This interview is taking place on February 15, 1982 in the home of the McHugh family on Lexington Road, Concord. Being interviewed are Terry and John McHugh who live with their brother Tom in the home bought by their parents in 1880. I'm William Bailey and I am conducting this interview as part of a grant awarded to the Concord-Carlisle Human Rights Council by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, an organization funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The purpose of the grant is to develop an appreciation and understanding of the experiences of Concordians of different ethnic backgrounds.
Terence – I'm Terence J. McHugh and I was born August 30, 1897 right here in this house where I'm living now. My father was born in County Cavan, Ireland and my mother was born in County Waterford, Ireland. My father came to this country in 1864. My mother came in 1867 and her maiden name was Mary Dee. They married in 1880 and they bought this house and farm and came to live here on the 17th of March, 1880.
John – I am John Gabriel McHugh and I was born the 3rd of April, 1901. My father was Terence McHugh and he was born in 1841 in County Cavan, Ireland. My mother was born in 1858 in Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland.
Terence – There were eleven born in the McHugh family right in this house, eight boys and three girls.
...Can you tell me when your parents first came to Concord?
John – They lived in Lincoln first.
Terence – Dad came to Sudbury first.
John – His sister Katherine came in 1850, Mrs. Lyons in Sudbury,
and he came there and that summer he worked on the farm of Aaron
Hunt and that winter he worked in Boston on the docks and he met a
fellow named Robert Cairns about January. They took off and went to Jersey City, New Jersey and worked in a sugar refinery. They
were down there when about two weeks after Lincoln was
assassinated, in came an Englishman looking for Scotsmen and
Irishmen to go out to help build the Union Pacific Railroad. So
he signed up, and he took a ferry across the Mississippi River and he started with the Union Paific Railroad at Council Bluffs,
Iowa. He stayed on there from May, 1865 to November 1866. They
slept with their clothes on all the time and they didn't put in
but a mile of track a day.
So he went back to Ireland in 1866 and he went on the Irish police force, IRC, a real Irish constabulary under Queen Victoria. He stayed with that until 1872 and then he came back to the United States again and worked down at the Peter C. Brooks estate in Medford, MA. His brother Edward bought a place in Lincoln and my father started working there and stayed there from 1875 to 1880. My mother grew up in that area and they met and got married on the 22nd of January, 1880 and a short time after that my father bought
this place at a public auction, and Sam Staples was the auctioneer, and on the 17th of March, St. Patricks Day, they moved in and we've been here ever since.
Terence – My father told us ab ut when he was working building the Union Pacific Railroad they had moveable portable houses, they slept in them. As I recall he said he worked about a year and a half and the only time he had off was one half day they took to bury another Irishman that was killed in a brawl over a card game, his name was Brennan. The two brothers that were in the brawl that were responsible, it was a fight it wasn't a murder, he got hit over the head with a stick or something, they took off in a blizzard and they were never heard from again. They were building in Indian country and the squaws would bring in the wood for them to use in the fires, but the had no trouble with the Indians.
One time he said the buffalo were moving across the landscape and it sounded like thunder, the sound of their hooves on the frozen ground, it was thunder was the way he described. They were migrating, you know.
...What about your mother What kind of work did she do before she got married?
Terence – She came to North Lincoln with her father and mother and she went to a little red school there in North Lincoln. She went to work when she was about fourteen years old for the Sawyer family who lived on Route 2 way down in that neighborhood there. She worked there until she got married, she learned to cook from Mrs. Sawyer and she washed, she did everything and she was a tremendous cook too. When she got married, she was busy raising a family, you know. That's the only job she ever had was working for the Sawyers.
...When they came to Concord, did they have friends already here or were they really setting out on their own?
Terence – When they came to Concord, they had lots of friends here. My father had two brothers on the farm in Lincoln and of course, they knew lots of other Irish people here. Offhand I can't think of the people that were here when they came. Oh, there were lots of Irish families here long before they came. In fact the Flannery family, Steve Flannery was our neighbor here, he tells his grandfather came here in 1827 to Concord.
...Is that the Flannery that worked for Mr. Wheeler as a farm hand? I once heard a story about a Flannery who worked for Mr.Wheeler and Henry David Thoreau liked Mr. Flannery and helped him out one time.
Terence – That's the one. I think his name was Michael Flannery.
...Did your father always have the farm, was he always a farmer as soon as he married your mother?
Terence – Yes, that's all he did. Oh, the Dees were here then too. The Dee family here in Concord and of course my mother was a Dee and they were friends of my fathers.
The Burkes were here before my father, the Daltons, McManuses.
...What can you tell me about your early childhood and going to school? Did you have odd jobs in the afternoons or did you usually work right here on the farm for your father?
Terence – When we were kids, we worked right here on the farm.
...What kind of farm was it? What did your father raise?
Terence – Strawberries were the principal crop. It was the principal crop in the whole East Quarter here. Everybody raised stawberries, that's what they depended on. Of course, we raised asparagus, and potatoes, corn, cabbage, beans, celery and spinach, everything. We always had pigs too. Everybody had a pig in those days, even up in the center of town. They would kill them in the fall and have the ham smoked, shoulders, and so forth.
...What was school like? Did you all go through the Concord schools?
Terence – When I started in, it was the Ripley School where the kindergarten and first grade were. Then there was the Emerson School with the rest of the eight grades and then Concord High. I remember Miss Watley whose people were old Concordians, you know, old Yankee family, she was a swell woman and teacher. They were all very dedicated in those days. Maybe they are now but you don't hear it. But Miss Watley taught the kindergarten and then we went on through the grades and the high school.
