Sources A note on sources Th is is the fi rst ever full-length biography of John W. McCormack, 1891 – 1980, who at the time of his death weeks from his 89th birthday was then the second longest-lived Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. McCormack was one of the very few political leaders who openly resisted a biography written about him even going so far as to repeatedly warn his offi ce staff about preparing a manuscript of their service with him. As Dr Martin Sweig, his longtime assistant once contended to me, “ John McCormack was the most secretive man I ever met. ” Consequently, the search for sources documenting his life and political career had to go well beyond his apparently sanitized congressional papers located at Boston University ’ s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Secretiveness also characterized many of John McCormack’s South Boston constituents. South Boston had been the focus of negative press during the school busing crisis of the 1970s and the Southies were not eager to share information with an outsider like myself. I lived in South Boston for a few months and traveled frequently to that unique peninsula. During that time, I learned many McCormack family stories, most of which were about Knocko and his sons Jocko and Eddie but very few were about John. Most of those sources refused to let me name them in print but the stories were too revealing to excise from the book so they are included in spite of many not able to be fully fact-checked. Unpublished doctoral dissertations and theses Brannen, Ralph Neal. John McDuffi e: State Legislator, Congressman, Federal Judge, 1883- 1950 , Ph.D. Dissertation, Auburn University, 1975. Coff ey, Ellen. Th e Impact of the New Deal on Boston Politics: Th e Early Career of John W. McCormack, Senior Honors Th esis, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 1994. Goldstein, Jenny. Transcending Boundaries: Boston ’ s Catholics and Jews, 1929-1965 , Senior Th esis, Waltham, MA: Brandeis University, 2001. Gordon, Lester Ira. John McCormack and the Roosevelt Era , Ph.D. Dissertation. Boston: Boston University, 1976. Greene, Harry F. Th e McCormacks of Massachusetts , Senior Th esis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1963. Hasenfus, William A. Managing Partner: Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Republican Leader of the United States House of Representatives, 1939-1959, Ph.D. dissertation, Boston College, 1986. 796 Sources Hedlund, Richard. Congress and the British Loan, 1945-1946, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1976. Imler, Joseph A. Th e First One Hundred Days of the New Deal: Th e View from Capitol Hill , Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1975. Sachar, David B. David K. Niles and United States Foreign Policy Toward Palestine: A Case Study in American Foreign Policy , Senior Honors Th esis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1960. Document sources Church documents McCormack family Canadian birth and baptismal records originally located at St. Columba Roman Catholic Church in Fairfi eld, Prince Edward Island, were moved to St. Margaret of Scotland Roman Catholic Church in St. Peters, PEI. Later McCormack records are at St. Mary ’ s Roman Catholic Church in Souris, PEI. Massachusetts church records of the Archdiocese of Boston have been relocated from the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College to Braintree, Massachusetts Baptismal records for McCormack family members may be found in South Boston churches Gate of Heaven and St. Augustine ’ s. Marriage records of Joseph McCormack and Mary Ellen O ’ Brien may be found at St. James the Greater in Boston. Marriage records of John McCormack and Harriet Joyce may be found at St. Augustine (now St. Th eresa of Calcutta) in South Boston. Harriet ’ s funeral took place at St. Augustine ’ s and John ’ s took place at St. Monica ’ s. Burial records for Joe McCormack are in the Rural Cemetery in Waldoboro, Maine. McCormack family members were buried in various Boston-area cemeteries — Sandbanks in Watertown, Mount Benedict in West Roxbury, New Calvary in Waltham, and St. Joseph ’ s in West Roxbury. G o v e r n m e n t d o c u m e n t s Massachusetts: Boston City Charters City of Boston, City Directory (commercially printed and published annually) Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention 1917-1918 . Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Registers of Vital Records — Indexes, 1841-1920 , Massachusetts Archives. Boston, Massachusetts. Also available at the Secretary ’ s offi ce were primary and general election returns for McCormack ’ s fi ft y-plus year electoral career. Legislative Journals of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: House of Representatives 1920 – 23 and Senate 1923 – 26. Sources 797 Maine: Offi ce of Vital Records, State Archives, Augusta, Maine. Texas : Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Austin, Texas. U . S . C o n g r e s s Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Bicentennial Edition, 1774-1989 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1969). Referenced in the footnotes as BDUSC; Black Americans in Congress , 1870 – 2007 (Washington, DC: United States: Offi ce of History and Preservation, Offi ce of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, 2009); U.S. Congress, Congressional Directories (Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce, 1928 – 70); U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 70th-91st Congresses (Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce, 1928 – 71); Congressional Research Service, William G. Whittaker, Davis-Bacon: Th e Act and the Literature , Report 94-908 (2007); U.S. Congress, Journal of the U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1928 – 71). “ Democratic Caucus Chairmen (1849 to present), ” History Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives; also relevant congressional hearings referenced in the notes. U.S. President Presidential documents and speeches were found in Public Papers of the President published in Washington, D.C. by the U.S. Government Printing Offi ce: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945 (13 vols. published 1938 – 50); Harry S. Truman, 1945-1953 (8 vols. published 1961 – 66); Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961 (8 vols. published, 1958 – 61); John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963 (3 vols. published 1962 – 64); Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1969 (10 vols., published 1965 – 70), and Richard M. Nixon, 1968-1974 (6 vols. published 1971 – 75). U.S. Supreme Court Martin Sweig, Petitioner v. United States of America, Respondent, Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1970, Case No. 1702. U.S. Bureau of the Census , U.S. Census Returns, 1880-1980 . U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Freedom of Information requests (FOIA) provided FBI fi les for John W. McCormack, David K. Niles, and Dr. Martin Sweig. Th e McCormack-Hoover correspondence includes 169 letters in thirty-four years from 1936 to 1970 that are very cordial. Th e Niles and Sweig fi les are more investigatory. U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Board of Parole National Archives provided the U.S. Bureau of Prisons fi le for James “ Whitey ” Bulger Jr., 1956 – 66 and U.S. Board of Parole, 1965 – 67 from the Gotlieb Archival Research Center. 798 Sources Canada: Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics at the Prince Edward Island Provincial Archives, Charlottetown, PEI. German Foreign Ministry: Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945 from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry (Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce, 1951), Series D (1937 – 45), Volume I, From Neurath to Ribbentrop (September 1937-September 1938) ; and Volume IV, Th e Aft ermath of Munich, October 1938-March 1939 . Archives for documents and oral histories John McCormack Papers, Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass. Extensive John McCormack congressional correspondence from 1950 on, including correspondence with Massachusetts State Senate President William Bulger. Pre-1950 materials are less complete. Th ere are valuable taped congressional interviews of John McCormack with Dr. Lester Gordon for his dissertation John McCormack and the Roosevelt Era Band those of Bill and Dorothy McSweeny. Also useful are the Ralph G. Martin papers with notes for Front Runner, Dark Horse (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), including Ed Plaut ’ s interviews with: Representative Dick Bolling – Mike Feldman – Joe Healy – Professor Arthur Holcomb – U,S. Senator Jack Javits – U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver – U.S. Senator Jack Kennedy – Larry O ’ Brien – John Powers – Ted Riordan – Arthur Schlesinger (Jr.) – U.S. Senator George Smathers – Sargent Shriver – Ted Sorensen – Wilton Vaugh. Eddie McCormack Family Papers: Th e boxes in this collection contained medals and gavels that were given to John McCormack, extensive newspaper clippings, family photos, and mostly personal correspondence apparently withheld from the Gotlieb Archives. Paul Wright Papers, University of Massachusetts-Boston: News accounts of Harriet Joyce ’ s singing career, U.S. Census Records, Massachusetts birth and death notices. Taped interviews with many South Boston neighbors, most valuable are those with James “ Buster ” Hartrey, who ran McCormack ’ s district offi ce in Boston and John ’ s sister-in-law, Mary T. Coff ey McCormack, the wife of Edward “ Knocko ” McCormack. Massachusetts Archival Collections : Th e Boston Public Library has the papers of Boston Republican boss Charles H. Innes who helped McCormack pass the bar examination and was an informal mentor in his early state legislative career. Th e BPL also has the largest microfi lm collection of Boston newspapers that provided a daily record of the city ’ s vibrant politics. Included were the Boston Globe , the Boston Herald Traveler , the Boston Record-American (now all subsumed as the Boston Herald ), and the defunct Boston Post . I was also able to spend days in the Globe ’ s huge clippings fi le. Th e papers of Augustus Peabody Loring who was helpful to McCormack at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917 – 19 may be found at the Harvard Sources 799 University Law School in Cambridge.