2011 Christopher Anglim Compiler 318 Hillsboro Drive Silver Spring, md 20902

The irrepressible Irish immigrants settled in the working class neighborhoods of northeast and northwest Denver, congregating near the Catholic parishes of St. Patrick’s in north Denver and St. Leo’s in Auraria. They opened saloons, became merchants, policemen and politicians, formed social and political clubs, started newspapers and held Denver’s first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in 1868.

Living with her at the time was Mary E. Anglim, a teacher at 2 Woolsey.⁶³⁶

From ca. 1971-1974, Thomas D. Anglim (born September 16, 1930 in New Jersey), lived at 30 Hampton Lane with his wife Madeline. From 1971-1974, he worked at Public Relations with Xerox Corporation.⁶⁴⁴

Donald D. Anglim, October 27, 1925-August 16, 1985 (Volusia County)

Helena Powers Anglim, January 27, 1909-October 20, 1973 (Pinellas County)

Kathryn C. Anglim, March 2, 1980-March 2, 1980 (Dade County).

Kenneth Howard Anglim, June 10, 1910-April 29, 1973 (Pinellas County)

Maren D. Anglim, April 22, 1943-October 27, 1993 (Volusia County)

Reilly John Anglim, October 31, 1934-October 23, 1984 (Duval County)

Rosairia Anglim, August 24, 1922-March 6, 1971 (Pinellas County)

William Joseph Anglim, February 7, 1908-July 29, 1987 (Pinellas County)

Georgia
Finding crowded, discouraging conditions upon their first arrival points of New York, Boston or Philadelpha, some Famine Irish immigrants embarked on coastal steamers or sailing vessels having heard that things "might be better" in South Carolina or Georgia. At that time Savannah was Georgia's largest city and its chief seaport, connecting with northern cities via coastal packets. This harbor became, for hundreds of Irish, their second port of entry in the U.S. Although a few were able to pay the steamer fare, the great majority found steerage more affordable.

Records show that some 2,280 Irish immigrants arrived in Savannah between 1800 and 1861 -- only a small fraction of those immigrated to the United States. The peak period for arrivals in the city was 1848 to 1852; in these years almost 800 arrived. Workers were needed in shipping and lumber, home construction, road-building, ditch digging and for laboring on canals. Labor in the rice or cotton fields did not appeal to the Irish and these jobs were mainly left to black slaves. The Irish did work with the cotton arriving by wagon or railroad from the interior of the state which had to be hauled to the warehouses in Brunswick or Savananah for counting and then loaded on cargo ships; this was a large-scale operation involving thousands of bales. In Savannah, this activity was located at what is now known as "Factors' Walk," along the Savannah River.

The great majority of Irish who came in mid-century were Catholic, and of those surveyed most were shown to have had given Co. Wexford at their point of origin, others principally from Counties Mayo, Tipperary, Kerry, Cork and Cavan. Some had landed in New York only to head for the southern United States for many reasons including overcrowding and desiring a warmer climate. In 1839 Irish laborers worked on a railroad in Marthasville (the original name of Atlanta.

Gwinnett County
[may be transcription errors in the original documents]

In 1900, Emory S Anglim (born ca. 1881 in Georgia), lived in Ben Smiths, Gwinnett, Georgia. He worked as a laborer.⁶⁴⁶

His wife was Elizabeth (born ca. 1879), and their children were: Beulah (born ca. 1897), Dewey (born ca. 1899), William H. (born ca. 1901), Dora (born ca. 1903), Jesse (born ca. 1905), and Rosa (born ca. 1908).⁶⁴⁷

No Records

No Records

The local Catholic church established two types of parishes: special ones without boundaries for non-English speaking immigrants and ones with neighborhood boundaries. Since the Irish were the major, if not the only, English-speaking group, they obtained dominance by default in the structure of the church. In turn, the local parish aided and sustained them by providing education, social services, and a focus for social life.

Throughout the latter nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Ireland agitated and fought for independence from England. In Chicago, many Irish became involved in organizations that supported independence for Ireland.

Eventually, the Irish became the most important ethnic group in local politics. They were an integral part of machine-style government based on patronage jobs. They benefited greatly from this system and also learned to build coalitions in order to attain/retain power.

During the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Irish political involvement and their Catholic religion led some native-born Protestant Americans to conduct an anti-Irish campaign, which affected employment opportunities and promoted a negative image of the Irish.

The early years of Chicago coincided with the significant rise in Irish immigration in the 1830s. Some Irish already lived in Chicago when it was incorporated as a city in 1837. In the next few years Irish numbers grew rapidly particularly after the arrival of refugees from the Irish Potato Famine. By 1850 Irish immigrants accounted for nearly 20 percent of the city's population. Although the number of Irish immigrants in Chicago continued to increase until the end of the century, their percentage of the city's population was never again as high as it was in 1850, after which large numbers of Germans and later other immigrant groups settled in the city making it one of the most multi-ethnic urban areas in the United States.

