On a cold morning at Wollaston Beach, you can hear a Donegal accent ordering coffee, watch a Mayo woman walk her dog along the seawall, and pass a pub where the pints are poured the way they are in Cork City. The Irish in Quincy are not a memory here. They are a living, arriving, settling presence, threaded through a granite city on Boston’s South Shore that has been speaking with an Irish lilt for the better part of two centuries.
The Place
Quincy sits just south of Boston, a coastal city of roughly 101,600 people that wraps around 27 miles of shoreline and beaches. It is known as the City of Presidents, birthplace of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, and it celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2025. The town itself takes its name from Colonel John Quincy, the maternal grandfather of Abigail Adams.
But the thing that shaped Quincy, and drew the Irish to it, was not politics. It was stone. The hills of West Quincy hold some of the finest granite in America, and for more than a century the city was a quarrying town first and everything else second.
How It Became Irish
The granite years
Between 1825 and 1963, more than fifty quarries operated in Quincy. The grey Quincy granite they produced built courthouses, monuments and churches across the country, and moving it required muscle and skill that the local farming families could not supply on their own.
In 1826 the Granite Railway was constructed to haul stone from a Quincy quarry to the Neponset River, where it was loaded onto barges bound for the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. It was the first commercial railroad in the United States, and it turned a quiet farming town into an industrial one almost overnight.
The work pulled in thousands of skilled quarrymen and stonecutters: Irish, Scottish, Finnish, Swedish and Italian. The Irish were among the earliest and the most numerous. They came with hammers and a tolerance for brutal, dangerous labour, and they settled in ethnic enclaves in west and south Quincy, close enough to walk to the quarry face at dawn.
Parishes and the building of a community
What the quarrymen built first, after their own houses, was a church. The Catholic parish was the organising centre of Irish Quincy, the place where weddings, funerals, christenings and arguments all happened. Saint John the Baptist on School Street, Sacred Heart on Hancock Street in North Quincy, and Saint Ann further up Hancock Street in Wollaston anchored Irish family life for generations.
Around the parishes grew the rest of the apparatus of an Irish-American town: the social clubs, the fraternal halls, the Ancient Order of Hibernians divisions that still operate across the South Shore. The Father John Murphy Division of the Hibernians has worked for years to plant heritage markers along what is now the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail, a route that runs through Quincy and down the coast. The story of how the Irish first arrived to work the quarries is documented in Boston College’s Global Boston project.
Settling the neighbourhoods
As the quarries faded through the twentieth century, the Irish did not leave. They moved seaward, into the peninsular neighbourhoods that gave Quincy its reputation as part of the so-called Irish Riviera of the South Shore.
Squantum, the northernmost tip of the city, became one of the most concentrated Irish-American neighbourhoods in the entire country, with roughly a third of its residents claiming Irish ancestry and a per-capita Irish population that ranks among the highest in the United States. Hough’s Neck, jutting into Quincy Bay to the south, became its mirror image, another tight peninsula of Irish families who lived within sight of the water their grandparents had crossed.
Quincy did not invent this pattern. It is part of a band of South Shore towns that became deeply Irish in the same era, from neighbouring Milton just to the west to the coastal town of Scituate further down the shore, long nicknamed the heart of the Irish Riviera. The same families moved between them, and the parishes, pubs and Hibernian halls formed a continuous network down the coast.
By the 2000 Census, 33.5 percent of all Quincy residents reported Irish ancestry, the single largest heritage group in the city, ahead of Italian and English. For a city of its size, few places in America were more Irish.
The second wave
Then something unusual happened. While most Irish-American enclaves were ageing and thinning out in the late twentieth century, Quincy started filling up again with people born in Ireland.
Irish immigrants flocked to Quincy in the 1980s, and over the past 25 years the city has become a primary landing place for Irish expats arriving in greater Boston. They came for the same reasons people always come to Quincy: it is cheaper than the city, it is on the water, it has good transit into Boston, and it already sounds like home.
Building it back, business by business
The newest wave did what the granite generation had done: it built institutions. In 1998 a Corkman named Gerry Hanley opened Paddy Barry’s, a pub that locals say carries the atmosphere of a Cork City bar transplanted whole to the South Shore. In 2012 Sara Stanton, who had come over from Mayo years earlier, founded Cara Group Travel in the city, an Irish-run business serving a community that still flies home often. For years the Lucky Shamrock store on Beale Street kept the shelves stocked with the imported tea, chocolate, sausages and tinned beans that make an Irish kitchen feel right.
Music came too. Seamus Langan, a musician from Ballyshannon in County Donegal, has long played the Boston-Irish circuit with the band Devri, part of a live-music scene that keeps the city’s pubs sounding the way they should on a Friday night. The connections run official as well: Quincy’s business community has cultivated ties with Cork County Council and the Kildare Chamber of Commerce, formal bridges to the counties its people came from.
The Landmarks
Saint John the Baptist Church, 44 School Street. One of the historic anchors of Catholic Quincy, the parish on School Street served generations of Irish families through the granite era and beyond. It remains an active parish in the city’s reorganised Catholic landscape, a continuous thread back to the quarrying years.
Sacred Heart Church, 386 Hancock Street, North Quincy. A cornerstone of Irish life in the northern neighbourhoods, Sacred Heart was one of three Quincy parishes merged in 2020 into the new Divine Mercy Parish, which now serves West Quincy, Wollaston, North Quincy, Squantum and Marina Bay. The merger reflects both a smaller priesthood and a community that has scattered across a wider city.
