A Little Bit of History

    Irish county organizations were first organized in New York City in the late 1840s. The early societies were for the most part purely social organizations, but in the 1870s some of them started to offer benefits for sickness and death. In the 1880s, inspired by the land reform movement in Ireland, many additional county societies were organized. Eviction and high rents in Ireland were fought on a local basis in Ireland and in New York a county society rather than one of the Irish fraternal or social organizations seemed best able to respond to sudden developments in the old country. In the early 1890s the first attempt was made to establish a central body to coordinate the Irish counties. A central organization for county societies was set up in Manhattan and at the same time a similar coordinating body was formed in Brooklyn where many county organizations existed independently. Both these overseeing bodies were similar in design to the present day United Irish Counties, but after only a few years of work the organizations went out of existence, although many of the county societies survived.

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