Immigrants from Ireland and their descendants. The Irish who came to America from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries were Presbyterian Scotch-Irish from Ulster, the northern province of Northern Ireland, who later wished to be distinguished from the mostly Catholic, rural and poor immigrants who, because of the great famines in Ireland in the late 1840s, began the first wave of mass immigration to the US. In the hundred years after 1820, almost 5 million Irish entered America. In the 1840s, the Irish made up 45 percent of immigrants to America. While the numbers of new arrivals have declined since, they have continued to be an important thread in the American tapestry Some estimates have 40 million Americans claiming Irish ancestry While the majority of Scotch-Irish settled in the Middle Atlantic states, the Irish Americans who hailed from the southern parts of Ireland settled throughout the US in both rural and urban communities. Initially discriminated against in the nineteenth century because of their religion and culture, in an era where many employers displayed signs of “No Irish Need Apply” by the twentieth century the Irish had assimilated into the American mainstream. In the cities many Irishmen found employment in the construction trade and in the civil service, principally in the police and fire departments, where their literacy and fluency in English gave them an advantage over other immigrant groups, while many Irish women worked as servants and seamstresses for the growing urban middle class. Found in every American community, the Irish have become particularly associated with the politics, culture, religion and economy of New York City, Chicago, IL, Boston, MA, Philadelphia, PA and San Francisco, CA, which along with most major American cities have sported at least one “Irishtown.” These cities continue to hold parades on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) to celebrate Irish American accomplishments and identity.

Irish Americans are mostly followers of the Roman Catholic faith, and they have helped to sustain that church in America since their arrival. Patronage systems among the Irish in politics had an impact on party organizations in every major city where many of the Irish working class supported the Democratic Party. The Irish have made remarkable contributions to all forms of elite and popular American culture. In contemporary America, the Irish have made great achievements in politics (the Kennedys, Tip O’Neill, Paul O’Dwyer, Richard J. Daley, Eugene McCarthy), cinema (John Ford, James Cagney Grace Kelly, Spencer Tracy), religion (Francis Cardinal Spellman, John Cardinal O’Connor), drama (Eugene O’Neill, winner of the Nobel prize), literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell) and journalism (Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill). Since the 1980s there has been a resurgence in immigration from Ireland, inspiring a revival in interest in traditional Irish culture, best represented in the success of the staged musical Riverdance.