The United Irishmen:
A 200-year-long appearance on Broadway. Saint Pauls Chapel and the New York Irish - a quiet alliance

Irish residents of New York in the period between 1711 and 1799 were frequent participants in the life of Trinity Parish, which encompasses Trinity Church (at Broadway and Wall Street) and St. Paul’s Chapel (just five blocks north, at Fulton and Broadway). According to Michael O’Brien’s In Old New York (1928), numerous Irish, including Thomas Kearney, Edward Foy, Patrick McKnight, and Anna Burck, contributed to building of the steeple of Trinity. Hugh Kelly and Elizabeth Griffin were married there on November 30, 1746 (St. Pauls opened twenty years later). Six McCarthys are buried at Trinity, one –Mary–died Sept. 30, 1746. James Woods, a United Irishman, was buried at Trinity in 1801, his headstone inscribed with a Masonic symbol - reflecting the use of Masonic lodges as cover for United Irish conspiracies.

My friend, William McGimpsey and I (we’re both from “the North,” so I can confidently call Bill an Orangeman while he may comfortably call me a Fenian) have not yet fully understood how it developed that two of the greatest Irish rebels [Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet (Cork) of the Anglican/Episcopal church and Dr. William James MacNeven (Galway), a Roman Catholic] were honored with magnificent memorials at the Broadway entrances to St. Pauls. That, in a parish charted by King William III (“William of Orange”)! Tellingly, St. Patrick’s (Old) Cathedral at Mott and Prince Street, nearby, displays no such honors for Irish revolutionaries – reflecting the church’s conservatism, a determination not to “rock the boat,” and a delicious Irish-American irony. Daithi Mac Lochlainn offers one explanation for the Emmet and MacNeven monuments. The high esteem in which these men were held by the end of their extraordinary careers and because of their eminent services to New York and to America. They were previously denied entry into the Land of the Free during the John Adams administration, because, as the American representative in London put it in 1798, their ideals were “utterly inconsistent with any practicable or settled form of government.” Others saw these United Irishmen as “wild Irish... malcontents...pernicious to the Order and Industry” of the American people. But they rose above all that, building substantial careers while reaching out to the non-Irish community. As it developed, Emmet became the Attorney General of New York, while MacNeven was a pioneer in American medicine. But McGimpsey believes there’s another explanation, suggesting that perhaps some influential figure or figures inside Trinity/St. Pauls may have been “closet United Irishmen.”

An American version of the United Irish symbol and the image of Emmet (by a sculptor unknown to us today) appear on the Broadway face of the cenotaph, alongside Fulton Street. Above, though now only faintly discernible, are the Gaelic, Latin and English texts of a tribute to Emmet–brother of the executed Robert Emmet. By the corner of Broadway and Vesey Street stands the monument to MacNeven (by Draddy), inscribed also in Gaelic, Latin and English. Ironically, neither is buried here. Emmet lies at St. Marks in the Bowery, while MacNeven was initially buried in the Riker family graveyard in Astoria (Queens). Professor William Griffin, however, isn’t fully convinced that MacNeven’s bones remain there. – Charlie Laverty