patrick murphy has worked for over 40 years in saint louis television, both on air and as a six time emmy winning producer of documentaries and musical variety shows. for the past 24 years, he's emceed the saint louis speaker series at powell hall. and he's also a working artist producing woodcut prints that are on display in several saint louis galleries. he's the author of candyman the story of the switzer candy company, and, of course, the irish in saint louis. from shante to lace curtain. his next book is on catholic churches, monasteries and shrines throughout the state of missouri. it's due to be in bookstores in winter of 2023. but of course, today he's here to talk about the history of the irish in saint louis. and after the talk, we do invite you to

join us upstairs outside the museum shop, where he'll be signing copies of his book. you can purchase them there. and that's enough for me. i'm going to turn the stage over to patrick murphy. so please join me in giving him a really warm welcome today. thank you. thank you. thank you, emily. and thank you all for turning out. what a great what a great turnout today on such a cold day. i appreciate that. missouri historical society has been a wonderful help in putting this book together with all their wonderful documents and and photographs. and they were just there, just wonderful people and just a great treasure for for the saint louis community. so how many of you out there identify to some degree as being irish. okay. is there anybody who does not in some way identify with being i? okay. well, good. thanks for coming anyway. both of you.

i grew up with the perception of being irish and it started at a very early in fact, the first time i actually remember becoming aware there in some sense that i was a part of some subgroup group of of the species called irish. i was about five years old and, and it was at the downtown famous bar when i visited santa claus. now, some of you of a certain age would remember that the real santa claus was at the downtown famous. well, i started developing a little bit of theological sophistication. i asked my mother, how could there be a santa claus? it's scruggs and it found divots and and she said, patrick, the real santa claus, is it downtown famous? but the rest are helpers. so i climbed into his his his lap before christmas and he

asked me in his normal, jolly way, what is your name, little boy? and i said, patrick murphy. and he said, ah, that is a fine irish name. and it was the first time i figured that if a major celebrity like santa claus that this was something worth mentioning, that this had to be something. and i would probably have to look into that. well, there are certain names that have a certain ethnic flavor to them. and patrick murphy is one of them. so even as a little boy, i would be introduced to people. and even to this day i am introduced to people as patrick murphy and not all of them, maybe not even half of them, but a lot of them feel compelled to comment on my name. and it's always friendly excuse me. and it's always wonderful and it's always warm and it's always something like, well, sure. and viagra or top of the

morning, which i understand they don't really say in ireland, but we say it we say it here because being irish in america is i learned putting this book together different from being irish in ireland and irish people regard irish-americans as being americans. so i was i'm old enough to remember a lot of family members in a storytelling family of people who were actually born. my grandfather, his brothers, they were born in the 1880s and early 1890s, and they grew up in kerry patch. my uncle fred would tell stories of the streetcar strike in 1900, throwing rocks at the streetcars from kerry patch and helping the other kids tear up the tracks. so i heard a lot of kerry patch stories and i always sort of wonder, what is the essence of this thing called being irish? and over the course of the book,

i asked a lot of people, irish, americans, danny long, the ceo of anheuser-busch, i asked danny, who grew up in that kerry patch, but another neighborhood called the patch, an irish neighborhood in carondelet. what being irish meant to him, because he's a very proud irishman. in fact, at the brewery, he had a bunch of irish-american people who reported to him dan flynn, mike rorty called the murphy at german brewery. irish, irish leadership. and he said, well, patrick, i don't know what being irish really means, but i know that i'm very proud of it. so i thought the best way to approach this whole subject of being irish was to write a book. it's about 80 different stories right from the beginning, you know, to, to to today, each one of them focusing on some aspect of irishness or being irish.

and i went back to the very beginning. i thought, well, why did we all come here in the first place? and that was that that was that was very interesting. i learned a lot. i, i was always surprised talking to the older people in my family and hearing their stories. and it was, as i said, a very storytelling family about how it used to be, because i grew up in a st louis where everybody loves the irish once a year, everybody dresses irish and pretends that they're irish and kiss me, i'm irish and we're the only city our size that has a baby of any size that has to st patrick's day parades and i knew that it wasn't always like that from the stories that i heard from my grandfather and his brothers, that at one time they were all pushed together in neighborhoods like dogtown and kerry patch and the patch, and it was hard to get a job and there were signs

