Thomas F. Kerrigan

performer, saloon owner

b. Granard, County Longford, Ireland circa 1843
d. New York City Jan. 20, 1898

Thomas F. Kerrigan and Dan McCarthy, probably circa 1880. From the Harvard Theatre Collection, TCS 1 Houghton Library, Harvard University

Kerrigan and others in front of his bar "Kerrigan's Pleasant Hour," 316 West 42nd Street, NYC. From Richard Kerrigan, a descendant.

In the United States, Thomas F. Kerrigan was the most successful and well-known Irish piper in the last years of the 19th century. There were two aspects to his career and for several years they overlapped. First as a touring musician, a vaudevillian, second as the owner of a popular bar or "free and easy" in New York City, "Kerrigan's Pleasant Hour."

Kerrigan was very much an entertainer, a showman, and not averse to tall tales and remarkable assertions. What he said, and what was said about him, must be viewed with caution. Different sources present contradictory information. What follows is a best guess, based on the evidence which seems most plausible.

Thomas F. Kerrigan was born near Granard, County Longford. Research by Michael Kelly of Dublin turns up a baptismal record of a Thomas Kerrigan in the Granard Roman Catholic Church, May 25, 1843; parents Nicholas Kerrigan and Catherine Gallagher. This is the best evidence, though not a certainty, of when Kerrigan was born. Other dates derived from census records and obituaries range from 1843 to 1848.

Francis O'Neill says he emigrated to the United States with his parents. In an 1887 interview Kerrigan himself said "I came to this country in 1863, and spent the first five years in traveling," presumably playing the pipes. In the same interview he said "My people have been pipers for more than 200 years," and that his father taught him "the art."

The 1870 US Census lists a Thom Kerrigan, age 24, occupation "Liq. Dealer" at "112 Av D," near the intersection of Eighth Street, New York City. It is not unlikely this is our man. O'Neill writes that Kerrigan lived at the "corner of Eighth Street and Avenue D.," but does not say exactly when. This was in what is now known as the "Alphabet City" neighborhood near Manhattan's Lower East Side. O'Neill says also that the Taylor brothers, pipemakers, came to New York from Ireland in 1872. For a year or so Kerrigan let the Taylor brothers, William and Charles, make bagpipes in his basement. This may have been 1872-73. The Taylors supposedly made a set for Kerrigan here, the first set they made in America. According to O'Neill they moved to Philadelphia after "a year or so." There they worked for many years and developed a reputation as the best of the American makers of Irish pipes.

In Irish Minstrels and Musicians, O'Neill says Kerrigan came to Chicago from New York in 1873, invited by an admirer of his playing, Michael McNurney. (McNurney was a piper and the father of Charles Mack.) Kerrigan's playing was a "sensation." McNurney set him up in the saloon business. Kerrigan soon tired of this and without notice to his patron went back to New York.

The earliest known mention of Kerrigan as musician at a specific engagement is at a banquet of the "Knights of the Red Branch" on St. Patrick's Day 1874 at the Grand Central Hotel, Manhattan. The club was "composed exclusively of young Irish-Americans of literary tastes, who desire to re-awaken in the breasts of their exile fellow-countrymen some of the old chivalric aspirations of their ancestors." Kerrigan was introduced as their minstrel:

To the gratification of every one, Mr. Kerrigan took from out a large case a magnificent set of Irish Union Pipes in gorgeous gold and green mounting. The pipes were made of Killarney arbutus wood, and the keys were of pure silver extracted from the mines in the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." Never perhaps was a banqueting party more thoroughly electrified than this was by the stirring music of this grand instrument. Mr. Kerrigan executed with masterly skill the "The Harp that Once," "St. Patrick's Day," "Brian Boru's March," "The Coulin," "Garryowen," "The Minstrel Boy," and selections from the opera of "Killarney," with numerous other national airs at intervals during the remainder of the night. Mr. Kerrigan is a gentleman of leisure, and for love of Ireland and her music has acquired a wonderful proficiency on that most rare and difficult instrument, which, perhaps, above all others, gives the sweetest rendition to the martial and plaintive music of Ireland.

