The
Boston Donegal Association is an Irish-American cultural organization
founded in Boston in 1908. It traces its roots back to County Donegal,
Ireland. Actually, there exists several associations around the world;
New York-USA, Coventry-United Kingdom, New South Wales, Australia and
Dublin, Ireland.
The County Donegal
Association of Greater Boston
On August 9, 1908, a group of
Donegal immigrants to Boston's shores
met for a common purpose- “to promote unity” and much more.
The men all shared something in common besides their determination to
carve out better lives for themselves in their new home than they found
in Ireland. Their
shared bond was their deep tie to their birthplace. In a genuine sense, the
men- and later women- from that rugged and beautiful county never left their
roots behind, those ancestral ties of history, culture, and bloodlines that
they carried to “the Golden Door,” America.
The Donegal men who gathered,
according to the Boston Pilot, on a summer night in 1908 in “Roughlan Hall, Charlestown,”
had much in
mind. Along with their determination to remember the place where they
had come
from and to pass down those memories to coming generations, they
pledged to aid newcomers from Donegal and extend not only the
proverbial hand of friendship, but also a financial hand for members
“whenever the need arose.”
In the
first meeting of the County Donegal Benevolent Association, the members proved
that the fires of their birthplace still blazed. The gathering pledged that
they would give equal effort to aid the creation of a “Thirty-Two County Irish
Nation” and “to preserve the principal of American liberty.” Since 1908, the
Association has remained true to the tenets of its founders.