that said irish need not apply. there was a very strong anti-catholic and anti irish sentiment in st louis and i wondered what happened? how did they start out hating us? and then end up end up of loving, loving us? there's there's your poor, there's your poor irishman from an english newspaper back in the 1870s, standing in an irish or english port, dreamily, looking at a sign that will take him. take him to to america. ireland had the misfortune of being an island very close to another island called england, and i learned that in the year 1155, an english pope, adrian, the fourth gave ireland to an irish king. henry the second, i believe it was, just gave it to him. and he gave it to him with the explicit directions that he

should instill virtue and morality in the irish people, something for which 900 years later, the irish have never expressed their gratitude that. to put it in perspective, ireland and it's important to understand why irish americans are the way they are today in the light of their history, ireland was occupied for over 800 years by a foreign power. now to put that into perspective is something that we can more closely relate to. europe was occupied by nazi germany for six years, so the effect on the irish people is, is just staggering. there were laws called the penal laws, which in the 1600s made it essentially illegal to be irish in ireland. protestant or catholic. you could not own a horse of a certain size.

you couldn't marry a protest and you couldn't drift more than traveled. more than so many miles from from your home. at one point, the language was made illegal. their names were anglicized. i learned that murphy used to be o'moore garda, but everyone had to anglicized anglicized their names. so now we have kelly's and flanagan's and murphy's and. and i met him at google earlier, before the before the show. show started. so it was essentially illegal to to be irish. the harp was banned as a national symbol. the shamrock was banned as an action. it really was illegal to wear green at one time, and you really could be hanged for wearing it as as as a symbol. so as early as the 1820s, an irish protestant, many of them protestant and some catholics started coming to st louis to get away from these laws. they tended to be ambitious people who wanted to get away.

and st louis had a couple of appealing aspects to it. one was that it was named after a saint, so it was a catholic town and many of the irish who were coming over were were catholic also hostility in st louis towards the irish was not nearly as bad as it was in a lot of the the eastern cities, baltimore, new york, philadelphia. yeah, places like that where there was even more hostility and a nice thing about st louis was it was generally a french town and the french hated the english too, so they could share that. so a lot of these people came, they were very successful. these are the names like milan fee and o'fallon. old names, some of them in fact, actually own slaves because there was nothing really. to stop them. the church took no real moral stance on the subject of

slavery, and they were just trying to fit in. and it was st louis and people owned, owned slaves. so there's the dark side and the happy side of this whole history, which i try to capture in the book. so they integrated pretty well. they were they were benevolent societies of the irish who helped other irish as they came. but then in the 1840s, something totally different happened that totally changed the nature of the people. this is the people digging for potatoes. in the 1840s, the famine changed everything. people were dispossess east from from their land. there's a picture of a woman is being put out of her. out of her home in 1846, all the way to 1852, the potatoes, which were the main staple of of of ireland because that was another thing that the english imposed on the irish was a one crop staple that was pretty easy to grow and cheap, and it allowed their tenants to eat without them having to put a lot of money into it. the famine it.

3 million people on the island left between 1846 and 1852. a million of them died. entire families dying in ditches and in abandoned towns. 2 million emigrated, most of them to the united states and probably many of your families. that was probably the time when when they came came over in steerage. it was an awful trip. i actually have a letter that my great grandmother wrote who came over in 1852 in steerage, advising her younger brother patrick what he should bring on the trip, how much water, how many potatoes and warned him to avoid man catchers in liverpool and not to drink before he got on the boat. just a wonder, a wonderful letter that that really i just put that up because the story is getting so grim right now that i thought we could use a little a little relief. isn't she lovely? isn't she lovely? so st louis had never seen poverty on the scale that the irish brought to st louis was.

it was largely german at that time. it was becoming less french and many of the irish moved to some land that was owned by john milan. feet on the north side and north of washington, north of the eades bridge, which eventually came kerry patch because so many of the irish who were coming over were were from county, from county kerry at first they just create a lean tos squatted. then they built brick buildings. that's an early picture of of of kerry patch people ask a lot about where was kerry patch. well there's no trace of it anymore. i spent a lot of time just driving around and wandering around north st louis trying to find any remnant of kerry patch. and there's practically nothing left. there's the old emigrant home, which is falling down. every once in a while you'll see a row house from that era. but even the streets have have been changed. their routes and dead ended, but basically, if you think in terms

of cash, moulin fee, maybe west all the way to jefferson east maybe the way to sweet to sixth street where st patrick used to be dogtown. dogtown quickly got a reputation as being a horrible place. it wasn't just one slum, it was several inter-related slums run by gangs irish gangs who generally reported to older men. they were political gangs work and they kept the discipline the way the city thought of of the town is reflected in an 1870 guide to st louis. this is a picture from the 1870 guide from st louis. this was a guide put up by the chamber of commerce trying to attract people to st louis. so in the little kerry patch section, it's treated more like a zoo, actually. this is the title of that picture is a typical kerry patch

