THE SOCIETY

ARCHIVES & COLLECTION

As a precaution to help limit the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) the Society is temporarily closed and has cancelled all public programming. 

Celebrating new versions of Irishness
AIHS President Michael Higgins opinion piece in the New York Daily News about celebrating Irish American Heritage Month.

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The American Irish Historical Society

The American Irish Historical Society was founded in Boston in 1897 to encourage and promote historical research and to inform the world of the story of the Irish in America. In contrast to many other organizations at the time, it was non-partisan and non-sectarian from its inception. The AIHS has developed into a focal point of the contemporary transatlantic Irish experience. It is a scholarly and cultural organization dedicated to making better known the Irish chapter in American history. Numerous Irish scholars, artists and writers associated with the Society have gone on to promote Irish Studies in American Universities, including Seamus Heaney, John Montague, Brian O’Doherty, and Dorothy Walker. The Society’s archives, which have been built up over 120 years, contains one of the most complete collections of Irish and Irish-American history and literature in the United States. Its more than 15,000 volumes include Bishop Beddel’s Bible written in the Irish language in 1685. Extensive archives include letters and papers from key historical figures such as Patrick Pearse, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Thomas Addis Emmet. The Society’s collections also encompass a wide range of sculpture, paintings and periodicals—as well as the taped recording of Brendan Behan that became the celebrated work “Confessions of an Irish Rebel.”