Newtown:

Not Just A Little Irish

By Nancy K. Crevier

Long before the first St Patrick’s Day celebrations, according to town historian Dan Cruson and local genealogist Harlan Jessup, the Irish were kicking up their heels in Newtown, beginning with railroad workers who came through the area in the early 1800s and stayed to farm the land abandoned by New England farmers.

The Irish, who populated mainly the Sandy Hook and Walnut Tree Hill area of town, as well as farms along the Route 25 Botsford area of Newtown, had a big influence in Newtown, said Mr Cruson. “The Irish were very polarizing socially, religiously, and politically in town. There was very little Catholic presence in town when the Irish moved in, and with the increase in the Irish population, St Rose saw a big lift in membership, for instance.” Also, said Mr Cruson, the vast number of Irish who became residents of Newtown in the 1800s changed the face of the town’s political majority from Republican to Democrat.

The Irish made up just 5.6 percent of the town’s population in 1850, said Mr Jessup, who has collected data on the Gaelic population for his talk “The Irish Come To Newtown,” which he will present to the Middlesex Genealogy Club Saturday, March 17, at 2 pm, at the Darien Public Library. “By 1880, that number was 41.8 percent and by 1900,” he said, “44 percent of Newtown’s population was Irish. The interesting thing is, that a great number of them came to Newtown from just one small area of County Clare.”

The potato famine in Ireland that devastated the economy there from 1845 to 1848 was responsible for one influx of Irish to America, said Mr Cruson, and employment offered at local factories like Curtis and Son and the New York Belting and Packing Company, as well as many button shops, attracted Irish settlers to Newtown, and later their friends and families. Statistics found by Mr Jessup support that the area factories thrived upon the Irish labor force. “At one point, the Rubber Factory [NY Belting and Packing] employed 200 people, 185 of whom were Irish,” he said.

The women from Ireland, as well, entered into the Newtown workforce, many of them hired as domestic laborers, or as seamstresses and lace makers.

Despite these vital contributions to the town’s economy, though, ethnic tension in the town, once owned and run by staunch Yankees, was palpable, said Mr Cruson. For example, the Gray’s Plain School War, detailed in Mr Cruson’s book, A Mosaic of Newtown History, culminated in a “fierce split within the town at the end of the 19th Century along the Yankee/Irish lines,” Mr Cruson said.

The fire had been fueled along the way by the powerful rhetoric of Irishmen like James E. Madigan, publisher of the popular Newtown Chronicle newspaper from 1880 to 1882. The newspaper openly supported the working class and the Democratic Party, unlike The Newtown Bee, which at the time was limping along under poor management, professing to be politically independent. The Newtown Chronicle also was a valuable source of information from the old land for Irish immigrants. One whole page of each four-page edition carried news from each of Ireland’s counties.

It was not until after World War II, said Mr Cruson, that the Irish of Newtown were truly accepted. “By then, Newtown had become a suburban town and Sandy Hook was no longer considered lower middle class. Then, by the time Kennedy was elected president in the 1960s, the Irish point was really moot.” The new Irish, he said, were now accepted and assimilated into the town, remaining a huge force.

A 2000 census, said Mr Jessup, showed that the most numerous ethnic group in Newtown remained those of Irish descent. Brennans, Burkes, Collinses, O’Connors, O’Connells, Dunns, Fitzgeralds, Johnstons, Kennedys, Mahoneys, Murphys, and O’Neills are names all found in the Newtown directory. O’Brians, Quinns, Reillys, Sullivans, Smiths, Walshes, and Whites contribute to the conglomeration of Irish names. Sweeneys, O’Donnells, Moores, and Kellys, O’Callaghans, Nolans, and Keanes — all among the most common names in Ireland, are some of the most common ones in Newtown, as well.

Today, it is the sound of reels and jigs; the scent of corned beef; visions of pots of gold; and a sense of ethic pride that surfaces as St Patrick’s Day comes about.

The differences that drove the Irish apart from the New Englanders a century ago are today buried as deep as the graves of those in the Sandy Hook Cemetery. It would seem through perseverance, character, and the changes wrought by time, that the new attitude of the Irish embodies the old Irish saying, “The Irish — Be they kings, or poets, or farmers, They’re a people of great worth, They keep company with the angels, And bring a bit of heaven here to earth.”