resident. a kerry patch is described as a place occupied by fun loving people prone to telling fantastic stories and drink and at night, prone to punching each other's eyes out. so that's about the best they can come up with in terms of describing describing the irish. so, you know, we get into it, we get into that is more, more kerry patch. 13th street. none of that is. no, there is there anymore. the center of the center of kerry patch. there was three churches. they called them the shamrock churches. there was st laurence o'toole to the west, the first one on jefferson st, brigid of aaron and to the east st patrick. st patrick and the three of those provided a lot of stability for for the, for the neighborhood. and of course, they're all gone now.

are. that is one of the more complimentary pictures of a typical irish family and stereotypes are certainly not exclusive to the to the irish. and one of the things that interested me interested me was as i was writing this book about the irish, i kept on thinking how much of this applies or is similar to what other groups went through to try to become american. the irish had it lucky. they were basically white, spoke english after a generation they could lose their brogue. you couldn't tell just by looking at somebody, whether they were catholic or not. but the stereotypes are very interesting there to stereotype types, really. and it's strange because you wouldn't think that they could co-exist. the one is of of the the fire breathing fenian nationalist bomb throwing irishman which actually is still out there, you know, during the troubles. that was a stereotype.

the other stereotype is just the simple buffoon. too many kids, dumb, doesn't want to work. you know, usually drunk. and on top of that, and i found this really interesting. so much of american history and prejudice says are based on race or our perception of race or what we invent race to to be because they tell us that race has really no biological basis. it's more of a social phenomenon. and the irish were, according to the pseudo science of the day. and among many academicians and intellectuals and not considered to be white. and this is harper's weekly, a respected magazine in 1876. this this is the cover of harper's. and basically the article was about and the title on it is is it the black man is the problem

of the south? the irishman who looks very much like a monkey in that picture, actually is is portrayed as the problem of of of the north. and there was this this pseudo this pseudo science that that. among all of the races of humanity, you even saw this at the world's fair in 1904. but but at the very top of it, the whitest you could be was either too tannic or anglo. and then there was sort of a descending whiteness all the way down to other other races that are not caucasian. the irish were sort of there in the middle somewhere, you know, with italian and other people who were not german or english. so along with all of the other prejudices, there's this sort of racial in the 1920s, a writer named seamus mcmanus actually turned that whole race thing on

its head and wrote a a very popular book called the irish race, in which he embraced the idea of the irish being a different race and decided to write a book about how they were a great race and a wonderful race. so embracing it, rather rather than than rejecting it. so along with all of these other problems with the irish, you're having 1849. there's a cholera epidemic. who are they going to blame it on altogether? now? in 1849, there was a fire and most of downtown st louis burned down whose responsible for that? you got it back then. it was a long time ago. people believe in something called voter fraud. we should know this about about our our history. nobody like the irish but everybody wanted their vote. so there were a number of riots. this is the time when the know nothing party. remember studying the know nothings in school are

virulently anti-catholic. anti-irish. america should be white and protestant. in 1854, there was a riot. somebody in north st louis at a voting. at a voting pole of a voting what do you call it? a precinct where people vote accused some irish of voting voting fraud. somebody pulled out a knife. somebody gets stabbed. and three days of riot occurred. 1854 fighting was hand to hand. people were killed all the way out to where the convention center is now. all the way from the riverfront. i never learned about this in school. they threatened to burn down the old cathedral. the priest mobilized a number of his his parishioners. they put a canon in front of the front door of the old cathedral, threatening to fire it into the crowd. the hibernians. we have all heard of hibernia, and they were originally organized as a paramilitary

group. that's why hibernian chapters today are called divisions. the hibernian were armed and fighting is as well took three days. a good many irish homes and shops were were burned down and. it creates it created some some bad will. on the other hand here's a happy st patrick's day parade in the 1870s. the neighborhood also had a lot of a lot of cohesion. and a lot of the positive side, was it was that it was a neighborhood that there was very, very close knit. and people helped other people. this is funny, too. and i think this reflects the mentality of the irish because one of the things about being irish is there's a very strange kind of dark sense of humor that that permeates irish. irish culture and the deadpan, the straight face and they are

