I Took a Walking Tour of One of Newport's Old Irish Neighborhoods

When I went on a walking tour of Newport’s Ward 5 on 6 June 2012, someone on the tour said that Newport was an island and everything had to be delivered there by ship in the 1800s – food, clothing, building materials, everything. She also said that no one would go to Newport without a reason – it was not easy to get there – so a person would probably need a contact telling him or her to come. So who was the contact for Margaret/Maggie Moriarty and her neighbor Michael Dwyer?

Fort Adams was built to defend Newport’s harbor. During the Revolutionary War British ships were able to sail into Newport Harbor and occupy the city. There seems to have been several starts and stops in enlarging the defenses through the 1850s due to problems with funding, but the work continued.  And who performed this pick and axe labor? Remember this was before machines were available to do the heavy work. So the Irish broke their backs with this strenuous labor for small wages and dangerous working conditions. The massive fort was built of local shale and Maine granite. There were other fortifications built in this area also – this provided more work. When funds periodically dried up, the laborers looked for other work. 

From colonial times Newport was one of the busiest seaports in the United States. Wealthy Newport merchants were participants in the slave trade. Whaling was also an enterprise. With all the ships and wharves, you would think work would be plentiful. There was discrimination against the Irish in Newport just like there was in Boston – despite the fact that Rhode Island was founded on the principle of religious freedom. The Irish were taking work from the locals and from the free blacks – the Irish would work in terrible conditions for less money. This was especially true during and after the famine when thousands of Irish – many sick and destitute – arrived on American shores. There were four mills in Newport – at least two were cotton mills – Irish women and children were employed here. It was probably like the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts – a new girl or operative would be hired, and the girl on the looms beside her would show her how to work the looms. 14 hour days were not uncommon for these women and children. 

By the mid 1850s, wealthy Americans – including southern plantation owners - had begun to build summer mansions in Newport. After slavery was abolished and the Civil War ended, there was a decline in the local economy. But the wealthy eventually rediscovered Newport as a resort or vacation destination. In the 1880s mansions and hotels were springing up. And who expanded the roads, built the mansions and grounds, worked for the wealthy, provided the services such as police, firefighters, garbage collectors, public works employees? The Irish of course!

When I went on the walking tour of Ward 5, we walked up and down very narrow streets running between Thames and Spring Streets. The houses were built close to each other with the front doors opening right onto the brick sidewalks. The Irish lived on the outskirts of Newport – far away from the native Americans and close to the sights, sounds, and smells of the wharves and harbors. Above Spring Street was farmland – the mansions would be built there starting in the 1850s. 

A man named Charles Russell bought up 100 acres of land below Spring street further past the outskirts of Newport in the 1850s. He developed it into lots – established wider streets – and sold the lots in the 1880s to … the Irish, who built houses set back further on the larger lots – most with porches. I was imagining the families sitting on the porches at night after supper in nice weather – talking across the street to each other or walking up and down the street stopping here and there to talk about the day’s events, news from the old country, national happenings. 

So did someone from Sneem come to Newport in the early or mid 1800s and send word home that there were jobs here? Was that why Michael Dwyer and Margaret Moriarty ended up here?