Submitted by the Bedford Historical Society
Author, lecturer and history teacher Chris Daley will make a return visit to Bedford as the Historical Society’s guest speaker on Sunday afternoon, April 28, 2019, with another thought-provoking topic: “Irish Need Not Apply: The History of the Irish in Boston.”
Daley, who has delighted Society audiences over the years with fascinating talks on the Lizzie Borden case and President Lincoln’s assassination, will examine many facets of the early Irish experience in Boston through a 90-minute slide lecture, to be given in the third-floor Great Room of Old Town Hall.
A refreshment period will run from 2-2:30 pm, with Society announcements to follow by President Don Corey, who will then introduce guest speaker Daley. Daley’s talk will run for about an hour.
This program is free and open to the public. Especially those that are Irish are invited to attend!
Daley will address the scant evidence about Irish brought over unwillingly as indentured servants in the late 17th Century; the arrival of the Scotch-Irish or “Ulster Irish” in the first real migration of Irish in 1718; the increase in anti-Irish/Catholic sentiment in Boston – starting with the notorious Pope’s Day celebrations; the burning of Charlestown’s Ursuline Convent in 1834; and the Broad Street Riot of 1837.
He will describe the massive wave of immigration into Boston after the Great Potato Famine with respect to the condition of the new Irish arrivals, the neighborhoods they settled, how they banded together, the kinds of work they did to survive, and their eventual assimilation into American culture.
His presentation will end with short vignettes on Irish political leaders who rose up within the sphere of Boston politics, including Patrick Collins, Hugh O’Brien, Patrick J. Kennedy, John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, and the “Rascal King” himself, James Michael Curley.
Chris Daley is a history teacher in the Silver Lake Regional School System in Kingston. He has served as Chair of the Pembroke Historical Commission and President of the Pembroke Historical Society. He has turned one of his talks, entitled “Mass Murder: Massachusetts’ Most Infamous Murders,” into a book called Murder & Mayhem in Boston – Historic Crimes in the Hub.
His presentation is supported in part by a grant from the Bedford Cultural Council, the Bedford committee that is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
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