people who escape to queen. queen victoria, mostly during that time. and they proclaim carrie page, they proclaimed a king and actually passed the title on to his son. right after the civil war, a man named dennis sheehan, he was one of the few people who could read and write in carey page. he had a saloon because he could read and write. he was the postmaster there. he was also the person who was very well respected and settled disputes in the neighborhood he went to. he went to jail because he was pro southern. when he came out, they decided to proclaim him king of carey patch. so there was a three day celebration. there was a lot of unemployment. you know, people had time on their hands. so for three days, i should say, mostly nights, there were torchlight parades and i was reading articles in the globe democrat about these torchlight

parades. tenths thousand people with torch lights wending their way to the streets of carey patch. with dennis sheehan on his throne, a chair and they're singing songs. this is so irish. and they listed in this article in the globe democrat. the songs that they were singing. and my favorite was and. imagine 10,000 irishmen. and i think drink was involved singing the song called oh why did they dig my mother's grave so deep. with tears in their eyes? and dennis sheehan, irish on a on a chair. the the role of the irish in saint louis during the civil war

is complicated. and in many northern cities, the irish associated identified with the union army and the union side of st louis was had a very southern flavor to it at the time. and many of the irish in st louis, many of them from the early days, actually owned slaves. i learned, sadly, that bishop archbishop kenrick owned three slaves and i actually called up the archdiocese and i, i confirmed that it's true. and i wondered why. how could that be? how how could you be? and i an enslaved people yourself in your own country, and then come to another country and an and own people. and the best explanations i got really were first of all, the church didn't have any position on slavery at all. sadly, also, a lot of the irish in interpreted american history in terms of their own history

and many of them associated washington as being the big capital, i.e. london and the southerners as being working people on the land like themselves. and another reason was they were afraid that freed slaves would compete against them and they would no longer be second to the bottom of society. they would be at the very bottom. and i look at this and it's very disturbing. and there are a lot of different ways of looking at history. one is to look back and simply condemn the way people thought. and it was wrong. it was ignorant and it was harmful and it was but i think it's helpful to go one step further and try to at least try to understand what what they were thinking. my grandparents, they never really talked much about race, but when my dad married a protestant, it wasn't a big deal. so i can only imagine what their

thoughts on on race were. so there's another aspect of being irish that did here's a battle of wills and creek, which is so sad because wilson creek, which is south in southern missouri, was a battle were on both sides. most of the soldiers were irish on both sides, confederate and irish. and that is so much a part of the irish story, too, all the way up until the time of the troubles. irish fighting irish and even today, we have to say patrick's day parades, because there was a differences between the leadership of the downtown irish organizers and the hibernian later to become the dogtown irish in terms of who should be included, then what should be, what should be, the flavor of it? talking about battles. this is interesting also in my mind, very irish. my great grandfather was involved in a he came to america because he was 20 years old. they were going to hang him

because he participated in a rebellion outside of dublin and they didn't get him, but they got his name. and so if they if they caught him, they were going to hang him. he came over in steerage, ended up ended up up in st in st louis. there were so many rebellions. there was the rebellion of 1798. there was a rebellion of 1840. the rebellion of 1867. the rebellion of the easter rising in 1969, 1916, and in every case, there's an adjective that goes before irish rebellion, and it failed now failed rebellion. well, in 1867, the irish being a clever people as they are, had an ingenious plan to free ireland. it was the fenians. there were a number of st louis and involved in it too. their plan was and stick with me here, okay? to invade canada, to capture

canada and hold it hostage. you're laughing. and the only way that england could get canada back or and they would want it back because it's canada was to free ireland and they actually invaded and failed. there. this is the this is the irish in 1904. this is the this is the irish. pavilion at the world's fair on the pike. one of the things that i found very interesting was, okay, so when did the irish started to become acceptable in my own family? they moved from kerry patch. then they moved to cote. brilliant. you know, the west end, north side. and then later they, you know, moved to the suburbs over generations. you know, they got jobs, they got respectable, they second generation, they, you know, lost their brogue, got a shoeshine, a

haircut. and, you know, they passed for just being americans. but there were a couple of times, as i did my research and it was kind of moving actually to starting to realize that the irish americans and the irish irish were starting to become two different people. oh, yeah. and over a beer and and the irish americans, they were irish, you know, and but that in the larger scope of things, they were becoming americans. and in the 1904 world's fair, the people who brought the fair and put the irish pavilion together were two minds. one of them wanted to show in 1904 that that ireland was a modern day country that was capable of being independent from england. the movement was very strong. there was a cultural movement led by yates and other people to show that there was irish culture and irish music and irish industry. the other half of the people who put the fair together were they wanted to have goat rides on trails passed past rosy cheeked

