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Hull Mass.

How Boston’s South Shore Became the Irish Riviera

Visit the South Shore of Massachusetts and you won’t have much doubt about why people call it the Irish Riviera. Orange-and-green flags fly from many a home, and the region is filled with Roman Catholic churches and schools, Irish dance schools and Irish pubs, restaurants and bakeries.

Nantasket Beach along the Irish Riviera

You may conclude the Irish Riviera resulted from suburban flight from the working-class neighborhoods of Boston, that most Irish of American cities. But well before the exodus to Braintree, Hull and Marshfield, well-heeled Irish families had built seaside Victorian mansions along the coast south of Boston. And even before that, the Irish gained a toehold in what is now the most Irish town in America: Scituate, Mass. They did it by engaging in the now-lost industry of Irish mossing.

Mossing

Irish immigrants began arriving in Boston during the Irish potato famine starting in 1845. Daniel Ward, an Irish immigrant, headed south and started collecting seaweed, or mossing, in the 1850s in Scituate.

Irish moss

Irish moss is a red algae used as a thickener and stabilizer in ice cream, beer, wine, medicine and in calico dye manufacturing. Mossers hauled the slimy stuff from the sea floor with heavy rakes at low tide. Those who mossed at both low tides could gather as much as 1,000 pounds a day. Others made money spreading the seaweed on the beach to dry and packing it into crates.

It was a full-time job for Irish immigrants during the mid-19^th century. But it didn’t make Daniel Ward rich. The salvage rights to the Forest Queen in 1854 did. The wrecked vessel from London had carried a load of silver bars, and Daniel Ward got the rights to them.

Scituate Harbor

He built a big house on a cliff and offered it for use as the first Catholic Mass. Starting in 1856, priests said Mass there four times a year.

In 1942, an anonymous mosser told American Magazine, “It’s a great farm we have out there. We don’t have to plow it or plant it, but it gives us four crops a season.” By the end of World War II, it was a lucrative summer job for young people. It died out, a victim of cheap labor overseas. Lucien Rousseau, the last commercial sea mosser, died in 1983.

But Scituate’s Irish mossers left a legacy: the Irish Riviera. Once they established an Irish-Catholic enclave in the town, Quincy and Randolph built parishes in 1848 and 1850.

The Irish Riviera

John F. Kennedy and others sitting on the deck of the Kennedy family home in Hyannis, Mass. Left to right: Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, an unidentified man, an unidentified woman, John F. Kennedy, K. LeMoyne (“Lem”) Billings, and an unidentified woman. (Photographer unknown. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

As the Boston Irish began to acquire wealth and power, they began to move to large houses on the South Shore, to Marshfield, Scituate and Cohasset, according to historian Thomas O’Connor. Boston’s rogue mayor, James Michael Curley, spent summers in Scituate. In hot weather, Irish families visited Nantasket, Wollaston and Hough’s Neck beaches.

Nantasket Beach in Hull was a fashionable vacation spot for the well-off Irish. Rose Fitzgerald’s family had a place on Nantasket Beach in Hull. Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly died at his summer home there.

After World War II the migration accelerated as returning GIs from South Boston, Hyde Park and Dorchester moved to the South Shore suburbs. It continued through the 1950s and 1960s.

By The Numbers

Today, Scituate and Marshfield are the epicenter of the Irish Riviera, which some consider the stretch from Weymouth to Kingston. Others consider the Irish Riviera to comprise Milton and Quincy outside of Boston to Cape Cod, where the Kennedy family still maintains a compound. The late Speaker of the House Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill retired to Harwich Port on the Cape.

Nearly 50 percent of Scituate residents have Irish ancestry. The Fieldston neighborhood of Marshfield is the most Irish-American section of the second-most Irish-American town in the United States. At least 44 percent of the population in Marshfield, Braintree, Hull, Avon, Pembroke and Milton have Irish ancestry.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005-2009 American Community Survey, 19 of the top-20 most Irish communities in Massachusetts are south of Boston. Here they are by the percentage of residents who claim Irish ancestry:

47.5 Scituate
46.5 Braintree
45.8 Hull
45.6 Marshfield
44.9 Avon
44.9 Pembroke
44.6 Milton
44.5 Abington
44.3 Whitman
44.2 Hanover
43.4 Weymouth
43.0 Walpole
42.2 Holbrook
41.4 Duxbury
41.2 Norwell
40.8 Hanson
17.4 Boston

This story about the Irish Riviera was updated in 2022.

