Thomas C. Hannahoe and Jane Johnson exchanged marriage vows in Ireland in 1851, then set out to honeymoon in New York.
The newlyweds fell in love with America, decided to stay and in 1856 ended up in Reading.
Hannahoe opened a bar at 514 S. 11th St. and, reflecting his love for his adopted country, named it the Stars and Stripes Hotel.
The area around the bar, roughly from Nanny Goat Hill to Neversink Mountain, would become a mecca for Irish immigrants. So much so, it would be dubbed “Irishtown.”
And, Tom Hannahoe would be accorded the honorary title, “The Mayor of Irishtown.”
“Tom Hannahoe had a magnetic effect on people,” John J. McKenna Jr. wrote in “The Early Irish in Berks County.” “He lived and died with a song in his heart and on his lips.”
Hannahoe’s embracing of the American dream and his zest for life characterize the spirit of generations of Irish immigrants who left the old sod for a better life in Berks County.
Jim Caherly of Wyomissing, a native of Ireland who immigrated to America in 1971, said early immigrants brought with them a resilience tempered by the harsh realities of life in Ireland.
“They were young, uneducated and hardworking,” said Caherly, 74, a retired engineer who worked with Gilbert Associates and PPL Corp. “They were working people who found their way into the canals and railroads.”
Though the earliest immigrants were primarily German, French and Swiss, some Irish had come to Berks County decades before the American Revolution.
County records indicate that Irish settlers had reached Berks in the first half of the 18th century.
Thomas McCarey resided in Amity Township in 1709, McKenna found. In 1754, a list of Berks County’s “taxables” had 12 Irish surnames, Maguire, Malone and Murphy among them.
Frontiersman Daniel Boone, who spent his childhood in Berks, got his early education from an Irish schoolmaster.
Canal fever
The first large wave of Irish immigrants came in the early 1800s.
Glenn A. Wenrich of Muhlenberg Township, a canal historian, said large numbers of Irish came to work on the construction of the Union Canal and the Schuylkill Navigation System, a series of canals along the Schuylkill River between Schuylkill County and Philadelphia.
“They were laborers, pick-and-shovel guys,” said Wenrich, president of the Pennsylvania Canal Society.
Young men in Ireland were recruited to work on the canals by agents who promised 80 cents a day and a chance to buy cheap farmland.
About 5,000 Irish men responded and worked on cutting canals through hostile terrain in the early 1800s.
They bored America’s first tunnel in 1823, Wenrich said, through a mountainside near Auburn in Schuylkill County. It was for a canal on the Schuylkill Navigation System.
In crews of about 100, Irish canal workers lived in encampments near the worksites.
Unsanitary conditions spawned canal fever, a combination of malaria and dysentery, which took its toll on workers. Many were buried along canal towpaths, but the graves of 23 anonymous Irish canal workers survive in a plot at the Berks County Heritage Center in Bern Township.
For some who survived the rigors of deprivation and disease, Berks County would become a permanent home.
“You can go along the Union Canal,” Wenrich said, “and still see Irish names on the mailboxes.”
Freedom, opportunity
The discovery of coal in Schuylkill County, which sparked rapid industrial development of Berks County, provided unprecedented opportunities for newly arrived immigrants in the mid-19th century.
“Vast deposits of coal and the advent of steam to operate machinery combined to create a tremendous economic boom,” said Irish historian Joseph G. McCarthy of Muhlenberg Township. “The influx of large numbers of Irish changed the complexion of Berks County’s population.”
Reading’s population nearly doubled to 15,743 by 1850 from 8,410 in 1840. The impact became apparent during an economic depression in the 1850s.
While all of Reading suffered, the Irish were especially affected because they were almost entirely a laboring class.
“The amount of poverty and suffering in our city is greater than any former period,” the Berks Journal reported.
The Irish, who had come in search of religious freedom as well as economic opportunity, were predominantly Catholic.
They gravitated to St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Reading, then a predominantly German congregation.
In part for religious and economic considerations, a contingent from St. Peter’s migrated west to form an Irish Catholic colony at Conception, Mo., in 1858.
“About 50 covered wagons pulled out of Reading in March 1858,” said McCarthy, author of “From Reading to Conception: Founding of a Catholic Colony in the West.” “The depression of 1855-57, together with the promise of additional government lands, caused some Irish settlers to move west out of Reading.”
Preserving the legacy
On Nov. 7, 1860, six months before the outbreak of the Civil War, a group of Irishmen organized a chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Reading.
They named it for St. Brendan, the sixth-century Irish monk who sailed the high seas to spread the Gospel to Scotland, Wales and Brittany.
Continuing a legacy begun 155 years ago, a delegation from St. Brendan Division 1 will march in St. Patrick’s Day parades this year in Conshohocken and Girardville, Schuylkill County.
“It’s our tradition,” said AOH division President Len Weckel, 70, of Blandon. “We love our music and camaraderie.”
A journey undertaken by Tim Antosy, an AOH member, underscores the depth of Irish tradition.
Inspired by a 100-year-old letter from Ireland, passed down from his great-aunt Catherine Dougherty, Antosy embarked on a quest to find his family’s ancestral home in County Leitrim.
He studied family genealogy, Irish history and saved money for a trip to the homeland.
In 2005, Antosy journeyed to Ireland in search of the birthplace of his great-grandfather, Michael Dougherty, who arrived in America in 1870.
To his surprise, he found the homestead, an Irish cottage perched in on picturesque land in northwest Ireland.
“I went in search of our ancestral home,” said Antosy, a retired Reading Eagle compositor. “And with God’s help, I found it.”
Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or rdevlin@readingeagle.com.
The legendary Thomas C. Hannahoe
Thomas C. Hannahoe, the honorary mayor of Irishtown, was one of Reading’s most colorful characters in the late 19th century.
His saloon, Stars and Stripes Hotel at 514 S. 11th St., was a gathering place for the city’s Irish community.
It was not uncommon to find the likes of boxing great John L. Sullivan at the bar.
Indeed, on St. Patrick’s Day, Tom Hannahoe was at the head of a parade through Irishtown.
When he was outfitted for the Wearin’-o’-the-Green, Hannahoe sported a red tie in deference to his German friends.
One of his closest friends was Alvah O. Schaeffer of Mount Penn, who was of German ancestry.
One day in February 1897, Schaeffer, a cornetist, played “Lass O’Galway,” a song Hannahoe hadn’t heard since he’d left Ireland in 1851.
Right then and there, the two entered into an informal pact.
If Hannahoe died first, Schaeffer would play “Lass O’Galway” at his grave every St. Patrick’s Day. If Schaeffer died first, Hannahoe would see to it that his grave was tended.
Hannahoe, 66, died a few years later.
For 49 years, Schaeffer played “Lass O’Galway” at Hannahoe’s grave at midnight on St. Patrick’s Day.
In year 50, Schaeffer, 81, could no longer play the cornet because his fingers were gnarled with rheumatism. He made it to the grave, though, and bandmaster R. Elmer Addis did the music. Shortly thereafter, Schaeffer died.
