They didn’t all settle in the big cities on the East Coast. Many Irish immigrants headed for the frontier, where cheap land and mining jobs awaited them.
The January 14, 1841, edi- tion of the Philadelphia Catholic Herald includes this letter from Charles Corkery, one of Dubuque, Iowa’s first Irish settlers: “My sole desire is to direct the attention of Catholics (Irish Catholics particularly) to the country little known, and less appreciated, in the East… I have had ample opportunities of bearing witness to many respectable writers who unite in giving Iowa the happy (names) of “The Garden of America’ and ‘The Eldorado of the West’ … Irishmen unite in saying that our wheat and oats are nothing inferior to those in Ireland, and I have never seen better potatoes in Ireland… than those raised in the mining district.”
Mathias Loras, bishop of the new Diocese of Dubuque, also had a strong interest in attracting Irish immigrants to Dubuque. He wrote letters to the Boston Pilot and dozens of other Eastern newspapers, extolling Iowa.
Loras wrote in 1854 to the Pilot:
“Let good immigrants come in haste to the west of Iowa… they will soon make whole Catholic settlements-some Irish, some German and some French.”
For Irish immigrants, the appeals of the area were many: cheap land-wooded areas cost $4 to $8 an acre, a good yoke of oxen could be had for $45 to $55, and for those not inclined to farming, plenty of jobs were to be had in the lead mines.
But there were other attractions. Dubuque’s advocates spoke of the low cost of living, the area’s intolerance of “robbers and swindlers,” and a strong moral, religious and social order.
Some of the enticements included warnings. Michael O’Sullivan of Dubuque wrote to the Pilot in 1850 that Irish settlers “must not be shocked at the idea of living in a log cabin or of wearing rough clothing.”
Response to the appeals was swift.
In 1830, a group of 51 miners-two-thirds of them Irish-settled in Dubuque, and stayed until they were driven out by troops after the return of the Fox Indians. They drew up a set of rules known as the Miner’s Compact-believed to be the first code of law in what is now Iowa.
The great influx of Irish to Dubuque started in about 1833.
In 1838, the Jackson County settlement of Garryowen began getting settlers from the Irish counties Cork and Limerick.
Between 1840 and 1842, the Irish tide spread throughout northeast Iowa, to settlements at Temple Hill in Jones County, and Bellevue and Charleston (now Sabula) in Jackson County.
In 1846, Dubuque’s first ward on the south end became known as “Dublin” because it had so many Irish.
By 1850, there were about 1,720 Irish in Dubuque County, out of a total population of 8,230.
The Rev. Terence Donaghue, vicar general of the Diocese of Dubuque, wrote to a priest in County Carlow, Ireland, appealing for more Irish settlers. Donaghue promised to teach the settlers how to grow corn, oats and potatoes, and said the new emigrants must be smart, for we are a get-ahead people here.”
Indeed they were. Dubuque’s earliest European-born leaders included many of Irish ancestry. And a few of the Irish prospered so that by 1850, their property value amounted to more than one-third of Dubuque County’s total value, even though the Irish comprised less than one-fourth of the county’s population.
By 1860, 1,800 of Dubuque’s 13,000 people were Irish-born. They were day laborers, teamsters, draymen, inn and saloon-keepers.
Many worked in the mines, or on the railroad.
There were 15 Irish merchants and 14 grocers. And a further fifteen were professionals – lawyers, printers, teachers, an architect, an editor and an engineer.
The Battle Over St. Patrick’s
They called him “Father Matthew Kelly.” Though the missionary priest Samuel Mazzuchelli was Italian, and most of the Catholics he served in what is now the tri-state area were Irish, there was a mutual respect and love that transcended national loyalties.
That happened often in the frontier: a gifted priest could lead Catholics of a different ethnic background from his own.
But Dubuque’s first bishop, French-born Mathias Loras, would be the first to say it wasn’t easy.
The relationship between Loras and Dubuque area Irish Catholics had its tense moments.
“Loras… often had open conflicts with both Irish and German parishes,” wrote Sister Mary Kevin Gallagher, BVM, in Seed/Harvest, the history of the Archdiocese of Dubuque written in 1987.
“To understand these controversies, one must recognize the importance of nationality to these immigrants.”
Immigrants to the frontier wanted to preserve the religious and ethnic traditions of their homelands-making it difficult, at first, for Catholics of different backgrounds to find much in common other than their religion.
At the same time, they were ruggedly independent, and not likely to allow a bishop – whom they considered an outsider and a newcomer – tell them what to do.
The Irish Catholics in Dubuque often accused Loras of favoring French Catholics; when he first arrived in 1839, he understandably preferred worshipping with the French because his English was still heavily accented.
The Irish were incensed when Loras built St. Patrick’s Church in 1852, and proposed it remain a mission congregation and not an independent parish.
The Germans had their own church Holy Trinity – and the Irish wanted theirs, even though the cathedral, St. Raphael, was in an Irish neighborhood and had mostly Irish worshippers.
A battle of wills over St. Patrick’s – with Irish withholding contributions and Loras threatening repercussions -was waged for years.