Like those in other parts of the United States, the vast majority of the early Irish immigrants in Chicago were very poor. Taking low-skilled and poorly paying jobs in brickyards, meatpacking plants, and the like, they settled in poor neighborhoods, like Bridgeport on the South Side or Kilglubbin on the North.

Over time, the economic status of the Irish improved. The children of the early immigrants appear to have been better off than their parents, while the new immigrants arriving after the Great Famine were more prosperous and better educated than those who had come before. Yet, at the end of the 19^th century, Irish Chicagoans were still overwhelmingly working class, and some lived in considerable poverty.

After the turn of the 20^th century, the Irish continued to improve their economic fortunes. Increasing numbers of the Irish left their old neighborhoods in the central parts of the city and moved to better ones in outlying areas. The exodus of the “lace-curtain” or “steam-heat” irish from early shantowns was a key element in the story of Irish America at the turn of the century.

The Depression, of course, hurt the Irish as it did others, but did not permanently prevent their upward move, which received significant help after World War II with the Gl Bill of Rights. The increased prosperity of the Irish was evident in the steady stream who left the city for the suburbs in the half century after the war.

Although the Irish seem more widely dispersed today than they were a century ago, most of the Irish in Chicago's history have never lived in real ethnic ghettoes. In fact, they have been one of the least clustered ethnic groups in the city. Yet despite the presence of relative geographic separation, the Irish, at least into the twentieth century, remained a relatively cohesive ethnic group joined together by their Catholicism, devotion to Ireland (particularly Irish nationalism), and by a high level of involvement in the local political system.

Holy Family Church, Chicago

The overwhelming majority of Irish in Chicago were Catholics. For Irish Catholics, religious and ethnic identities were entwined, as religious persecution at the hands of Protestant England and the Protestant Anglo-Irish establishment had tended to fuse together their Irish and Catholic identities. In Chicago, it was the Irish along with German Catholics and some French-speaking residents who, in the 1830s and 1840s, laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in the city. With a tremendous increase in the number of Irish and German Catholic newcomers in ensuing decades, the Catholic Church dramatically grew. In the last decades of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Catholic population not Holy Family Church, Chicago only continued to grow tremendously, but it also greatly diversified with the arrival of thousands of the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, and Italians from southern and eastern Europe.

Because of their numbers, early arrival, and ability to speak English, the Irish held the dominant role in the Catholic Church in Chicago for decades. Until 1916 all the Catholic bishops in Chicago, except one who served for five years, were of Irish birth or parentage. Although ethnic tensions existed in the church, with few exceptions the Catholics in Chicago remained united. One of the factors that helped to promote this relatively peaceful coexistence of diverse ethnic groups in the same church was that the Irish bishops supported the practice of establishing separate (termed "national") parishes for the various non-English speaking ethnic groups.

As English-speakers, the Irish did not have national parishes created for them, but instead attended regular (termed "territorial") parishes. The system, however, had a significant effect on them. Because they were virtually the only English-speaking Catholic immigrants, the territorial parishes became in effect Irish parishes, so that for a long time the institutional religious structure not only separated Irish Catholics from American Protestants, but also socially from their fellow Catholics. This system began to change slowly toward the end of the nineteenth century. By 1900 there were large numbers of American-born German Catholics who used English as their first language. As a result, existing German national parishes gradually became English-speaking ones, and hardly any new German national parishes were created. When established, new territorial parishes were intended for Germans as well as for the Irish, although because of settlement patterns, many of these eventually became predominantly Irish or German. The newer Catholic immigrant groups followed the same pattern as the Germans.

The local parish was very important in the lives of Irish Chicagoans. It met their spiritual needs, of course, but it also served other significant functions. The parochial school attached to most parishes provided not only instruction in the Catholic faith but also a solid education in secular subjects. Priests, besides providing spiritual guidance, often acted as surrogate social workers and counselors, helping their parishioners with many everyday concerns. Parish events and meetings, which gave parishioners the opportunity to socialize with one another, thus, meeting an important social need. Most of these parishes had a vibrant sense of community and the intimacy of small towns.

While being nurtured by parish life, Irish Catholic identity also received reinforcement from anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice. This prejudice was quite intense in the decades before the Civil War. The Chicago Tribune, for example, often criticized Irish Catholics for their political power and religion, and in 1855 Chicagoans voted for an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant Know-Nothing mayor and a Know-Nothing-controlled city council. In the latter 1880s and early 1890s, another wave of anti-Catholicism hit the city, with many Protestant Chicagoans supporting organizations such as the American Protective Association, whose members swore never to vote for or employ a Catholic. Anti-Catholic prejudice had diminished considerably by the beginning of the 20th century but was sometimes quite noticeable. As late as the 1920s, Catholics along with Jews and African-Americans were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan. Most Protestant Chicagoans were not bigots, and many had quiet, friendly relations with Irish Catholics. Nonetheless, anti-Catholicism on various occasions arose and made Irish Catholics more conscious of their own identity.

