INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Irish in Indianapolis

Nine-year-old Mary Loftus stands on the dock in Cork, Ireland. It is Sept. 13, 1911, and a cool ocean breeze blows in her face. She is with many people, yet alone. The arduous trip from Galway to Cork she just completed will be the last time she steps foot in Ireland. Mary will soon be a steerage passenger on the S.S. Zeeland. After a quick stop in Liverpool, Mary Loftus and those strangers with her will travel 2,606 miles over the next seven days to Boston, Mass., United States of America.

Mary’s mother, Delia (McDonagh) Loftus, will greet her daughter in Boston for the first time in several years. Delia had come to America earlier in search of her husband, John, who deserted the family shortly after his arrival in the United States. Mother and daughter will make the long train ride from Boston to Indianapolis, home for the rest of their lives. They will stay with cousins, the Commons family, until they get their feet under them. Family legend has it that John was never seen again and ended up somewhere in California.

While working as domestics for the author Meredith Nicholson, Delia and Mary Loftus will eventually settle down on the near Eastside in St. Philip Neri parish; 418 N. Parker will be home for many years to come. My grandmother and great grandmother’s story of separation, hardship, reunion and triumph is similar to many of the Irish immigrants’ who call Indianapolis home.

Travel around Indianapolis on March 17 of any year and you get the feeling the whole city is Irish. Everyone claims to have some Irish in them on St. Patrick’s Day. While many of the celebrants are on the bandwagon for a good time, many of us in Indianapolis can proudly claim Irish roots.

The great potato famine of 1845 and 1846 in Ireland killed about 2 million people and many thousands more left the motherland, most for the United States. Once the migration started, it continued into the 20th century. Although most of the Irish settled in Eastern cities, such as Boston and New York, many made their way inland, to Chicago, Kansas City and Indianapolis.

Records show Irish fur traders and pioneers in the Indiana territory as early as the 18th century. Greater numbers arrived in the period between statehood in 1816 and the Civil War. The most active time for Irish immigration to Indiana, as well as Indianapolis, was from 1860 until 1920, a time of much growth in the state. Being unskilled and poor, these people did not have an easy time after arriving in their new country.

Much like the immigrants of today, the lure of jobs was the main attraction. Always a transportation hub, many canal and road building projects used Irish laborers prior to the Civil War. The great railroad boom following the war saw Indianapolis establishing itself as a key rail center for the country. Many of the Irish men found work not only building the railroads but also in the rail yards surrounding downtown Indianapolis. Irish women found work at factories and as domestics in the private homes of the wealthy.

Men not working for builders or the railroads worked as policemen, firemen and as meat-packers at Kingan and Company. Located along the White River at Blackford and Maryland (now the White River State Park), the Kingan meat-packing facility opened in 1862 and operated until the 1960s. The company, which originated in Belfast, not only employed the Irish already in Indianapolis, Kingan recruited workers in Ireland. The Kingan Company went as far as building an apartment house near the plant to house those who could not find places to live in the growing Irish community.

Many of the very early Irish immigrants settled on the near Westside in the St. Anthony Catholic Church parish, as well as St John’s parish. At the height of the Irish influx to the city, most settled on the near Southside in the areas known as Irish Hill and Fountain Square.

The boundaries of Irish Hill have long been disputed. They roughly encompass the area between College on the west, Shelby on the east, with the north and south boundaries being the first two rail lines south of Washington Street. Some say the west boundary is Delaware with State Street on the east. The Irish mixed with other ethnic groups, mostly Germans and Italians, in the early days of the Fountain Square neighborhood and established St. Patrick’s in 1865. Still a beacon to immigrants, the church of the patron saint of Ireland has recently come back to life with the Hispanics’ population growth. But much like the interstate highway devastated Fountain Square in the 1970s, the continued growth of the rail yards in the early 20th century led to demolition of many of the houses in Irish Hill. The Irish were on the move again.