One wonders, is this a fanciful description of the pipes made for him by the Taylor Brothers? And how could Kerrigan be a "gentleman of leisure?"

By the fall of the next year, 1875, Kerrigan was touring in vaudeville. The "dancing blade of Erin; and the merry Irish piper, Neil Conway and T. F. Kerrigan...." Conway was described as a "remarkably handsome young fellow, graceful and nimble...." Their partnership was a hit and lasted at least through early 1879. Conway's obituary, January 1888, recalls "they played all the principal variety houses in the United States and Canada."

Sometime during these years with Conway, Kerrigan took over management of a saloon and called it Kerrigan's Pleasant Hour. The location was 316 West Forty-second Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, in what is now the Theater District, not far from Times Square. This was about two and a half miles (four km) northwest of his old residence on Avenue D. In the 1887 interview Kerrigan said "Eleven years I have been here, playing almost nightly for my friends." That puts the opening at 1876. Other accounts allege opening dates of 1874, 1877, 1878. The Kerrigans bought the property from the estate of the previous owner in 1882 for $12,500 (equivalent to about $290,000 in 2015). They assumed a mortgage for $12,000. The bar was formerly called the Brewery Shades, and known as "a great resort for old country sports, especially shuffleboard players...." Kerrigan sustained the bar as an attraction for "sporting" men, athletes, gamblers, etc., and managed the place in a way to appeal to dancers and musicians. More of this later.

He married Susan L. Barry, perhaps in 1877. Their daughter Mary L., eldest of six surviving children, was born September 1878. The 1880 US Census shows them in residence at the West 42nd Street address, presumably above the bar.

From 1879 to 1883 Kerrigan was in vaudeville partnership with Dan McCarthy (c. 1860-1899), dancer and singer. This act was also a success. Based on newspaper announcements it seems that most of their engagements were in the New York City area; Kerrigan was likely doing less out-of-town touring than formerly. Kerrigan and McCarthy wrote songs together, and five of them were published as sheet music in 1890. These songs are now forgotten, although one, "Give an Honest Irish Lad a Chance," was reprinted (pirated?) in several songsters of the era.

In the 1880s the number of his vaudeville gigs declines. In their place, solo appearances at social, cultural and political meetings. Examples: a Parnell Land League concert in 1882; a church bazaar in Kearny, New Jersey in 1885; the Gaelic Society celebration of St. Stephen's night, Dec. 1886, etc.

In 1884, and from 1886-93, Kerrigan was the piper at the annual Feis Ceoil agus Seanachas concerts, sponsored by the Gaelic Society. This was a very prestigious event, and the cream of Irish-American society attended. In the 1884 concert was a woman's chorus, a singer, a harpist. Then, a reviewer wrote,

Quite a different performance was that of Mr. T. F. Kerrigan, who, dressed in a suit of green velvet, with red stockings and white lace collar, played on the bagpipes until the gathering all but arose and executed a multitudinous Irish jig on the spot. As the cheery sounds of the pipes rang through the hall, the regular beat of feet all over the place gave proof just as potent as the frequent bursts of applause of the pleasure that the gathering felt in the sound of the old Celtic instrument.

From time to time he would appear in stage plays: "The Ivy Leaf" in 1887; "Shamus O'Brien," 1890; "Fritz in Ireland," 1892. It is unclear how much acting, if any, was involved. He played pipes for the dancers in these plays, and likely performed solo as a "specialty" during the intermission between acts, as was the custom of the day. Although these were touring companies, performing throughout the country, best evidence is that Kerrigan played with them only when they were in New York City. If so, he was the "big city" attraction, and other, less established pipers took over when the plays left town.

