San Geronimo! reprise 1976 bicentennial

When I was very young, I was the female lead in a historical musical review at Lagunitas School, ca. 1965. We raised funds for the Freedom School in Indianola, Mississippi, during the Civil Rights movement. In 1976 we did a bicentennial revue where I co-directed and wrote updated skits with the original producer Barbara Scott for a SSU theatre community service project. Robbie Raffael and I made elaborate full body paper mâché headdresses a la Fred Curchack. I was surprised to find these papers tucked in among my old letters. The original 1965 program was destroyed but it looks like Barbara merely updated a copy the old program. Close enough.

for backstory, see San Geronimo! a school play, and Freedom School

Family history paper for History 495

For 750 years, Ireland has struggled and fought against the oppression of foreign invaders… “Those were the centuries, when the British Raj in Ireland attempted the systematic eradication of the Irish language, music and song, poetry and literature.”

In 1649, Oliver Cromwell invaded Ireland. A religious zealot, he slaughtered 3000 men, women, and children in the town of Drougheda, shipped the surviving women and children to the Caribbean to be sold as slaves, and wrote afterwards, “it has pleased God to bless our endeavors at Drogheda. I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God, alone, to who, indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.” Letter to John Bradshaw, 1649

During the reign of Elizabeth I, 10,000,000 acres of the best Irish arable land was stolen from the Irish, and given to the English and Scottish Protestant settlers of the north.

In the early 18th century, the Penal Laws were enacted to secure the Protestant Ascendancy and remained in effect for 125 years. These punitive laws deprived Irish Catholic citizens of any legal rights. The most crippling of these laws was the one forbidding Irishman from leaving their farms to one son when they died.

In Ireland, under English law, there was no primogeniture, the land had to be equally divided amongst all the sons, and the end result was the utter destruction of the Irish countryside. Farms became smaller and smaller with each passing generation, and were increasingly devoted to substance farming of potatoes, while the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy built their great mansions on stolen land.

(Beginning in the 1690s, the English had imposed on Ireland the infamous Penal Laws (e.g., a ban on Catholic education, either at home or on the Continent; the expulsion of priests; bounties on priests who remained; and a complex of vicious de jure discriminations in employment, intermarriage, and property), all in an apparent effort gradually to extirpate Catholicism.) —Miracles and Sacrilege, ch. 3 

An unintended side effect of the Penal Laws was the Great Famine (an Gorta Mór was a form of genocide) coupled with a series of droughts from 1846 to 1851, which was followed by a potato blight, brought from North America, which destroyed the entire potato crop three years in a row. More than half the population of 8 million were entirely reliant upon potatoes for food; when the potatoes died, so did the rural Irishman. 

Some 1,500,000 peasants died and another million immigrated. Meanwhile, the great Anglo-Irish landlords of Ireland exported Irish beef, pork, lamb, and grain to feed Great Britain that might have otherwise saved the starving Irish. 

(Listen to Christy Moore’s long version of The City of Chicago, at 2:30, he recites a ship’s manifest of what was shipped out of Cork Harbor on a single day, on the 15th of September in 1847. 186 barrels of flour, 286 barrels of barley, 334 barrels of wheat, 96 casks of ham, 486 boxes of eggs, and 219 head of cattle. There was plenty of food in Ireland during the famine, just not for the Irish.  YouTube)

Alexis deToqueville who visited Ireland in 1835, said after hearing tales of the times of Cromwell and William of Orange: “whatever one does the memory of great persecutions is not forgotten, and who sells in justice sooner or later reap the fruits.” —Miracles and Sacrilege, ch. 3

The British finally were able to reap their bitter fruits when a rebellion broke out on Easter, Monday, 1916, with guerilla warfare lasting until 1921. Most of Ireland had finally achieved independence and was almost free from bondage, except for the province of Ulster which remained under British control.

The populace of Ireland immigrated to America for numerous reasons. They had been long taught to look upon America as a refuge of their race, the home of their kindred. Their feelings towards America were those of love and loyalty.

But when they landed, their great expectations were somewhat checked… “The roots of the agitation and disturbances, which have convulsed Ireland, and shaken to England, were also to be found in America.” The American, Irish, and their influence on Irish politics, Philip Bagenal, 1882.