And, the Irish accused Loras of exacting disproportionate contributions from Irish Catholics for the cathedral.
There was truth, and much misunderstanding, on all sides of all these issues.
But on the whole, Loras cared deeply for the Irish Catholics, and went to great lengths to attract Irish priests and religious communities to the area.
The first to arrive were the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a community of teaching sisters founded by an Irish woman, Mary Frances Clarke. The BVMs arrived in Dubuque, by way of Philadelphia, in 1843. Loras invited them to Dubuque personally.
Six years later, Trappist monks from Ireland established the monastery of New Melleray near what is now Peosta, on land Loras gave them.
And Dubuque’s third bishop, John Hennessy, traveled to Limerick, Ireland, on his way back from the First Vatican Council, and asked Mother Vincent Hennessy to send a group of Sisters of the Presentation to Dubuque. Four years later, the Presentation Sisters arrived, and made their first home in a vacant house offered by a pastor in Key West.
The first Irish bishop of Dubuque was Loras’ successor — Clement Smyth, a Trappist. When he died suddenly in 1865, he was replaced by the Irish-born Hennessy, who became Dubuque’s first archbishop in 1893.
Settlers faced less bigotry in Midwest
Early Irish immigrants, running away from their homeland’s poverty and injustice, often found more of the same in the United States.
A group called the Know Nothings- anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigrant -made life miserable for Irish immigrants in large eastern cities. It was the Know Nothings who harassed the first Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Philadelphia, before they all came to Dubuque in 1843.
But although Know Nothings and groups like them existed in Iowa, Dubuque-like most of the frontier-was much more receptive to Irish newcomers than the cities.
“In Dubuque, the spirit of toleration and cooperation existed to a marked degree,” wrote Sister Mary Helen, AB, in her the- sis, The Irish Element in Iowa Up to 1865. But there were exceptions.
An early issue of the Dubuque Weekly Observer warned of the “danger” of Catholics gaining too strong a foothold in the United States. The writer said he knew little about the Know Nothings, but believed they were good men committed to “counteract the existing evils in our society.”
Other Dubuque publishers took a much more tolerant stance.
In 1856-after an apparently drunken Norwegian fired into a Dubuque German Catholic church during midnight Mass – the Express and Herald denounced this as an attack on religious freedom, and called for stern punishment for anyone who did so.
Irishman victim of first lowa execution
An Irish-born was the first European convicted and executed for murder in what is now Iowa-despite his protest that Dubuque had no laws under which he could be tried.
The story of Patrick O’Connor is one of frontier justice, Dubuque’s early Irish community and a very, very troubled man.
An eyewitness account of O’Connor’s life and death was published in a 1920 issue of Palimpsest, a historical journal of Iowa.
O’Connor, born in County Cork in 1797, was hanged in the summer of 1834 for shooting his mining partner, George O’Keaf.
In 1828, O’Connor, then of Galena, Ill., broke his leg, and the limb had to be amputated. He was given a wooden leg and all the charity the people of Galena could muster until his foul temperament caused people to grow tired of him.
O’Connor came to Dubuque in 1833, where he entered a mining partnership with O’Keaf. The two shared a cabin just outside Dubuque.
On May 19, 1834, O’Keaf came back to the cabin with a friend, and O’Connor wouldn’t open the door.
When O’Keaf forced the door open, O’Connor shot him with a musket.
Eliphalet Price, an eyewitness to O’Connor’s execution, said O’Connor replied, “That is my business,” when miners asked him why he killed O’Keaf.
Some wanted to hang him right then and there. Instead, a trial was held the next day under a spreading elm tree – despite O’Connor’s protests that “ye have no laws in the country, and ye cannot try me.”
Iowa was then 12 years away from statehood, and was not then part of any organized territory – so there was no legal system.
But a trial was held anyway, with O’Connor choosing his own jury.
After hearing from three or four witnesses, the jury deliberated for about an hour before finding O’Connor guilty and sentencing him to die on the gallows at 1 p.m. on June 20.
An Irish priest, the Rev. Charles Fitzmaurice, of Galena, denounced the trial as unjust and illegal.
But Dubuque’s Irish community didn’t intervene on O’Connor’s behalf. And a false rumor that 200 Irishmen were coming from Mineral Point, Wis., to free O’Connor only served to expedite his execution.
On June 20, about 160 men formed a rifle company to march to the death site, with a fife and muffled drum. Shops closed. The village bell tolled.
Fitzmaurice and O’Connor said he was sorry he killed O’Keaf, and asked the assembly’s forgiveness.
When O’Connor tried to tell the crowd whom he wanted to inherit his possessions, Fitzmaurice said, “Do not mind your world- ly affairs; in a few minutes you will be launched into eternity. Give your thoughts to God.”
O’Connor was buried, with his wooden leg, in a grave that had been dug at the foot of the gallows.
“Immediately after this,” Price wrote, “many of the reckless and abandoned outlaws, who had congregated at the Dubuque mines, began to leave for sunnier climes… The people began to feel more secure in their enjoyment of life and property.”
Price later became a politician, and a member of the Board of Curators of the State Historical Society of Iowa.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March/April 1995 issue of Irish America. ♦
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