I know when we were kids we hated to go to school because we hated the confinement. I suppose kids are the same way today. Concord's school system was rated one of the best when we were going to school. Like kids that went to college they were well taught and well trained before they could be admitted to college. They had a high rating in the high school, Concord High did in those days.
...I understand Terry that you were the valedictorian of your class?
Terence – Well, there were two of us, the other one was a girl, so I had the chance but I said no and let her be the valedictorian. That was in 1914.
I played on the baseball team too. Take now what it costs for the athletic program in Concord High. When I played on the Concord High baseball team, Mr. Goddard was the teacher, he taught Latin among other subjects. He was a fine man, he was a graduate of Brown University and he was in charge of the whole athletic training, track, football, and baseball. And as far as I know, he never got a cent for it, just his teacher's salary. They had fine people as teachers in those days.
...How important was the church, St. Bernard's, in the life of your family in growing up?
Terence – Very important. We were brought up as Catholics and they were strict Catholics.
...Did you all participate in different kinds of social organizations, like the Knights of Columbus?
Terence – The Knights of Columbus was started here in 1897. Father Moriarty was instrumental in getting the Knights here. And of course, they were strict to the Catholic church. You had to be Catholic to be eligible to join the Knights. They supported the parish and everything. The church in the '80s bought land for their cemetery and I remember my brother Mike telling about raising money to buy a gate for one of the roadways into the cemetery. I heard my father tell about all the farmers who were members of St. Bernard's parish and they went to the cemetery on different days with their carts and horses and took care of the land and cut the trees and got it in shape.
John – Annie Coyne was a Irish girl about twenty years old who was working up on Main Street for a private family doing housework. She died suddenly and the priest Father McCall asked my father if they could use the house for the wake. She was brought down here and she went from here to the cemetery.
...She didn't have any family?
Terence – As far as we know, she had no family.
...How did you all celebrate holidays, like St. Patrick's Day? Do you remember celebrating ever since you were a little boy or more later on when you got older?
Terence – For years the parish or the Knights of Columbus would run the fair on the 17th of March commemorating St. Patrick. Sometimes there would be a speaker and the speaker would be Irish. As I recall we always had a green ribbon or a green necktie to put on to go to school, and sometimes I recall some kids that weren't Irish would start ridiculing or something and we would give him a punch in the eye or something. But it was all in fun anyhow.
...What kind of contacts did you have in Concord growing up with people who weren't Irish, like the Yankees and Italians and Norwegians and Swedes? Did you have as much to do with thosepeople as you did with people who were of Irish background?
Terence – Well, some of them. The Clarks right here who were our neighbors, they were Yankees. In fact George Benjamin Clark said he was the seventh generation Clark between here and New Hampshire or Vermont.\
...So you would say there wasn't any kind of gulf between the Yankees and the Irish as you recall growing up?
Terence – Not the poorer Yankees. There were what we called the Main Street Yankees. There was no gulf, we just didn't have any social relations with them. We didn't think anything of that because they had their own friends and everything. But there were people who lived back of the depot who weren't Irish and were the same social class you might say as the Irish as far as work was concerned and jobs and everything. They got along just as well as the Irish. They had a Norwegian behind the depot and they had Italians. We had the Carlsons here on Virginia Road and the Petersons who were at the junction of Old Bedford Road and Virginia Road and they were just the same to us as everybody else. We boys were pals together and played ball together and went to market together and everything and we had no prejudice and they had no prejudice against us. We were just neighbors, good neighbors. They were all good neighbors that's the way to put it.
...Way back when your father and mother were here around 1894 just before I guess all of you were born, there was this story of the American Protective Association that decided to have a convention out here in Concord and they were as you know a pretty bigoted group of people. Did you ever hear the story of the day they came out and could you tell me the story that you heard?
Terence – Yes, we heard it all right. We heard them tell about some of the teenage Yankee boys right up in the center of town where they had the parade that night. In those days torchlight processions were popular. I don't know where it started but they went down Lowell Road to the depot because there was a depot down there. The train came from Boston out to the Lowell Road depot and that's where they all got off. And then they had their parade. They had these transparencies as they called them. Iheard one fellow talking about it that down on Lowell Road there was a whole bunch of them down there and there was a woods there where Star Market is now and they had bricks to throw at this bunch and one fellow drew out a revolving fighter (?) into the darkness in the woods. But we heard them tell about they got on the train, they didn't get any encouragement from the officials here in Concord at all. I don't know if they wanted a permit or not to use the Town Hall for a speaker or something but they weren't allowed I don't believe. But we heard them tell that they got on the train and went back down through Bedford and Lexington and to North Cambridge. And in North Cambridge they stopped and one of them got off and got hit in the head with a brick and was badly injured. We heard all these stories as we were growing up. The American Protective Association, the APAs they called them, were no-nothings. I recall hearing someone say that they elected a governor in this state prior to the Civil War.
...Just to conclude, I wonder if you could speak to the whole idea of having grown up here and lived here in the town of Concord all your life and your brothers and sisters and your mother and father and how it seems to have been as an experience for you?
John – Well, to me it's the best town in the world. I was born here and have spent most of my life here except for a few trips to California and Florida and Montreal. And the neighbors are all good neighbors and I loved the town and I still love it.
Terence – We all had the same feeling. We had two brothers who spent all their lives west of the Mississippi in California and they came back to Concord to die and be buried here.