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Ancient Order of Hibernians

Founded in New York City in 1836, the Ancient Order of Hibernians is a fraternal organization for Irish Catholics; it takes its name from the classical Latin name for Ireland. Fraternal organizations in the United States, evolving from tradesman organizations and Catholic “third orders” (religious orders of laymen), rose in popularity in the 19th century. They exploded in popularity around the turn of the century, when about half of all adult men belonged to at least one fraternal organization, with the average man belonging to two.

The use of Greek and Latin—as in the word Hibernia or the Greek letters used to identify the newly developed college fraternities—was common, as were claims of ancient origins, which were usually symbolic rather than literal. The word fraternity was consciously used to invoke the Greek word phratry, a social division within Greek tribes. While fraternal organizations of men bound together by religious faith or field of work continued, the trend of the 19th century boom in fraternal organizations was the growth in groups bound together by other criteria.

Rise of the Hibernians

In the case of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the criterion was ethnic background. One of the largest groups of recent immigrants in the 1830s, when immigration from southern and eastern Europe had not yet picked up speed and the use of Chinese laborers by railroads and mines had not yet inspired the formation of anti-immigrant labor parties, the Irish faced considerable discrimination and poor treatment in the United States. Irish Catholics were the most numerous and the least assimilated, as Catholicism was viewed with suspicion in much of the United States.

Even Irish Protestants rarely associated with Irish Catholics because of frictions originating in their homeland. Furthermore, American public schools frequently used the King James Bible as a main textbook, and at the time, Catholics were forbidden by their church to read this Protestant translation. Given the enmity between Irish Catholics and the English Protestant culture out of which the King James translation had developed, this was an especially sore point for Irish Catholics.

The Know-Nothings and the Molly Maguires

The Know-Nothing movement developed in the 1850s, when the AOH was still young. The Know-Nothings, an explicitly anti-Catholic political movement that sought to bar Catholics from public office, was responsible for many of the “Irish Need Not Apply” signs memorialized in photographs at places of employment. Anti-Irish discrimination and its effect on employment led to the development of the stereotype of the Irish as a laborer underclass, occupied mainly by construction and cleaning jobs, because these were the fields least likely to discriminate.

The benefits of the protection and camaraderie offered by a fraternal organization were significant. The AOH originally operated as a secretive group, as many fraternal organizations did. Its motto was “Friendship, Unity, and Christian Charity.” The group's goals included promoting equal rights for Irish Catholics, ending discrimination against Irish Catholics, and furthering the cause of financial security for its membership. Groups like this provided networking opportunities and crowd-sourcing, which were otherwise unavailable to persecuted religious and ethnic groups.

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