‘Without the Aid of a Sporting Safety Net?’: the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish Émigré in San Francisco (1888–c.1938)

Abstract

This article builds on an emerging corpus of work that seeks to uncover the history and social, cultural and political significance of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the United States. However, it also marks a departure from any of the published work to date because for the first time it addresses the place of Gaelic games in the lives of the Irish émigré in the San Francisco Bay area. The article accounts for the origins and early history of the GAA there, and details the key agents and agencies responsible for the Association's development during the first 50 years of its existence. In doing so, it reveals that the GAA's growth in San Francisco appears to have been more moderately paced than it was in some of America's other centres of Irish immigration, particularly Boston, New York and Chicago. The article concludes by exploring the reasons for this and argues that a combination of quantitative differences in levels of Irish immigration to America's Pacific and Atlantic coasts and qualitative differences in the nature of the experiences of the Irish émigré in San Francisco were key in this regard.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the British Academy for providing the funding that facilitated my fieldwork in San Francisco. I am also indebted to a number of individuals for sharing with me their knowledge of the history of the GAA in San Francisco including: Eamonn Gormley; Malachy Higgins; Joe Duffy; Mike Moriarity; John O'Flynn; Louis Cotter and Brendan Kenneally. Liam Reidy was particularly helpful with access to people and documents. The staff at the library of the United Irish Cultural Centre, especially Joan Manini as well as Thomas Carey at the San Francisco Public Library and Debbie Malone at the University of San Francisco's Gleeson Library were also very helpful in my archival searches. A very special word of thanks must go to Mary Ringstad and her father, Thomas J. Wrin, for their kind words of encouragement and for providing me with a copy of the ‘Wrindex’, an index of early Irish-American San Francisco newspapers.

Notes

[1] Wilcox, ‘Sport and the Nineteenth Century Immigrant Experience’; Wilcox, ‘The Shamrock and the Eagle’; Reiss, ‘Sport, Race and Ethnicity in the American City’; Bjarkman, ‘Forgotten Americans and the National Pastime’; Bjarkman, The Boston Celtics Encyclopaedia; Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America; McCaffrey, Textures of Irish America; McCaffrey, The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America.

[2] Ryan and Walmsley, ‘The Fighting Irish of Toronto’.

[3] See for example, Murray, The Old Firm; Murray, Bhoys, Bears and Bigotry; Finn, ‘Racism, Religion and Social Prejudice’; Finn, ‘Faith, Hope and Bigotry’.

[4] Kelly, ‘Hibernian Football Club’; Bradley, Celtic Minded; Campbell and Woods, Dreams and Songs to Sing; MacKay, The Hibees.

[5] Free, ‘Tales From the Fifth Green Field’; Free, ‘“Angels” With Drunken Faces?’

[6] Bairner, ‘Wearing the Baggie Green’; Horton, ‘The “Green” and the “Gold”’; Cashman, The Paradise of Sport; Adair and Vamplew, Sport in Australian History.

[7] Kennedy, ‘Sporting Traditions in Ireland and Latin America’.

[8] Cronin, ‘The Gaelic Athletic Association's Invasion of America’; Ridge, ‘Irish County Societies in New York’; McGinn, ‘A Century before the GAA’; Black, ‘Cultural Identity’; Brady, ‘Irish Sport and Culture at New York's Gaelic Park’.

[9] Humphries, Green Fields; De Búrca, The GAA.

[10] Darby, ‘Gaelic Games, Ethnic Identity and Irish Nationalism in New York City’; Darby, ‘Gaelic Games, Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in North America’; Darby, ‘Emigrants at Play’; Darby, ‘Gaelic Games and the Irish Immigrant Experience in Boston’; Darby, ‘Gaelic Sport and the Irish Diaspora in Boston’; Darby, ‘The Next Parish Over from Galway Bay’.

[11] King, The Clash of the Ash in Foreign Fields; King and Darby, ‘Becoming Irlandés’; McCarthy, ‘Enacting Irish Identity in Western Australia’; McCarthy, ‘Irish Rule’; Bradley, Sport, Culture, Politics and Scottish Society; Ryan and Walmsley, ‘A Grand Game of Hurling and Football’; Duignan, Keeping the Game Alive; Hassan, ‘The Role of Gaelic Games’; McAnallen et al., ‘The “Temporary Diaspora” at Play’.

