Friendly and Adopted Sons
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1771, a group of Irish immigrants met to form a social group, Members included, Stephen Moylan (later secretary to George Washington), Thomas Fitzsimmons (one of only two Catholics to sign the Constitution), and George Meade (banker and trustee of Old. St. Mary’s).[1] The group was
Irish Catholics and Secret Societies
The Catholic Church has a long history of opposing secret societies, partly because of the oaths of loyalty involved in such groups. Nevertheless, during the 1800s there were two major organizations that attracted numbers of Irish Catholics: the Fenian Brotherhood and the Molly Maguires. The Fenian Brotherhood was founded in
Mathew Carey
A major figure in the fields of literature, religion, and economics in the post Revolution America, has often been overlooked and forgotten. That figure is Mathew Carey, an Irish Catholic immigrant who helped shape the intellectual landscape of Philadelphia. Born on January 26, 1760 in Dublin, Carey entered a printing
Thomas Nast Anti-Irish Cartoons
Among the recently digitized images added to our online collection are a number of drawings by cartoonist Thomas Nast. In 1846 at the age of six, Nast immigrated with his mother to the United States and by age 15 he had begun drawing for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News.[1] He joined
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