carlene in heartbroken tenors, singing to the all the stereotype. in fact, they had a band by the name the world's fair, a band called 64 sober irishmen. as if where did they find 64 sober irishmen in any way? john mcloughlin, who was, you know, famous tenor, you know, i'm sure your grandparents all had a john mclaughlin record in the victrola, there minded and he was going to go on stage he was supposed to follow a guy. it was a with a putting nose and a red fright wig, you know, playing the stage irish and he said, either that guy goes or i go. and they sent him back to ireland. so. so there was that. but the funny thing was all the people coming in from kerry, patch and dogtown and the patch down in carondelet, st louis,

irish, they thought that stage irish stuff was hilarious. they liked laughing at themselves. they thought it was funny because for them they felt more american than irish and they didn't feel threatened by that. it was like. like a drunken irishman. ha ha ha. you know, they had enough distance between them and the experience to be able to laugh at it. not like not like the irish in 1882, there was a veiled prophet float. i don't know who put the float together, but wasn't a st louis irish 1882 the veiled prophet float the night before some hibernians actually saw the float and gathered a bunch of people to burn it down so that it wouldn't be the next day in the parade. they worked it out and they took the float out. but what the float was, and i read about this in the globe democrat it was st patrick standing on a little rock blessing, a bar fight. so that that was rough, that

was, that was that was rough. and and they took the float out. and then there was a lot of bad publicity and a lot of people in st louis said, can't the irish take a joke? they call themselves mick and paddy. how come we can't? and an irish doctor wrote to the paper and he said, you know, it's true. we do call each other mc we do call each other paddy. you know, we enjoy our stereotypes, but that's for us. it's to the early. we need more time when we are a free and independent country, then we can laugh and we'll see the humor in the in the joke. another instance was. in 1916, europe was at war with germany. england was fighting germany. we were on the verge of instituting a draft. the easter rising had occurred in dublin, england, made the terrible mistake after suppressing the easter rising of

executing 16 of its leaders. shot them at the tower of dublin castle, got terrible british terrible press all over the world for for that and st louis was always on the route where irish artist irish politicians always said louis, because there was such a big irish population throughout at the coliseum on jefferson, there was a huge rally 1916 and the the the german society was there with the irish society and the fenians and the and the hibernians. and the whole point was to argue that young irish american men should not enlist in the us army to fight in world war one alongside the british. the germans had never occupied ireland. the english had. we had no fight with the germans. our fight was still and would always be with the english until

ireland was a free and united country. and there was a lot of applause. and you people, you know, people expressing their favor in that. but the thing is, irish-american young men enlist at the same rate or higher than other people. that was an indication that, yeah, they love being irish. they identify with being irish american, but they they considered themselves to be more american than that irish. another funny thing by 1918, by the end of the world, the world war one, kerry patch really wasn't exclusively irish anymore. it was other people were coming at other poor people, people from eastern europe. african-americans were starting to move into the neighborhood. so it becomes more difficult to decide, well, who's who's irish anyway? because part of this book is about like i identity as well. and over the course of the book, i met a lot of people who identified as irish and their last name might have been

schmidt, but and doing book signings and things i run into, people say, well, you know, my name is, is, is wagner, but my, my, my mother side is flanagan. and i love that. so so how do you determine that during the first generation was easy to see who the irish were. you know, they dressed funny and they they talked funny and they lived in one part of town. but but i've met african-americans named murphy, like who's irish and who isn't. and the best answer could come up with is this is america. and you can identify in any way you want. and if you want, be irish, you go right ahead and do it because you're welcome. bad men, these bad men, good catholic boys. but bad men. this is these that's jellyroll hogan on the left with a couple of his guys. a lot of crime, a lot of organized crime. i say organized crime actually, they weren't all that organized.