The Irish came to America in droves because America was perceived as the land of political and religious freedom. They came to escape the British Pale. They thought America offered a chance at a better life.

My grandmother, (who was born in Bantry, County Cork in 1893), said, “I came here to get away from English rule. I found that the Anglo-Saxon propaganda was worse here than in Ireland. Fact is, they were beginning to ease up a little when I left home. Of course, they were still draining money out of Ireland… “

She found that America stood, not for the American ideal, but America emulated and admired British thoughts and ideals.

I asked my grandmother why she immigrated to America she said, “I wanted to get away from Ireland more than anything else, I couldn’t see any sort of life for me back there. We actually lived in an “easy” period. The Penal Laws were abolished, the Catholic Church was no longer persecuted after 1870, but there was no future for me there. The push to immigrate was strong. My aunt May, my mother’s youngest sister, came out to San Francisco earlier, and she kept writing to me to come out. When she sent me my fare, I came, and that was that.

She continued, “Uncle Jim Sullivan came over first. He brought out Aunt May, and she, in turn, was to bring out another member of the family. One member of the family always paid the fare for the ones back home. I brought out my sister Kitty and it cost over $100.”

I asked her about the trip over, “I came over on the SS Lusitania, it was her maiden voyage. It took five days to cross the Atlantic, and the whole ship was vomiting, except me. The seamen had a job cleaning it all up. Berths were comfortable and we had plenty of hot tea.

When we went through immigration at Staten Island, New York, the customs man, he was Irish, and he said to me, “and what have we here acushla?” When I showed him my suitcase, he didn’t even check my luggage. I had some Irish whiskey, Irish tea, carrageenan moss, and a Blue Willow platter in my case. In those days you weren’t allowed to bring those things into the US.

“I already had gotten my visas and my passport in Queenstown, Cobh/Cove of Cork. Everyone there was helpful because they were immigrants too. I took the Staten Island ferry to the train station, and said goodbye to my brother, Joe, who had made the trip with me, but didn’t have enough train fare ($5) to go to San Francisco. He stayed in New York, just long enough to earn his fare, and out he came. (He got a job on a ship and sailed to Galveston.)

“It took me six days to reach the West Coast. I thought I’d never get here. I was on the Northwestern Pacific. I arrived in San Francisco on June 21, 1912, Midsummer-nights day, and it was sunny! It took me quite a while to adjust. I lived with my aunt May and Uncle Dick (I think she meant Dan) on Moultry Avenue.”

For 12 years my grandmother was a domestic engineer and a tailor. She worked for several Jewish families—all of them doctors (including the Rixfords)—until she was married in 1924.

During her first 12 years in San Francisco, she joined several groups for women. She said that The Young Ladies’ Institute was particularly boring. Nothing ever happened. So she joined the Gaelic League and the Irish Liberty League, both of which supported the cause in Ireland.

From 1916 to 1922, she was deeply involved in supporting the Irish rebellion. When she was with the Irish Education League, they conducted boycotts of English goods. They patterned their protests after the Suffragettes. They marched up and down Market Street with banners, similar to our anti-war protest rallies during the Vietnam war.

People were sent out from Ireland to collect money and guns. They received advance notice of speakers arriving from Ireland, the likes of Eamon de Valera, Con Kellagher, and Liam Mellows, and organized town hall meetings, and handed out leaflets advertising the speakers.

The Irish Americans were great supporters then as they are now for the cause in Ulster and Belfast. After the lectures, money was gathered up in wicker baskets, and was either sent to Ireland, or was used to buy guns here which were shipped to Ireland. My grandfather was a member of the Knights of the Red Branch.

“I was there the night Woodrow Wilson came to speak at the League of Nations,” my grandmother said, “we did much to smash it. We did much more to smash it than anyone else.”

De Valera said, “we are willing to accept the responsibilities… which inclusion into such a league implies,” but he found that “It simply meant an association to perpetuate power for those who had got it, and to keep forever in slavery those who had been kept in slavery by international rules, as they are called, but which were simply the rules of thieves were regulating their conduct among themselves.” Eamon DeValera, a Biography, Earl of Longford, and Thomas O’Neill, 1971.