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The Narragansett Pacer – the Lost Horse of the New England Colonies

It’s not exactly clear when the first horse officially called a Narragansett Pacer appeared in Rhode Island, though it was likely in the late 1600s. Its emergence marked the first true American breed of horse.

In 1672, John Hull – the Massachusetts mintmaster who had properties in Narragansett and Cape Cod – wrote his partners with a proposal. If they fenced in part of their land and imported some particularly fine horses from Europe they might well produce a horse bred specifically for New England.

Race Horse and Trainer (unknown artist, National Gallery of Art)

The region had few streets and riders needed horses different than English horses.

The most prized English horses were bred for speed in flat racing. And work horses had lanes in which to work. Neither breed could master New England’s wilderness.

Within a couple of decades, Hull’s vision would become reality.

Narragansett Pacer

From the earliest days of New England’s settlement, colonists prized their horses. They came from Europe on the first ships from Britain, Spain and the Netherlands.

Over time, however, breeders in Rhode Island took a more active role in promoting the horse perfect for the new colonies: The Narragansett Pacer. Unlike a racehorse bred to produce quick, bursting speed over a flat course, it was a relatively small horse, but bred and trained to move swiftly over rough terrain with tremendous endurance. As a pacer, it had a somewhat awkward high step, but it did not sway from side to side and could carry a man 50 miles or more in a day.

Edmund Burke

The British politician Edmund Burke wrote an Account of the European Settlement in America in 1857. In it, he noted the emerging breeds of horses in New England:

They have, besides, a breed of small horses which are extremely hardy. They pace naturally, though in no very graceful or easy manner; but with such swiftness, and for so long a continuance, as must appear almost incredible to those who have not experienced it.

As a member of Parliament, Burke tried to convince his colleagues to avoid war with America. Instead, he wanted to grant the colonies the right to establish their own parliament and courts, while remaining under the umbrella of the British Empire. His efforts in this regard failed, but the word of the Narragansett Pacer spread.

By the early 1770s, horses ranked among the top 10 colonial exports. Shipments of horses regularly left New England for the southern colonies and the Caribbean.

Gold Standard

The Narragansett Pacer soon became the gold standard of horses in the colonies. George Washington owned a pair, which he highly valued. Paul Revere was said to have ridden a Narragansett Pacer on his famous midnight ride, though proof is scant.

It is known that Narragansett Pacers, ‘of extraordinary fleetness, and astonishing endurance’ were ridden by governmental post riders during the American Revolution. Riders hitched them outside the house and War Office of Connecticut Gov. Jonathan Trumbull in Lebanon, Conn. The horses were ‘ready, on any emergency of danger, to fly with advices, in any desired direction, on the wings of the wind.’

Jonathan Trumbull

Rhode Islanders raced the pacers on the beaches of Narragansett. While Puritan Massachusetts frowned on sporting events such as racing, the more liberal Rhode Island allowed it. The horses also raced in Virginia.

Though highly popular for more than 200 years, the Narragansett Pacer doesn’t exist today. Historians of horses do not really know why. They may have simply dwindled away due to changing times.

An American Saddlebred, the descendant of the Narragansett Pacer

As American roads improved in quality and travelers used coaches more widely, the pacer’s gait and size made it less desirable. Meanwhile, the horse would only get more attractive in the Caribbean for work on plantations and on the rough island roads. That led some to suspect the breeders simply shipped away the last of the Narragansett Pacer over time.

Hat tip to: Historic Rhode Island Farms by Robert A. Geake. This story was updated in 2024.

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Maurice Prendergast Paints New England at Play

The much-loved American artist Maurice Prendergast once wrote in his notebook,

Art is the great stimulus of life -I find it year by year more rich, more desirable, and more mysterious.

Revere Beach, ca. 1896. Private collection.

He found much richness outdoors in New England, especially during the summertime.

His art featured familiar scenes of parks and beaches, holidays, festivals and picnics. But his paintings resembled delicate mosaics more than the representational art then popular in the United States.

Marblehead, ca. 1914-15. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art.

Maurice Prendergast was one of the first American painters to paint in a manner inspired by the French Post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne.