they're there because nemesis was egan's rats. these are all all all carry patch gangs because prohibition did them a great favor. jellyroll hogan actually on the left, retired from crime and spent 40 years in missouri legislature. yeah, there's so many punch lines. i'm not even going to go there. i'm not. i'm not even going to go there. but many of these there are stories of when they're shot. you know, they they call for the bishop, you know, to give them their last rites. i mean, they're just wonderful, wonderful stories. and and egan's rats in jelly roll, hogan, they pretty much killed each other off. the police didn't really have all that much to do with it. and so by the late 1920s and it was 1929, there practically nonexistent is gangs and gangsters need work too. so when your gang falls apart, you freelance and al capone in

chicago was looking for some boys to come up to chicago and take care of a job on valentine's day. and egan's rats and i almost had hogan's heroes and jellyroll hogan's boys went up to chicago and performed the saint valentine's day massacre because they had a reputation of being real professionals. so this is my this is this is one of my favorite pictures that is to me, this is this is a picture of irish saint louis. you got cops, you got priests, you got leprechauns back there in the band. this is the 1930s. it's st patrick's in in well, saint patrick's was on was on six on sixth street and there's there's just you get a politician in there. so, you know, by this time, you know, they're getting pretty well pretty well assimilated. one of the thing that contributed to assimilation and

this was a surprise by the end of the first world war piano starting to go out of style in people's parlors, the victrola, which was invented in 1900. by 1918, they were getting pretty sophisticated, stimulated technology for victrola, but it was still pretty rough. not a lot of the frequencies could cut through a victrola, but one of the frequency things that could was the frequency of an irish tenor. so when people had victrola in their homes, irish records were very popular. my girls, an irish girl. it's a long way to tipperary. all of these. my wild irish rose sung by tenors. these were very songs. and irish culture started getting into people's parlors. i just thought it was that was kind of interesting. and at kind of strange today. pat connolly tavern saying yeah st st patrick's day i called the book i called the book the irish

in st louis from chanty to lace curtain because to me it sort of spans the experience. i remember at home hearing that some family or friends or people were there lace curtain, neither one of these as a compliment being chanty or lace curtain, neither one of them was a complete compliment. the shedding means you just got off the boat and you don't know nothing. you know, you're not. you're you're rough, you're crude, but lace curtain kind of implies, as my mom used to say, that you forgot where you came from or. she used to say a little big for your britches. so that's that. even today, irish american, i have a tendency to identify themselves, but the reason that even people even consider are they wear the cloth doc or or are they identify or when when somebody you meet somebody else with an irish name, you kind of, you know, wink and like you're

in a club it's it's basically it's the power of all that history behind it and how they were told and retold. but any irishman will tell you that a story gets better every time it's told. that still carries on today. and also in the culture, in the music, in making irish so to read that these are the kinds of things that stories that the english couldn't take stories away those would be passed those would be passed on. when i left home. wrap this up and we'll take questions. my mom, when i left home at years old, she made an embroidery for me that she embroidered and framed. and it's hung on my wall in every place i've ever lived. over the last 55 years, there are however however long it's been, and it's a saying, you know, kind of the corny sayings that i never like. it's like, oh, i made a wind at your back.

and may your pockets be full of potatoes. and then i made the devil not know you're dead, momma. blah, blah, blah. well, this is the one. and maybe you've heard. maybe not. this is the one my mother embroidered for me. may those who love us love us. and maybe those who don't love us. may god turn their hearts. and if we won't hear their hearts, maybe turn their ankles so we know them by their limping limping. which to me captures the whole kind of chip on the shoulder spirit, you know, it's like, yeah, i'm irish. you got something to say about that. a lot of you know what i'm talking about. so it's a quarter till and we got the room till noon. we've got a couple of microphone ins on either side. i asked either that you go to a microphone or someone emily, the lovely and talented emily from the missouri story year, will

will will bring the mic to you. so any. oh come on. did i explain everything that clearly. yes, sir. no, please, please. oh, no, no. she's just. well, thank you very much for not. and i think i really love the distinction you make between irish americans and the irish. i find that i was raised by irish descendants, folks who came over before the famine and whatnot, and we were always taught to root for the underdogs and to remember where we came from. and i just want to see if you have any experience with folks

of irish heritage really understood standing where we came from and working towards helping to live great. those among us, right? whoo hoo hoo. still sort of suffer the indignities that we suffered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. and how that might sort of play out. thank you. you know, where i probably see it most is probably the majority of the majority of irish in st louis are roman catholic and i probably see that mostly in parishes, probably, you know, and the parish that i had holy redeemer as a pretty rich irish heritage from from its early days and i think that a lot of the charity work and work that comes out of out of the parishes

