Why care about immigration? family story ...

Irish immigrants had a rough time, but don’t always remember it that way.

My great-great-grandfather, John O’Keefe, came to the United States because of the Potato Famine, which killed a third of the Irish and displaced another third. But the music about Ireland that these refugees sang a generation later was syrupy-sweet. The story that my family retains about this ancestor is that he walked through Cork for awhile before he emigrated, and that he never slept without a roof -- that is, that his neighbors were hospitable to him, everywhere, every day. The family story suggests that young O’Keefe was easy to get along with, but it focuses on hospitality. And for sure: to get a picture of the devastated countryside, you have to go to some other source.

John O’Keefe was a stone mason in Knocknagree, County Cork; I am not sure what his work was here in America. He settled in Rockport, Massachusetts, and stayed there awhile. One evening, a neighbor came to see him. “O’Keefe,” he said, “I like you, so I’m telling you. We have decided that we don’t want Irish Catholics here, and we are going to burn your house down tomorrow. I like you, so I’m giving you warning, and you have time to pack up and leave.” He packed and left, and moved to Peterborough, NH, where some in-laws helped him settle on a farm.
In that time, businesses often had signs in the window that announced simply: NINA. That’s not Nina as in “the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.” That’s NINA as in “No Irish Need Apply.” But we think of ourselves as irrepressible, and maybe we are. John’s son, John Aloysius (in retrospect, we identify him as John A the First; they were many more), received a good education in a one-room red schoolhouse on the side of a mountain a few miles outside the town of Peterborough. His teacher there was related to Thornton Wilder, perhaps his grandmother. It seems that she was a good teacher; it is sure that he was a good student. John A. went on to Harvard.

Just 15 years after the flight from Rockport, the family was back in the Boston area. John A. O’Keefe did well enough at Harvard (#2 in his class) to earn a slot as speaker at graduation in 1881, giving the “salutatorian address.“ He spoke about prejudice against Catholics, telling his classmates that they had been taught falsely that the Church was on the side of tyranny. When he finished, his WASP classmates were silent. A Jesuit from Boston College, Fr. Walsh I think, stood and applauded -- alone. That was 131 years ago, and we still chuckle about it.

It was his generation that established Irish power in Massachusetts. He was headmaster of Lynn Classical High School, and later another city school in Lynn was named for him. He supported the early labor movement, including the famous strike at the shoe factories in Lynn. In his generation, John (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald was elected the first Irish mayor of Boston, displacing the previous patrician class.

The descendants of John O’Keefe are not as abundant as the stars, but they did proliferate. We are mathematicians, scientists, astrophysicists, chemists, geologists, (no biologists), doctors, lawyers, undertakers, politicians and activists, managers, glass-makers, teachers, soldiers, cops, tax resisters, engineers. At least 12 of his descendants went to Harvard. My great-grandfather was an educator who supported labor unions in their early days. My grandfather was a pediatrician who was very proud of his work with immigrants, including many Eastern Europeans, particularly Poles. My father was an astrophysicist who supported the civil rights movement -- hiring colorblind, marching, and collecting signatures for fair housing petitions.

Family lore does not record whether the house in Rockport was actually burned, after the offensive Irish with all their “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” had left. What does remain in family lore is etched in stone, in New England granite: we remember that we too once were “strangers in a strange land.” But by God’s grace, we have seen much good and done much more.