Besides Catholicism, devotion to Ireland held Irish Chicagoans together. The most visible evidence of this was the support they furnished for both peaceful and revolutionary Irish nationalist movements. In the1860s, for example, Irish Chicagoans provided money and men to the Fenians, a revolutionary organization that sought to win the complete independence of Ireland. After internal divisions led to the collapse of the Fenians in the late 1860s, revolutionary-minded Irish Chicagoans turned to the Clan na Gael, which for many years supported the revolutionary cause in Ireland.

The Chicago Irish also supported peaceful Irish nationalist efforts. During the 1880s they supported the Irish Home Rule movement led by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Though Ireland would have remained in the United Kingdom, Home Rule would have given Ireland a separate parliament for Irish matters, and thus many Irish Chicagoans, including members of the Clan, supported it as a step in the right direction. Parnell's campaign for Home Rule failed, however, as did subsequent attempts in the 1890s and prior to World War I.

As a result of events in Ireland, the interest of the Chicago Irish in revolutionary Irish nationalism increased substantially in the period during and immediately following World War I. The daring but unsuccessful republican “Easter Rising” in Dublin in 1916 along with certain ill-advised British policies regarding Ireland ignited revolutionary nationalism among many Irish people. In the British general election of 1918, the radical Sinn Fein party soundly defeated the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1919 Sinn Fein declared Ireland independent, and war broke out between its military wing, the IRA. and the British. The war ended in 1921, and a compromise settlement gave virtual independence to most of the island in the form of the Irish Free State but left two-thirds of Ulster in the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. During the struggle for Irish independence, the Chicago Irish supported the Irish cause by joining support groups, holding rallies, and contributing money. With the creation of the Irish Free State, which later evolved into the Republic of Ireland, interest in the Irish nationalist struggle waned but revived somewhat again when trouble broke out in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.

Besides support for Irish nationalism, Irish Chicagoans showed their interest in their Irish heritage in other ways. Some belonged to organizations such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which fostered nationalism but had a broader cultural agenda. Some attended or participated in musical and dance events or in Gaelic football and hurling matches.

Besides Catholicism and a devotion to Ireland, another factor that served to unite many Chicago Irish was their significant involvement in local politics. From the earliest days of Chicago the Irish were politically. The vast majority voted Democratic, as the Democrats had the reputation of being friendly to the Irish. A knowledge of the English language as well as a familiarity with electioneering in Ireland gave them an advantage over continental immigrants.

In the decades after the Great Chicago Fire, as the first American-reared generation reached adulthood, the Irish dominated the Democratic party and emerged as the single most important ethnic group in the city's politics. The Irish supported the local political system which, like that in many American cities of the time, was based not on ideology but on patronage and other economic incentives. The Irish used the system to get patronage jobs such as those on the police force and thus move up the economic ladder. Good government reformers of the period criticized "boodle" politics as corrupt. There was indeed significant corruption (bribes, vote stealing, etc.), but the system also did much good, providing assistance to the poor and jobs to working class people.

The Irish were skilled politicians, using the contacts and connections they made in their parishes or through Irish organizations to enhance their political prospects. They also on the whole were adept at dealing with non-Irish groups and in building coalitions from various ethnic groups. Yet, despite their considerable political power in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Irish occupied the mayor's office for only a total of eight years during the period from 1871 to 1933. The Irish mayors, all Democrats, during this period were John Hopkins (1893-1895), Edward F. Dunne (1905-1907), and William E. Dever (1923-1927). One of the reasons for this rather sparse representation was that Irish politicians were never as interested in having one of their own in the mayor's office as in supporting winning candidates like the two Carter Harrisons and Anton Cermak. Ironically, during the thirty some years after Cermak's murder in 1933, when the Irish percentage of the city's population fell steadily, Chicago had a continuous string of Irish Democratic mayors: Edward J. Kelly (1933-1947), Martin J. Kennelly (1947-1955), and Richard J. Daley (1955-1976). Of these the most notable was Daley, who was able to keep a political machine with a patronage system running smoothly, even after those in other American cities had vanished. In the period following Daley's death in 1976, two Irish Chicagoans, Jane Byrne (1979-1983) and Richard M. Daley (1989-), have between them occupied the mayor's office for over half the time, despite the fact that persons of Irish background make up no more than six percent of the city's population.

Although an Irish Chicagoan held the city's highest office as the 20^th century came to a close, the Chicago Irish were not nearly as visible in the early 21^st century as they were at the beginning of the 20^th century. In 1990, 660, 343 persons in Cook County (237, 133 in Chicago alone) claimed Irish ancestry. Over the course of the century, many descendants of Irish immigrants lost much of their sense of Irishness, either through the passage of time, intermarriage, or deliberate decision. Yet, a core of ethnic-conscious Irish remain in Chicago and its suburbs. Consisting of immigrants and their children as well as persons of more distant and/or mixed Irish ancestry, this core supports a viable set of organizations that sponsor a wide array of cultural, scholarly, social, athletic, and nationalist events.

Chicago Alphabetical List: