Learning Longmeadow’s History: Irish Heritage

By Melissa M. Cybulski & The Longmeadow Historical Society

Published in Longmeadow Neighbor, March 2025

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, that venerable feast day that celebrates the blessings of being born Irish, let’s look back at their earliest recorded years in Longmeadow. The best way to do that is by looking at the 1850 Federal Census and the 1855 Massachusetts State Census, both of which are the first to ask respondents to identify their place of birth. Through that, it is easy to see an increase in Longmeadow residents identifying Ireland as their place of birth.

In 1850, out of a town population of 1,258, there were approximately 60 people who identified Ireland as their place of birth. Five years later in 1855, that number had doubled to 121 Irish-born residents. That is a huge jump for a small town. What brought them here to live in relative isolation away from their homeland and families? Those were among the most devastating years of the blight known as the Great Hunger or the Irish Potato Famine when scores of starving Irish boarded boats out of Ireland in hopes of a better chance at life abroad. Longmeadow’s Irish likely arrived in larger port cities of Boston and New York and for one reason or another made their way towards the Western part of Massachusetts.

Anyone with Irish roots will find the names of those recent immigrants familiar. There are Ellens and Marys and Margarets and Catherines and Bridgets for the ladies; there were Johns and Thomas’ and Michaels and Patricks and Martins for the men. They came with the kind of last names that make genealogical research nearly impossible because they are so common: Quinn, Ryan, Burk, Connolly, O’Connell, and Carroll among them. Ever tried finding a John Ryan on Ancestry? You could get lost among them!

Unless they were working for the button factory in town or in the quarry in the eastern part of Longmeadow, they generally did not live with any other Irish-born soul. Instead, they were farm hands or house servants in the households bearing the names of Longmeadow’s oldest families like the Coltons, Fields, Cooleys, and Blisses.

By 1868, the “Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary” was formed by a committee of five Irish men in town: Michael Quinn, Martin Hartigan, John Waters, Patrick Connors, and Peter Ward, all of whom appear on the 1855 census in Longmeadow as young laborers. They must have found enough community and success to choose to stay. They raised money to purchase an old school building and move it to a site on Williams Street across from the cemetery. The parishioners of the newly formed St. Mary’s contributed their own labor in preparing the land and renovating the building to suit them. It was dedicated in October 1870 and served the Catholic community of Longmeadow until the current St. Mary’s church opened in 1931.

Longmeadow Historical Society board member, Beth Hoff, has spent a lot of time compiling data on census records in Longmeadow, and between 1850-1910, Ireland was by far the most commonly cited country as a place of birth outside of America. A very distant second was Canada, with a few Swedes, Swiss, German, British, and Bohemians among the mix.

March 17th may be the designated day on the calendar to celebrate the Irish, but anyone with Irish in their bones will tell you any day is a fine day to be Irish.