is is evident evident there. unfortunately, a lot of the history of the irish in st louis and in the united states, too, is, is they spent so much time trying to establish themselves that it was later in their history that they had the luxury, i think, of being able to actually focus on the plight of other people. i think a lot of this there was so much struggle all the way into the 20th century and there's still anti-catholicism out there, not in saint louis, because there are 400,000 catholics in saint louis, but, you know, you get outstate emily mentioned that i'm writing a book on catholic churches all around the state of missouri. there are parts of of missouri now where people still think it's a little weird, be irish or catholic. so i think a lot of a lot of the energy that the irish spent was trying to bring themselves up by their own bootstraps, but so it's a good point. and i, i, i'm glad you had that

experience. yes, i can repeat the question if you'd like to. yeah. oh, here we go. good. i haven't had the opportunity to of reading your book yet. my cousin is going through it and she'll give it to me, i have to say. no, no, don't read hers. we're selling them after the speech. but i wonder if you went into any depth with where the patch in carondelet was and how that came about. yes. and i ask that because i had the opportunity of meeting danny long very casually at his son's restaurant. and after a 20 minute laughable, fell madly in love with the man. he's great, but he didn't mention the patch and how much it meant to him. yeah. and my husband.

and i drive around there and we ask people if this the patch is yeah nobody knows. yeah. the oak is confusing because i spent a lot of time with danny long and you're right, he has absolutely one. wonderful. he grew up in the patch. he went to st mary's. he attended st columb kill, which is i think the only thing left his c column killed now is the front steps in the weeds that mean that's about it. there is st boniface up the street because of course, you know, you can't have catholics, german and irish worshiping together. you know, the archdiocese made sure that every block had a catholic church for a different different ethnic group sang tenor box. an irish kid from from the patch a lot of us for me i thought the patch was kerry patch because kerry patch also abbreviate did the patch and there was dogtown but but the patch was in kuranda lad like along michigan. very small, very irish. it was also nestled between a spanish neighborhood and a

german neighborhood and the reason that so many irish came to the patch is because a lot of irish came up through new orleans on their way to to st louis and they would look off the boat and off to the left. they'd see smokestacks and factories and basically it was, hey, let me off here. it looks like there's work here. there were all these forges and they built they built ships there and iron works in very dangerous places. these were always blowing up or they were very dangerous places. but yeah, a solid irish community settled down there, sort of, if, you know, carondelet kind along michigan on the streets and either side. colonel, it's not that big. but yeah, that's interesting. so you know about the patch? yeah, not a lot of people don't. i didn't. yes. thing that used on the said was

it how how the bush is treated him with the third bush especially and held it against mr. long that he was from the patch and which bush was from heaven. i guess we didn't talk about that, but i but i know that they had a lot of pride this murphy at the brewery there was denny, there was mike rorty who came up with this bud's for you. and weekends were made for michelob there was dan flynn and they actually went to ireland, made budweiser like the number one lager in ireland, which is amazing. they they bought the derby, the horse race and because they were irish-american, they established this great relationship ships with the irish because in business, denny was telling me a lot about how close the irish and irish americans in ireland

do overseas business together. and of course, ireland being the only english speaking eu country now, is just such a natural gateway to europe that there's a very close affinity between americans and particularly irish americans and and and the irish. but now we didn't talk much about mr. bush or his feelings. yeah, but i'm sure it was, you know, interesting some interesting cultural dynamics going on there. yes. oops. so i get this question right in the old, old times, the english the rich english people. i'm talking about, they wanted land either hunt or something, and it was in ireland. so they captured people. i guess they would call the irish to run their plantations. is that a true story? yeah, actually.

and so i want to know, where did they capture these people that were slaves? what country or where did they come from? i, i didn't run into that. what i did run into is that basically there was a land grab in the north and that's why they, you know, they, they threw off all the irish aristocracy and moved the english aristocracy in. and that's why there's a protestant north and a catholic. you know, republic. now, the source of, of of of all of the troubles, but basically what with the english did was they took the land and consolidated the land, particularly during famine. they were all tenants. the irish didn't own their own land for the most part they rented. and when the famine came they they threw them off the land and consolidated the land. so they weren't they were more like sharecroppers than than slaves. but when it wasn't economically feasible anymore to have them living on their land, they just throw them out. and they did.