[12] Burchell, The San Francisco Irish.

[13] Curry, ‘San Francisco’.

[14] Burchell, The San Francisco Irish.

[15] Clark, Hibernia America; O'Keefe, ‘Introduction’.

[16] McCaffrey, The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America.

[17] Burchell, The San Francisco Irish.

[18] Kline, Irish Dream Accomplished.

[19] O'Keefe, ‘Introduction’.

[20] Dowling, Irish Californians, xxxi.

[21] Burchell, The San Francisco Irish: 115.

[22] O'Keefe, ‘Introduction’.

[23] Cited in Dowling, Irish Californians, xvii.

[24] Alta California, 4 May 1853.

[25] The relationship between the GAA and Irish nationalist politics is discussed at length in Sugden and Bairner, Sport, Sectarianism and Society; Cronin, Sport and Nationalism in Ireland and De Búrca, The GAA.

[26]Daily Morning Call, 23 Jan. 1888, 2.

[27]Daily Morning Call, 30 Jan. 1888, 2.

[28] While there were five GAA clubs in existence in San Francisco at this time, there were ten in Chicago and 22 in New York: Darby, ‘Gaelic Games, Ethnic Identity and Irish Nationalism in New York City’; Darby, ‘Emigrants at Play’.

[29]Daily Morning Call, 1 Aug. 1892, 3.

[30] Ibid.; Daily Morning Call, 12 Sept. 1892, 2.

[31]Daily Morning Call, 13 Feb. 1893, 3.

[32]Daily Morning Call, 1 May 1893, 2.

[33]Daily Morning Call, 17 March 1894, 2.

[34]Daily Morning Call, 17 Dec. 1894, 2.

[35]Daily Morning Call, 23 Dec. 1894, 4.

[36]The Leader, 7 Feb. 1903, 8.

[37]The Leader, 2 May 1903.

[38]The Leader, 13 June 1903, 8.

[39] Burchell, The San Francisco Irish.

[40]The Leader, 28 Feb. 1903, 3.

[41]The Monitor, 21 March 1903, 3.

[42]The Leader, 2 May 1903, 8.

[43]The Leader, 2 April 1904.

[44]The San Francisco Call, 19 Feb. 1906, 1.

[45]The Leader, 20 Jan. 1912, 8.

[46]The Leader, 27 Jan. 1912.

[47]The Leader, 26 July 1913.

[48]The Leader, 6 Sept. 1913.

[49]The Leader, 15 March 1913.

[50]The Leader, 26 July 1913, 5.

[51] For the start of the 1913–14 season there were seven football teams (Celtics, Parnells, Rangers, Sarsfields, O'Growneys, McBrides and Geraldines).

[52] This assertion is made on the back of comments made to this effect in a number of match reports published in The Leader during 1914.

[53]The Leader, 13 June 1914, 7.

[54]The Leader, 29 Nov. 1913, 3.

[55]The Leader, 8 Aug. 1914.

[56]The Leader, 15 March 1915.

[57]The Leader, 14 Oct. 1916.

[58]The Leader, 2 June 1917; The Leader, 15 Sept. 1917.

[59] Fund-raising games and other events were organized in this period for a number of Catholic churches in the city, while a one-off GAA field day was held to raise money for Mary Scanlon, a young girl who was severely injured when a fire engine accidentally crashed into her house on Christmas Day 1918. This benefit match, played on 17 July 1919, raised $328: The Leader, 19 July 1919; The Leader, 23 Aug. 1919.

[60]The Leader, 23 Aug. 1919, 2.

[61]The Leader, 1 Nov. 1919, 6.

[62]The Leader, 12 May 1923.

[63]The Leader, 11 June 1926; The Leader, 19 June 1926.

[64]The Leader, 23 April 1932. It should be noted that not all of these teams were in existence at the same time and that some lasted only a short period of time.

[65] The teams involved the Gaels, Cavan, Lee's and St John's: The Leader, 23 March 1935.

[66]The Leader, 18 Feb. 1933.

[67] Dowling, Irish Californians, 404.

[68] Ibid., 408.

[69]The Leader, 3 Aug. 1935, 5.

[70]The Leader, 5 June 1937, 5.

[71]The Leader, 24 July 1937.

[72]The Leader, 19 March 1938; The Leader, 13 July 1940.