What the Irish and the Irish Americans so strongly objected to was Article 10 of the League of Nations covenant; members undertook to preserve existing territorial boundaries of member nations, which meant Ireland’s wishes would have been ignored completely.”

“De Valera came here three times, fighting for Ireland’s freedom. He asked for recognition from the Congress to acknowledge the Irish Republic. Congress did nothing. He requested President Wilson to recognize Ireland’s demand for independence. Wilson turned a deaf ear. De Valera decided to come to the US and appeal directly to the people above the head of Wilson.“ She continued, “the league of nations would not accept Ireland’s proposal for independence.”

“When Dev came here in 1921 to sell the Irish bonds, we all bought them. We were too involved in fighting for Ireland to notice what was happening here during World War I. The Irish didn’t want to hurt the US but they were more worried about what was happening in Ireland.”

She continued her story, “The IRA was a well respected organization in those days. My brother, Joe Walsh (who was a police captain in the Richmond District), was able to pick up guns at pawnshops, and (my husband) Barney was able to get guns from the Benicia Armory with a judge’s signature, and there were plenty of Irish judges. The guns were shipped to New York in suitcases, and only one was ever confiscated.”

She continued, “Liam Mellows came out to see your grandfather before he was shot.” She said that Liam Mellows was later imprisoned, with others, who were considered political prisoners of war against Britain, and held without charge or trial, and then executed six months later. They became martyrs for the cause of an independent Ireland.

Con Kelleher, Liam Mellows, Bernard Reilly at DeLacy’s in Lagunitas, 1920.

My grandfather, Deputy Sheriff Bernard Reilly, was very active during this time as well. He, like my grandmother, Jenny, immigrated in his teens. He arrived in San Francisco in 1904 when he was only 16 years old. He was employed by the city as a postal workers and then became superintendent of County Jail number 1 in San Francisco and, later a guard at San Quentin penitentiary.

My grandparents were married later in life, an Irish tradition, in 1924. My grandmother saved and managed the money in the family. They lived in apartments in San Francisco when the babies began to arrive.

When the Depression struck they hardly even noticed it. Since my grandfather worked for the city, he was employed during the Depression. A rarity. Two days after my oldest aunt Jane was born, came the stock market crash. By then they had four children. Grandma said, “if you had money there was never any problem getting food.”

They had bought the Forest Knolls house one and a half years before the Depression, and were living in Marin County part time. My grandfather commuted into San Francisco on the Northwestern Pacific train, and then caught the Sausalito Mill Valley ferry to San Francisco, until 1935, when the train system was scrapped.

I asked my grandmother if they had a victory garden. She snorted said victory gardens were for city hicks. They did some gardening, but most of the produce was brought once a week from the veggie man from Novato, who peddled his wares from the back of a truck.

Milk and eggs and big wheels of jack cheese were gotten from a neighbor, Mary Bianchi. My uncle Bill, unfortunately got tuberculosis from their milk so the milk had to be boiled. My grandfather brought meat from San Francisco. He knew of a butcher friend there. (Also, porterhouse steaks were purloined from the city jail.) I think they ate better than we do now. My grandmother made most of the children’s clothing and bought overalls and shoes through Sears catalog. She told me we got “we got by. We never were rich.”

A cousin of mine (a first cousin, once removed), John Budgick was a carpenter, during the Depression, he was out of work. But he found work through the WPA and he designed and helped lay the cement road for Sir Francis Drake Highway that runs from San Quentin to the Point Reyes lighthouse. (There’s a section of road near Crystal Springs, now paved over, where he signed his name in the wet pavement.)

During the prohibition, John’s mother, Ellin Budjick, who was my grandfather’s sister, ran a speakeasy in her home on Hammer Street in San Francisco. (My grandmother’s, aunt May, and her husband Dan Forbes also made corn whiskey). But one day the revenuers came in and she grabbed the whiskey jug and put it between her and the baby as if she was taking a nap. They never thought to look there. Dan got rid of his corn mash by flushing it down the toilet (but the toilet backed up). And they were never caught selling or making liquor. (Clients included priests and policemen.)