Maurice Prendergast

He and his twin sister Lucy were born in a subarctic trading post in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Oct. 10, 1858. (Perhaps that’s why light and summer attracted him so.) The trading post failed and the family moved to Boston’s South End. He then left school at 14. Prendergast was apprenticed to a commercial artist who painted show cards – advertising point-of-sale displays. By the time he reached 24, he could support himself painting flat, colorful advertisements — much the way his art would look.

Boston, Snowy Day. ca. 1910. Private collection.

His brother Charles, an artist with whom he was close, said he always knew he wanted to be an artist and he didn’t let anything get in his way. Back then, one generally studied in Europe if one wanted to pursue art. The brothers in 1886 worked their way to England on a cattle boat.

Nantasket Beach, ca. 1896. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Maurice then saved enough money to go to Paris, where he studied for four years. He was exposed to James McNeill Whistler, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Edgar Degas and Claude Manet.

When he returned to Boston in 1895 he had some modest success. By 1897 he acquired patrons who sent him to Italy to work for several years. But he suffered from poor health, and he’d lost nearly all his hearing by the time he returned home.

Maine Beach, ca. 1913. Private collection.

Back in New England, he painted in watercolor on the coast in summer, then recast his work in oil in the winter. He especially liked Revere Beach, Marblehead, the South Boston Pier and the Boston Public Garden.

Salem Willows, ca. 1904. Terra Museum of American Art.

His naïve, cheerful paintings sold well, and he began to exhibit in New York to find a wider audience. But not everyone liked his work.

Autumn in New England, ca. 1913, Private collection.

The Eight

In 1908 he exhibited with a renegade group of artists called The Eight. One critic dismissed his paintings as ‘artistic tommy-rot, unadulterated slop, the show would be better if it were that of The Seven rather than The Eight.’ Another compared his work with ‘an explosion in a color factory.’

Merry Go Round Nahant, ca. 1901. Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.

Eventually he moved to New York City, where he often painted Central Park scenes. He continued to work in New England in the summers.

Low Tide at Beachmont, ca. 1905, Worcester Art Museum.

Maurice Prendergast died on Feb. 1, 1924.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Joshua James Avenges His Mother’s Death by Saving 1,000 Lives

Growing up in Hull, Mass., Joshua James saw more than his share of shipwrecks. One in particular sent him on a lifelong mission of saving lives at sea.

Joshua James with his Life-Saving medals.

He began saving lives at the age of 15, when he joined the Massachusetts Humane Society, until his death while on duty at the age of 75.

Joshua James

Joshua James was born on Nov. 22, 1826 in Hull, Mass., the ninth of 12 children born to Esther Dill and William James. His father owned a fleet of schooners that hauled paving stones to Boston.

During his lifetime, the Port of Boston, just north of Hull, became one of the busiest ports in the country. One hundred ships a day would pass Hull, which jutted into Massachusetts Bay at the southern boundary of Boston Harbor. Coastal storms frequently wrecked ships on Hull’s shores.

Aerial view of Hull, Mass.

On April 3, 1837, his mother and baby sister returned from Boston on his brother’s schooner Hepzibah. Joshua, 10, stood on shore watching the vessel come into the harbor. But a half-mile out, a sudden squall rose up and knocked the Hepzibah on its side. The boy watched as the boat sank, his mother and sister aboard. He vowed to do everything he could to prevent others from the same fate.

Five years later he jumped into a surf boat manned by volunteers from the Massachusetts Humane Society. They rescued the crew of a ship battered by a storm. The Massachusetts Humane Society, formed in 1786 to rescue people shipwrecked at sea, provided the model for the U.S. Life-Saving Service established in 1848. By 1915, the U.S. Coast Guard took over operation of the Life-Saving Service.

For decades, Joshua James voluntarily saved people from shipwrecks. But he had to work to support his wife, Louisa, and three children. So he fished, coasted from Boston to Hull carrying paving stones, salvaged ships and lightering cargo from ship to shore.

He won his first life-saving medal at the age of 24 for rescuing the crew of the French brig L’Essai.

James performed his most astonishing life-saving feat, one that required seamanship and courage, at the age of 62. He had already spent decades rescuing hundreds of people when the Great Snow Hurricane of 1888 struck the New England Coast.

Finest Hours

On Nov. 25, 1888, a category 2 hurricane struck New England, bringing with it driving snow, extremely high tides and a pounding surf. As the storm worsened, Joshua James climbed Telegraph Hill and saw five schooners and a coal barge anchored off Nantasket. Fearing the storm would wreck them, he ordered his volunteers to patrol the beach.

