NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
Contrary to popular opinion, not all Irish politicians in the 19th century were a product of Tammany Hall. Case in point: William R. Grace.
Born in Ireland in 1832, Grace traveled from the Emerald Isle to Peru when he was 18 to help his father launch an agricultural community for victims of the Irish Potato Famine. The community failed and his father soon left, but Grace stayed on, finding work with a shipping firm. He became a partner in 1854 and gradually expanded the business until it became one of the most successful shipping companies in the world. By 1860, W. R. Grace and Company had offices in New York, San Francisco, and every major city along South America’s west coast.
In 1866, Grace decided he’d had enough of Peru and moved to New York with his wife, Lillius—-the daughter of a prominent ship builder from Maine—-and their 6–year–old daughter (two other children had died as babies). Over the next 16 years, the couple would have eight more children. Only five of the 11 would survive to adulthood.
In early 1880, Grace paid for more than a quarter of the aid Americans sent to a starving Ireland via the famine relief ship Constellation. Thanks to his generosity, Grace’s popularity with the New York electorate skyrocketed and he was urged to run for office. He complied and later that year became the first Catholic mayor of New York City.
Over the course of two terms (1880 to 1882 and 1884 to 1886), Grace fought the Irish political machine of Tammany Hall, going after corruption and organized vice while also lowering tax rates. During his second term in office, he welcomed the Statue of Liberty to New York.
A regular at daily Mass for most of his life (morning Mass at St. Agnes was his first stop every day as mayor), Grace devoted his later years to the work of the Grace Institute, the charitable organization he founded in 1897 to provide education and job training for female immigrants.
William Grace died on March 21, 1904.