A friend of my grandfather’s wrote from Tennessee:

“Hello old timer,… I’ve been looking around for a jug of good corn for you, and one for Mike since repeal, all bootleggers go to Kentucky and haul in the bonded stuff, and that makes corn, so cheap, it don’t pay to make it good, but I may run into some private stock. If I do, look out for a brainstorm… Well, old friend, as this is the first I have written since I last saw you, I’m getting writer’s cramp, so will close for this time…

As ever, your friend, Earl Stanfield
Chattanooga, May 24, undated

When World War II came along, our family wasn’t really affected by it. My uncles, Bill and Miles joined the Navy, the others were too young. Bill got tuberculosis and Miles got cancer, so both were discharged from the Navy. When I was born in 1952, we were all living together in San Francisco, as my grandparents had moved back in 1935 for his work.

I lived with my grandparents and their family. Of my aunt and uncles, only the aunts remained at home. Two of my uncles were married and my uncle John was in the army. I remember him coming home from Korea.

Feilim, my grandmother‘s favorite, had died when he was 17 of a ruptured appendix so there were at least eight or nine of us living in a nuclear household. There was plenty of room for all of us in the three-story Victorian at 333 Third Avenue. I was born the first grandchild of the family, so I received lots of attention.

When I was four, my grandfather died of esophageal cancer, and my grandmother and I moved back to Forest Knolls. I was on loan to keep my grandmother company, or busy, for a while, so she wouldn’t get so lonely after my grandfather‘s death. The “while” has now been 19 years since I began living with my grandmother. My parents got divorced soon after my grandfather‘s death and I stayed with her until things got settled. They never did.

I grew up here and went to Lagunitas School, Drake High School, College of Marin, then San Francisco State, and Sonoma State colleges.

Ever since I can remember, at a subconscious level of thought, I always felt a vague antagonism and hostility from my WASP classmates, and I never understood why. I couldn’t explain it, I could only feel it. My Catholic classmates must’ve felt it too, because we all bonded together in a clique during grade school and maintained those bonds in high school.

Now in college, I’m beginning to understand why we, as kids, felt this nonverbal antagonism. I’ve discovered America has a K in it, and a long-standing love affair with anything British, since the colonial days, and our entire culture is so overlaid with millions of subtle digs and hatred of anyone not WASP.

I am Irish, and I was raised to be proud of my heritage. I am Irish first, American second, and I struggle to maintain my Irish identity in this WASPish sheet of ambiguity.

When writing this paper, I found that a lot is written about Irish Americans, and how they were viewed in the eyes of their Anglo-American neighbors, but not much is written, explaining why they were clannish, rebellious, etc. We must look at Ireland’s history from an Irish point of view, and then turn our eyes inward, and understand Irish Americanism for what it really is, not what it seems to be from the outside.

My grandmother said, “the Irish here banded together to protect themselves. The Knights of Labor, the unions were created to protect the little guy. Sure, there were your so-called undesirable Irish, there were undesirables from every immigrating group. The stigma of the drunken Irishman was both permanent, perpetuated and encouraged by the canal and railroad bosses. They should’ve paid the Irish laborers more money instead of giving them a pint and a half of whiskey a day, and a $.50 wages. My God, they never saw that much whiskey at once back home. No wonder they were drunk and rebellious and the conditions they worked in were deplorable. No wonder they drank.”

NOTE BENE: Of all the books listed in my bibliography only somewhere helpful. William Shannon‘s book was and I quote Thomas Brown… “A brilliant book that for the first time lifts the story above the level of regret and recrimination, and makes it important to cultural history.” Both Thomas Brown and Carl Wittke’s books were too limited, dealing only with the second half of the 19th century.

We, that is, my family, read all of them, and we found the two authors to be the worst offenders of WASP whitewashing. In the future, I would recommend William Shannon‘s book, The American Irish, for anyone doing an Irish family history project, his was the most inclusive, and the least bigoted book.

Some of the above mentioned authors actually seemed to gloat over the American Irish “loser” virtues. Every group of people has its vices, and I think it is important to understand why they were corrupt, to amend and compare that to their downfall with other ethnic group subjected to the same conditions and see the similarities between them.