Saint Ann Church, 757 Hancock Street, Wollaston. Set on Saint Anns Road just off Hancock Street, Saint Ann anchored the Wollaston neighbourhood and joined Sacred Heart and Saint Mary in the 2020 formation of Divine Mercy Parish. For decades it was where Wollaston’s Irish families marked the milestones of their lives.
Paddy Barry’s Pub. Opened in 1998 by Corkman Gerry Hanley, Paddy Barry’s is one of the social hubs of Irish Quincy, a pub locals describe as feeling lifted straight out of Cork City. It is the kind of place where a newly arrived expat can find a job tip, a flatmate and a session in a single evening.
Squantum. The northernmost peninsula of the city, Squantum holds one of the highest per-capita Irish-American populations anywhere in the United States, with around 32 percent of residents claiming Irish ancestry. Streets of modest single-family homes look out across Quincy Bay toward the Boston skyline, and the Irish tricolour is not a rare sight.
Hough’s Neck. Named for Atherton Hough, who was granted the land in 1636, this southern peninsula reaching into Quincy Bay became one of Quincy’s most enduring Irish neighbourhoods. Tightly knit and surrounded on three sides by water, it is the kind of place where families have lived for three or four generations.
Quincy Quarries Reservation, West Quincy. The former granite quarries that drew the Irish in the first place are now a reservation managed for recreation, climbing and history. Walking the old quarry rims, you are standing where Irish stonecutters spent their working lives, and where the stone for the Bunker Hill Monument was first hewn.
Where They Came From
The granite-era Irish came largely from the rural west and south of Ireland, leaving counties where land was scarce and labour was the only export. They crossed in the decades around the Famine and after, drawn to wherever there was heavy work and a wage, and Quincy’s quarries offered both.
The modern wave has clearer postmarks. The named lives of Irish Quincy today trace to Cork, Mayo, Donegal and beyond. Gerry Hanley brought Cork to Beale Street, Sara Stanton brought Mayo, and Seamus Langan brought Ballyshannon in Donegal. The formal partnerships the city has struck with Cork County Council and the Kildare Chamber of Commerce map directly onto the counties that emptied a little to fill Quincy.
What ties the two waves together is the water. An island and a coastal city understand each other. The Irish who came to cut stone and the Irish who come now to work in Boston both chose a place where you can see the sea, and where the sea points roughly home. It is the same instinct that drew Irish families to Greenwich on the Connecticut shore and to Rockaway in New Jersey: water on one side, work within reach on the other.
Quincy Today
Quincy today is one of the most genuinely Irish cities in America, and also one of the most rapidly changing. The 2020 Census recorded 101,636 residents, making it the seventh-largest city in Massachusetts, and a large and growing share of that population is of East Asian origin, particularly Chinese and Vietnamese, who have built their own thriving neighbourhoods in Quincy Center and North Quincy.
The Irish share has eased from its 2000 peak as the city has diversified, and the old quarrymen’s grandchildren have moved to the suburbs further south. But the Irish institutions remain, and the flow from Ireland has not stopped. Paddy Barry’s still pours, the parishes still gather, and the Hibernians still march.
The honest picture is of a city in transition that has held on to its Irish soul without freezing it in amber. You will hear a brogue at Wollaston Beach and Cantonese in Quincy Center on the same afternoon. For the Irish, Quincy is not a heritage site to be preserved. It is still, after two hundred years, a place to arrive.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are there so many Irish in Quincy, Massachusetts?
The Irish in Quincy arrived in two waves. The first came in the nineteenth century to work the granite quarries, of which there were more than fifty between 1825 and 1963. The second has come over the past 25 years as Irish expats settled in greater Boston, choosing Quincy for its coastline, lower costs and existing Irish community.
Which Quincy neighbourhoods are the most Irish?
Squantum and Hough’s Neck are the most concentrated. Squantum, the city’s northern peninsula, has around 32 percent Irish ancestry and one of the highest per-capita Irish-American populations in the United States. Hough’s Neck, a southern peninsula reaching into Quincy Bay, is the other historic Irish stronghold.
What percentage of Quincy is Irish-American?
According to the 2000 Census, 33.5 percent of Quincy residents reported Irish ancestry, the largest single heritage group in the city. The share has eased since then as Quincy has diversified, but the Irish remain a defining presence, and the city is often counted among the most Irish in America.
What is the connection between Quincy granite and the Irish?
Quincy granite drew thousands of Irish quarrymen and stonecutters in the nineteenth century. The Granite Railway, built in 1826 to carry stone to the Bunker Hill Monument, was the first commercial railroad in the United States. The old quarries are now the Quincy Quarries Reservation in West Quincy.
Are there Irish pubs and businesses in Quincy today?
Yes. Paddy Barry’s, opened in 1998 by Corkman Gerry Hanley, is a well-known Irish pub. Cara Group Travel, founded in 2012 by Mayo-born Sara Stanton, is an Irish-run business, and Irish musicians such as Donegal’s Seamus Langan play the local scene with bands like Devri.
What happened to Quincy’s Catholic parishes?
In 2020 the historic parishes of Saint Mary, Sacred Heart and Saint Ann merged to form Divine Mercy Parish, serving West Quincy, Wollaston, North Quincy, Squantum and Marina Bay. Saint John the Baptist on School Street continues as an active parish, keeping the thread back to the granite-era Irish unbroken.
If your family’s story passed through Quincy, or any of the places the Irish have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a quarry village in the west of Ireland to a peninsula on Quincy Bay, to wherever you are now.