they died by the hundreds of thousands. a million of them died in ditches along alongside the road. in fact, the irish don't call it the famine. the the gaelic word for what happened back then is anger to more, which more literally the great hunger, because a implies that it's somehow an act of god that happens through some quirk of nature. but i'm going to more implies that it was more of a genocide. it was the ultimate solution in that the english employed against the irish to get rid of them all in the 17th century crime. oliver cromwell you don't want to mention his name in an irish pub, he told his troops that the irish, when they they burned down, have they killed hundreds of thousands of irish just going village to village, massacring them and burned down half the trees, cut out half the trees in

ireland. and he told his troops that the irish really weren't human beings, that beneath their clothes they tails. so it kind of makes you kind of mad when you think about it. but you know, this idea i mean, we do it today. it's not just the english. i mean, by, you know, demonizing or eliminating, you know, the enemies, humanity, you know, it's easier to it's easier to do whatever you want to with with them. i think we've got time for another couple of questions. we do. we got 5 minutes. yes. from i. i listen to a podcast once about an african-american community that they were like the poorest people, but they pooled all their money and sent it to ireland for the famine. they could relate. wow. did you hear of that? no, i did not. it was just this past year. i don't know if it was through here or arp or some kind of.

it's a wonderful story. i had never heard of it, but here you had the poorest americans sending their money to ireland because they felt so compassionate. it's a wonderful story. i talked to many irish who i. irish. irish who said that ireland would not have been come free a free country were it not for the money that that irish americans in cities like st louis sent to ireland. well, to buy guns. and during the civil war, a lot of irish who served in both the confederacy and the union learned warfare in the civil war and then went back to ireland to fight for irish freedom. so there's always been this strong connection between the two countries, and i could just add to what she was saying. the cherokee very, very much sent a lot of food to ireland during the hunger. and my family that lives in

southwestern cork still revere the american indian because of that spirit. it was the cherokee, you know, this is this is where i get a lot of good material for. the second edition, where were when i was writing this book, those are wonderful stories. great stories. oh, we've got, i think, time for another another or two is got a couple of minutes left. yes. never say never. oh, boy. that's tough. oh, pat connolly's is great. mcgurk's help me launch the book and we had the opening that at at mcgurk's. i it's hard to decide how you how do you decide they're all they're all my children how can you love one more one more than another? but then i think about pat connolly's is they don't go they

don't they don't make a big deal out of being irish. when i interviewed them and they're in the book too, it's like it's like, you know, we don't we don't have shamrocks on the walls, you know, we just we're just irish and everybody it and we don't make a big, big deal out of it. so it's kind of low key beneath the radar. irish. yes. patrick, you mentioned that there was an irish tenor that was popular around 1900. yeah. john mclaughlin. yeah, name is john. yeah. did you mean john mccormack? yes, i did what i say mclaughlin. yes, john mccormack. i did. that's who i met. that's what i thought. yeah. thanks. you want a good irish song? where to get mclaughlin, mccormack, john mccormack. thank you for keeping me honest. appreciate it. oh, okay. see, i could have i could have i could have bought my way through that. no, no, no. i mean mclaughlin, the other one. john mccormack. john mccormack, thank you.

i won't make that mistake again. how many people out there during these talks have been just so polite and not said anything? patrick doesn't know his tenders. so you're a cheddar. would you mind singing something? you know, let's hear. let's finish it up with a good song. thank you. this song was before probably john mccormack. it was a song originally titled londonderry air. yeah. and then they later changed it to oh, danny boy. yeah. which is probably the most popular. arizona is. oh, danny bowie, the pipes, the pa pipes are called the and from glen to glen and down the mountains are the summer's gone. and although these have fallen,

it's you, it's you must go and i must by but me bug ones. summer's in the meadow. oh, ah. when the valley's hushed and white with no if i'll be here in sunshine ah in shadow. oh, oh, danny boy, oh, danny boy i love you so much. when we come and all this lovers are dying if i am die as dead i well may be you come and find the place where i am why he and in neil and say and are they

there for me? and i shall we hear those songs you each read about me and know my grave will warm her sweet her be so you will burn and tell me that you loves me and i shall sleep in peace until you. come to you me me. i apologize because i'm not irish.

yes, i can't top that. i can't top that. thank you in person the family has. thank you all so much for coming. i believe we're moving upstairs and if you would like a book, i would be happy to sign it and personalize it. i'll write anything you would. it it. thank you. you have a delightful thank you so much.

we are so grateful to have this opportunity to explore the earliest years of the kennedy family's life in america with our distinguished guests this evening. much of neil thompson's research took place at the kennedy library archives and we are very pleased to learn more about his work in the lives of bridget and patrick kennedy this evening. i'm now delighted to introduce tonight's speakers. we are so glad to welcome neil thompson to the kennedy library virtually. a journalist and and the author of six acclaimed books. he has written for the new york times the washington post the wall street journal esquire outside and numerous other media outlets. his new book is the first kennedy's the humble r