page_title: History of the Irish in Holyoke
section_title: Representation on Beacon Hill
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Irish in Holyoke / History / Representation on Beacon Hill
caption_attribution_description: English: David M. Bartley, 79th Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1969-1975), President of Holyoke Community College (1975-2004), Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance (1981-1983, under Gov. Edward King), Majority Leader of the House of Representatives during 1968.
context_page_description: From the beginning of the city's history as the western bank of Springfield, Irish families have resided in and contributed to the development of the civics and culture of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Among the first appellations given to the city were the handles "Ireland", "Ireland Parish", or "Ireland Depot", after the village was designated the 3rd Parish of West Springfield in 1786. Initially occupied by a mixture of Yankee English and Irish Protestant families, many of whom belonged to the Baptist community of Elmwood, from 1840 through 1870 the area saw a large influx of Irish Catholic workers, immigrants to the United States, initially from the exodus of the Great Famine. During that period Irish immigrants and their descendants comprised the largest demographic in Holyoke and built much of the early city's infrastructure, including the dams, canals, and factories.
context_section_description: With the exception of the earliest Yankee Protestants, Holyoke's political history encompasses an exhaustive list of Irish and Irish-American figures represented in all years of the city's civic operation, even during those times where it has not been the largest voting bloc, in offices too numerous to name in entirety. A handful of key figures in the Irish community however, especially in the 20th century, would grant it broader influence on the discourse of the Commonwealth in Boston's body politic. 
  One early example was Francis X. Quigley, a member of the Holyoke Philo-Celtic Society and a journalist, who served as a member of the Massachusetts House (1908-1911) and of the state Senate (1911-1913), and was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 to be appraiser to the Port of Boston.
  One of Holyoke's earliest members of the Irish community to see representation in a municipal, state, and federal capacity was Mayor James 
  Delaney. A son of John Delaney, he was born in Lowell during his father's work on that city's canals, came to Holyoke at the age of one, and eventually graduated from Eastman Business College. Delaney would go on to work for the Holyoke Water Power Company and serve on the city's board of assessors for a year. In 1875 he was elected to the common council, from 1877 to 1882 served as city clerk, and was elected mayor twice in 1883 and 1884, serving two terms before being elected again in 1888 for a third. During that same year Delaney served as delegate-at-large to the convention nominating Grover Cleveland, and elected an alternate for the next Democratic convention. Governor Russell would grant him the honorary title of colonel of the governor's military staff, under Adjutant General of Massachusetts Samuel Dalton. Posthumously the Springfield Republican would describe him as having bipartisan support, and holding a legacy of growth in the city upon leaving office. During his time on the governor's military staff, Delaney attended the inauguration of Pres. Cleveland as well as serve in the state delegation to the World's Columbian Exposition. Attending events such as the inauguration of Russell's successor Frederic T. Greenhalge and events such as charity balls in Boston, spread the influence of the then-still 20 year old city during its greatest period of industrial growth.
   
  In the latter half of the 20th century, Maurice A. Donahue was a Holyoke figure who loomed large in Massachusetts politics. First elected as part of the Commonwealth's first Democratic Party majority in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1948, Donahue would go on join the State Senate in 1950, and by 1958 had become the Senate Majority Leader. In this position he lobbied for a number of interests in Western Massachusetts, including for the restoration of the old Mount Holyoke Prospect Summit House at J. A. Skinner State Park and its incline railroad. Though the latter is lost to history, the former would be restored in Donahue's lifetime. By 1964 Donahue had risen to the rank of President of the Massachusetts Senate, a position he held until 1971, longer than any Democratic politician in that post before him. Though a prominent figure in state politics, in a 1976 interview for the John F. Kennedy Library, Donahue would describe John Kennedy's electoral campaigns as lacking the same connections in Holyoke–Chicopee–Springfield as he and his staff had, noting a common respect between the region and Boston but less "down-the-line Democrat" territories than rural towns where Kennedy was able to build a substantial ground staff. Donahue's political career would end in 1971 after failing to garner the post of Democrat nominee for governor in the previous year. Choosing not to seek re-election to the senate, he would be appointed as a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts and became the first director of the Institute for Governmental Services, a publicly funded consultancy and think-tank which would later bear his name, the UMass Donahue Institute.
  Another influential resident of Holyoke i
caption: David M. Bartley, c. 1963, as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
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