But most of all, it is important to see how they contributed to our society and how we benefited from their labors. I’m a little sensitive when someone, however indirectly, points of finger at me says, oh you, Irish accusingly.

And in answer to Carl Wittke’s closing paragraph in The Irish in America… The Irish question has faded into the background… No anglophobia among today’s Irish Americans… “

I beg to differ. No, we have not been assimilated into the mainstream of America, the WASP culture. The Irish question has not faded into the background and nor is it likely to as long as Britain still insists upon keeping and controlling Ulster. As the song goes:

I have four green fields
one of thhem’s in bondage.
My fourth green field 

will bloom once again
said she.

Four Green Fields, Irish Songbook collected by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem 1965

Liam Mellows in Lagunitas ca. 1920.

Addendum: a friend of my grandfather’s, Liam Mellows bravely fought for Irish independence. In 1913 he organized Fianna Éireann, whose goals were “to reestablish the independence of Ireland.” Before he was executed by the agents of the British Crown, he said, “I have no regrets, for the future of Ireland is assured… We died… For the cause of human liberty.” He was shot on December 1922. 

another martyr for old Ireland,
another murder for the crown,
the British laws may crush the Irish,
but cannot keep their spirit down.

—from the song, Kevin Barry
The Wolfe Tone Annual, 1939 Brian O’Higgins; Colm O Laughlin, Three Candles Press, Dublin.

Addendum: While Ireland was fighting for freedom, the Indians were also fighting for their independence to get out from under British rule. My grandfather Bernard met Indians in San Francisco who were trying to garner support for their cause. They were classified as a white race, and granted US citizenship. But when they started to fight for their independence, the US canceled and denied those citizenship.

Jian Singh Dhandah was one of those men. When you’re not a citizen and are denied citizenship because of your race, you can’t buy land, or vote, among other things. My grandfather took the responsibility of signing for land when Jian saying wanted to buy land. In return, Jian sent our family care packages every Christmas as repayment for our sponsorship.

Addendum: During 1916, a Labor Day parade turned into a mass riot in San Francisco against US involvement during World War I. Among the multitudes was longshoreman, Thomas Mooney, a member of the IWW. A bomb was thrown, and people were killed, because he was head of the IWW in San Francisco, they needed a scapegoat, and he was framed for the incident with false evidence. This is one of several letters from Tom to my grandfather, who was superintendent County Jail number 1 in San Francisco.

The IWW wanted the Irish organizations to join their cause, but the Irish had one goal in mind, and that was to free Ireland. The Irish Americans didn’t want to dilute their power with conflicting interests. Besides, the IWW was very socialistic, and the Irish groups felt the affiliation with the IWW would harm their cause.

note bene: I got a B+ from Dennis Harris—for a few small typos—after he inadvertently dropped me from his class. We did not see eye to eye. He used folksongs to explore American history which was right up my alley, but I found some of his interpretations off, and probably said so in class…out loud.

He said, “An obliviously passionate account, one of which is little pretense of objectivity. but nonetheless, fascinating, well written, and informative. You could’ve done more by working with, rather than rejecting your sources so that you could integrate your family’s experience into the general history. But, well done. B+.

information in parentheses was added later after I scanned this paper. I made a few small changes to correct floppy verbs and adverbs and cleaned up punctuation. And, of course, being able to add links to the texts used was a delight. MH 

Bibliography.

The Irish in the US, John Duff, 1971

The American, Irish and their influence on Irish politics, Philip Bagenal, Kegan Paul, 1882

The Irish in America, Carl Wittke, 1956

Irish American nationalism, Thomas Brown, 1966 

Irish immigration in the United States, Jeremiah O’Donovan, 1969, first published 1864

The Irish songbook piled by Joy, Graeme, 1969 

Eamon de Valera, a biography, Earl of Longford, and Thomas O’Neill, 1971

The American, Irish, William, Shannon, 1963.

Generations, Jim Watt and Allan Davies, 1974.

The shaping of the American, V. 2, Robert Kelly, 1975

Wolfe Tone annual, 1939, 1962, Brian O’Higgins

Irish Street ballads, Colm O’Laughlin, 1937 

My grandmother was also a valuable reference, book or an inventory, made in Ireland 1893