A breeches buoy. U.S. Coast Guard photo

In the afternoon they discovered the Cox and Green wrecked on the beach. They dragged their equipment — breeches buoy, a gun to throw a line and surf boat — half a mile from the Stony Point Station. One by one, they rescued all nine men.

Sumner Kimball, who organized the U.S. Life-Saving Service, wrote a book about Joshua James. In it, he described the next, near-miraculous rescue of the Gertrude Abbott that night.

Gertrude Abbott

An eighth of a mile away, they could see through the dark another three-masted schooner, the Gertrude Abbott, wrecked on the rocks. James and his men carried their boat and gear through the storm to the schooner.

She was so far from shore they’d have to go get the crew in the lifeboat. James warned his men they’d likely perish trying to save the sailors, wrote Kimball. “Without a moment’s hesitation every man offered himself, and they ran the boat into the water and started for the wreck,” he wrote.

Spectators on the beach made a bonfire, which gave hope to the shipwrecked sailors. The lifeboat reached the Gertrude Abbott‘s bow and the crew threw a line aboard. The sailors made it fast, and when the lifeboat rose high on the crest of a wave they jumped into the lifeboat, one by one.

Joshua James and Crew (he’s in blue)

But the overloaded lifeboat had to get past the rocks and the roiling sea between to get to shore. Within 200 yards of the beach, the boat struck a boulder and filled it with water. But the men stuck to the boat even as it slammed against the rocks. The crew managed to keep it pointed toward shore until finally a humongous wave lifted it in the air and dashed it against the rocks. Though it tore into pieces, all the men got ashore, some pulled out of the water by spectators on shore.

More To Go

Even at 62, Joshua James wasn’t ready to call it a night. He and his crew patrolled the beaches until 3 a.m., when they found still another three-masted schooner, the Bertha F. Walker, wrecked and grounded about a half-mile away from the Gertrude Abbott. They couldn’t reach her with a line from the shore, so they walked to the Strawberry Hill station four miles away for another lifeboat. Then they hitched up horses and hauled the surfboat to the wreck, where they rescued seven sailors clinging to the rigging.

But even before they finished that rescue, a messenger rode up on horseback to tell them of two more wrecks on Atlantic Hill, five miles away.

Up all night with no breakfast and scanty supper, James’ crew soldiered on. They reached the H.C. Higginson, sunk between two ledges with five exhausted sailors clinging to the rigging. Two other lifesaving crews had arrived and managed to send a breeches-buoy to the vessel. But the lines had fouled and were useless. So Joshua James and his crew rowed out in the furious sea. After 45 minutes the waves washed the boat ashore with two holes in it. So they patched the holes and tried again. The lifeboat came up against the stern of the vessel, and as each sailor climbed down from the rigging the life-saving crew threw him a line, and he’d jump into the water to be fished out and into the lifeboat.

The other wreck had grounded on the beach and the sailors got off safely, so James and his life-savers headed home.

All told, they saved 29 lives during that one storm. Coast Guard historian William Thiesen called it ‘an unprecedented feat of skill, leadership, and sheer physical strength’ — especially for a 62-year-old.

Point Allerton

Joshua James and the Point Allerton crew in their gear. Courtesy U.S. Coast Guard.

In 1890, the Life-Saving Service appointed Joshua James keeper of the new Point Allerton Life-Saving Station, despite his age — 63 years old. He had saved 450 lives, and the Service waived the mandatory retirement age of 45 for him. He continued saving lives for another 13 years.

In fact, he saved 540 lives — no small feat for a man in his 60s and 70s.

Ebbing Tide

He died on March 19, 1902. A northeast gale blew, and he decided to drill his crew with a new self-bailing surfboat. For an hour they managed the boat in the roiling sea. They grounded the boat and he jumped out, looked at the sea and said, “The tide is ebbing.” Then he fell on the wet sand, dead of a heart attack.

Every May 23, the Hull Life-Saving Museum and the Point Allerton Station (which houses the Hull Life-Saving Museum) honor Joshua James at his gravesite. And on Aug. 8, 2015, the Coast Guard commissioned the fifth national security cutter, Coast Guard Cutter James.

With thanks to Joshua James, life-saver by Sumner Kimball. Aerial view of Hull by By Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA – 2010_04_28_bos-rdu_018Uploaded by PDTillman, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10586927. This story was updated in 2023.

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