The Wearing O’ The Green in the Green Mountains: the Irish in Vermont

The Green Mountains weren’t so green in the 1840s. Most of Vermont’s old growth trees had been savagely stripped from her rolling mountains and much of her soil had been depleted so that farming was becoming more and more difficult. Because of these factors and others, such as her isolation and extreme climate, Vermont was, in terms of population, the slowest growing state among the United States of the 1840s. Large sheep farms of merino sheep dominated Vermont’s nearly barren hillsides until the repeal of the Wool Tariff in 1846 made sheep farming far less lucrative.

So it is no wonder that the Irish but trickled into Vermont in the early decades of the 19^th century. However, when the potato blight struck Ireland in 1845, many inhabitants were forced to flee the starvation, many making the perilous journey to the New World in hopes of creating better lives for themselves and their children. And according to the internet site www.flowofhistory.org, from 1845 to 1860, half of all the immigrants arriving on America’s shores were from Ireland; and “by 1850, the largest foreign-born group in Vermont was Irish, numbering 15,377. The largest Irish settlements were in the railroad towns of Bellows Falls, Northfield, Rutland, Burlington and St. Albans.”

Much of Vermont’s early rail system was built by Irishmen, one of the main reasons being that as more and more Irish entered Vermont, a growing wave of anti-Catholicism forced them to take whatever jobs they could get. But later in the 19^th century when advances in cutting equipment and the arrival of rail in Barre created an explosion in the granite industry, many Irish families flocked to Barre to take advantage of the opportunities that lay in Barre’s burgeoning granite quarries and “sheds”. This sudden rise in Barre’s Irish population is captured in the parish records of Barre’s own St. Monica’s Catholic Church. Father Duglue, who pastored the flock that would formally become St. Monica’s in 1892, took a census of his congregants in 1881. Of the thirty-one families attending the church, about twenty of them were Irish. When he conducted a similar poll or census in 1898 of the three hundred plus families attending St. Monica’s, one hundred seventy-five of those families were Irish. (Information obtained from Irish Famine Immigrants in the State of Vermont: Gravestone Inscriptions by Ronald Chase Murphy and Janice Church Murphy.)

These Irish immigrants enriched Barre’s culture with their own customs, culinary heritage and solid work ethic. To all of you Barre-ites of Irish heritage, we give a hearty “Happy St. Patrick’s Day.” And we wish every other American-Irishman and Irishwoman the same. And that’s no blarney!

Todd Paton has more than 20 years of experience working in the Vermont tourism industry. Currently the Director of Visitor Services for Rock of Ages, one of Vermont's oldest, continuously operating attractions, he has served on the board of directors of the Central Vermont Chamber and the Vermont Hospitality Council. He is an active member of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce and the Vermont Tourism Network. He is a past Chair and current member of the board of directors of Vermont Attractions Association, a consortium of Vermont attractions established in 1956 to promote the highest standards of hospitality among Vermont's tourism-related properties.