The easiest way to follow the movement of the Irish is by church parishes rather than neighborhoods. And the movement takes a course east. Irish families helped establish Holy Cross parish in the 1890s on Oriental Street just north of East Washington. Then they continued east, doing the same at St. Philip Neri at Rural and Michigan in 1909, and Little Flower in the mid 1920s. Eventually, the Irish, like other ethnic groups, mixed into the rest of the population and scattered to all sides of town.

While the Catholic Church was the focal point of every Irish neighborhood, the place to gather for social interaction and political discussion has always been the neighborhood tavern. On the Eastside you could find taverns owned and operated by families named McNulty, O’Daly, McShane and Mathews. These establishments have changed ownership many times over the past few decades, and no one should confuse the modern strip center bars sporting manufactured Irish names with those neighborhood taverns of the past. But at 2533 E. Washington St., we still have the opportunity to take a trip back in time.

It’s a typical Tuesday night at the Golden Ace Inn, located a few blocks down from St. Philip Neri Church. At first glance, the place looks like many neighborhood taverns in the older parts of Indianapolis. Five or six regulars sit on stools. Television sets at each end of the room flash baseball scores. A couple of hamburgers are passed through the window in the wall at the end of the dark wooden bar.

But it only takes a few minutes to realize you are somewhere special. And your ears will give you the first clue. There is no sound blaring from the televisions. There is no jukebox assaulting you with the latest in homogenized country music or classic rock and roll. Instead, your ears are kissed by fiddle bows gliding across strings and a beat kept by a bodhran and bones.

Tuesday nights at the Golden Ace are set aside for a jam session. In the room adjacent to the bar, a group of people gathers to play Irish traditional music. This is not formal. No credentials needed. Anyone with an instrument and the desire to play Irish “trad” music is welcome to sit in. As proof, on this particular night, an Asian man is one of the fiddle players.

Beside him another fiddler occasionally sets his instrument down to play a song on the concertina. Across the table his wife plays the mandolin. They are joined by bouzoukis and guitars. The musicians play a variety of tunes, from the foot-stomping “Danny Ab’s Slides” to the mournful fiddle-only “Song of the Books.”

Musicians rotate depending on what is played and who needs to make another trip to the bar for Irish whiskey or a pint of Guinness. For no extra charge Steve V. Johnson, guitar and bouzouki player, tells tales of Irish folklore and all things Irish. Johnson and his wife, Min Gates, two-thirds of the Irish trad band Culchies, are regulars at the Golden Ace jam sessions. To the novice music fan, Johnson will gladly give the names of the unfamiliar instruments. Gates plays the bodhran (pronounced, bou-ran), a shallow drum long associated with Irish folk music. Much like a cross between a guitar and a mandolin, the stringed bouzouki with its sleek curves looks as beautiful as it sounds. Johnson and another musician alternate between bouzouki and guitar.

Above the musicians hangs a large varnished plaque with the carved letters “Golden Ace Inn. Est. 1934. John & Ann McGinley.” A stained glass window of the McGinley coat of arms centers one wall. The sons of John and Ann McGinley (whose black and white photo is displayed on the bar) still own and operate the Golden Ace. A sign on the back bar mirror proclaims “Dun NA nGall (Donegal) 25.” And with the music you get the sense you could be just 25 kilometers from Donegal, Ireland, the birthplace of John and Ann McGinley.

More so than any St. Patrick’s Day, Tuesday nights at the Golden Ace make me think of my Irish roots. As I listen to these unmistakably Irish tunes, it is not lost on me that I am just a few blocks from my grandma’s house. The house she and her mother worked hard to buy. Where my mother and her five siblings were raised. The same house my grandma left every morning to attend mass at St Philip’s, where she would visit with Margaret Quinn and give Jim Brennan 50 cents for the weekly pool at St. Bridget’s. The house where she died way too young.

As the group plays “Farewell to Erin,” I can see young Mary Loftus standing on the dock in Cork. A cool ocean breeze blows in her face.