When The Irish Came To Town––

The Greening Of Newtown

By Jan Howard

In 1900, the Irish population of Newtown of 1,447 was 44.2 percent of its total population of 3,276. Of 782 households, 37.7 percent, or 295, were Irish.

When and why Irish families came to Newtown will be discussed by Harlan Jessup of Newtown in a program, “The Irish Come to Newtown,” at the Newtown Genealogy Club meeting, March 12, at 7 pm, in the meeting room of the C.H. Booth Library. The public is invited to attend.

Mr Jessup, who does genealogy research personally and professionally, has been a resident of Newtown since 1972. He is a member and past president of the Connecticut Ancestry Society and belongs to several other genealogical societies.

He earned a bachelor of arts and master of science degrees from Dartmouth. He and his wife Shirley have four grown children and five grandchildren. He retired from General Electric, where he did management consulting, and also ran his own consulting firm from his home for several years after retirement.

“The Irish came just before 1850 in large numbers, and were a large proportion of the population by 1900,” Mr Jessup said. “I was so struck by that. Many of them came from a little peninsula in County Clare. Of the Irish here by 1853, I identified one half of the families were from this little area.”

In 1847 the first Irish families were listed in the tax rolls, and by 1850 there were about 27 Irish households in Newtown. 

These families did not immigrate because of the Irish potato famine, he said. “The population of Ireland was growing, and there was not enough land in Ireland. They were looking for more land. They had some money, bought some land here, and operated small farms.” In 1900, census figures indicate there were 116 Irish farmers and that 42 were employed as farm laborers.

“Some of them seemed to come first to Bridgeport, and worked where they could while they looked for farmland. Land in Newtown was cheap,” he said.

“As the rubber factories and the railroad grew, and the button and comb shops, they worked in those industries,” he said.

In 1900, he noted, 185 of the male employees of the rubber factories were Irish, in contrast to 11 native Yankees and three Germans.

Mr Jessup’s talk will include excerpts from a diary written by Walker Bates of Redding between 1857 and 1870 that contains “interesting reflections on his attitudes to the Irish, which changed over that period of time,” Mr Jessup said. “His comments were initially patronizing, then became sympathetic to their plight,” he said.

Irish females were predominately employed as domestic servants, 59 in 1870 as opposed to 12 native Yankees and three blacks. They also worked in the button and comb shops and needle trades.

“Within 25 to 30 years, they became a political force in Newtown and were more integrated into society, and ultimately became indistinguishable from the rest of the population,” Mr Jessup said. In 1866 the first state representative of Irish heritage was elected and by 1885 both state representatives were Irish. The Newtown Chronicle, which was published beginning in 1880, reported news of interest to the Irish population.

“There was an Irish undertaker, and several Irish tavern keepers,” Mr Jessup said.

The first murder involving an Irish resident occurred in 1855, Mr Jessup said. There were also a number of deaths caused by the railroad and the rubber factories. “They were hazardous occupations.”

Mr Jessup said his research for “The Irish Come to Newtown” included information from the census, issues of The Newtown Bee, and Newtown vital records. “I got a lot of clues from Dan Cruson [the town’s historian]about places to look,” he noted. Another source was Mr Cruson’s articles in the Newtown Historical Society’s newsletter, The Rooster’s Crow.