Kerrigan's Pleasant Hour was a long narrow space. No women were admitted. The bar was near the entrance. In the rear a raised platform for perfomers. Rough benches for seating. Kerrigan played "from four to six o'clock every afternoon," accompanied by a piano player, perhaps a fiddler. Patrick Meager, a New York City resident and later a Highland piper, recalls going to the Pleasant Hour on Sundays when he was 17, circa 1888. Admission was ten cents. "The waiters were entertainers who took turns singing, dancing reels, jigs and hornpipes. As I was a minor I purchased cider, while the adult spectators drank beer or whiskey. A New York supreme court justice often times would be seated beside a hodcarrier [brick carrier]." The Pleasant Hour developed a reputation as one of "the last of the old New York sporting houses of call," and people came to see and be seen. Kerrigan's obituary in the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator said it "was one of the best-known resorts in the city, and there were to be found the most famous reel, jig and clog dancers. Dancing and pipe-playing contests were held there frequently."

The business was not without risk and unpleasantness. In April 1887 two men were ejected from the bar. They made a commotion. One threw a beer keg through the door and another smashed the windows with his fists. They were badly beaten, the police summoned, and the two ultimately sentenced to three months in jail.

Francis O'Neill visited the Pleasant Hour in 1888 or thereabouts. He too was impressed by the waiters who were also entertainers. He observed that Kerrigan would vary his pipe playing "with an occasional tune on the 'coffeepot.' This clown instrument consists of a tall, rather slim coffeepot, with a teapot-like spout on the side. Holes are punched in the tin opposite the spout, to correspond with the holes of a tin flageolet soldered within. The player blows through the spout, and fingers the tune on the holes in the coffeepot." This was another example of Kerrigan's delight in showmanship, performing on an eye-popping instrument used by street musicians and a few vaudevillians.

Kerrigan was well regarded as a piper. Some accounts of his performances speak of enthusiastic applause, of audiences resisting the urge to dance in their seats. O'Neill thought of him as "a splendid Irish piper in every respect," but with the following observations:

Time, tune, taste and rhythm were all there, but from the monotony of his perennial practice he played automatically, hardly an effort of the will being required in his wonderful command of such a complicated instrument.

Often with eyes closed, and head resting against the wall back of his chair, and seemingly half asleep from pure weariness, his fingers never forgot their mission. With unerring certainty they reached for the proper keys on the regulators even in the most lively dance music, and never a discord or false note marred "Tom" Kerrigan's playing....

There is some evidence that he was cooperative and supportive of other pipers, and two references, one dubious, of Kerrigan as a teacher of the pipes.

In 1895, anyway, his favorite reel was reported to be "The Green Fields of America."

Kerrigan's wife Susan died in 1894, leaving behind six children, ages from probably 16 to four years old. Fewer mentions of piping engagements are found after her death. There may have been financial difficulties. In June 1895, an ad to sell "a first class of Irish bagpipes made by the late William Taylor, at great bargain." In February 1896, an ad for a "situation wanted" for a respectable woman to do housework, probably one of his daughters, contact T. F. Kerrigan. In 1895-96, ads for sale of a stone cottage in East Irvington, New York, supposedly overlooking the Hudson River, contact T. F. Kerrigan. Susan died at Irvington, perhaps at this cottage. It had yet to be sold at the time of Thomas' death.

In later years Kerrigan was troubled by rheumatism, the earliest mention of this in 1889, when he was unable to play at a St. Patrick's Day event sponsored by the Knights of St. Patrick. Patrick Meagher was aware of these difficulties, and says that piper Pat Touhey came to the Pleasant Hour to play and substitute for Kerrigan on this account. Kerrigan's last known engagement was at a school fair, November 1897. He died at home January 20, 1898. O'Neill says he died "from a severe attack of rheumatism." This is an umbrella term used for several maladies and in this context it is impossible to know the actual cause of death. He was about 55 years old, perhaps a bit younger.

Obituaries appeared in New York City, Irish-American, and show business newspapers. His funeral was "largely attended." Among those present were Tony Pastor, vaudeville theatre owner, Dan McCarthy, his old partner, and Pat Touhey.

Kerrigan left an estate of $16,500 (equivalent to about $470,000 in 2015), to be shared among his six children. The executor was Rev. James T. Barry, a cousin of his wife.

Attempts to sell the business were initially unsuccessful. The sale was advertised in newspapers for months in 1898. An article from June, 1899, "The Closing of the Pleasant Hour," claims that it was kept open for a year or more, then closed when inter-family litigation was begun. Much about the article is suspect if not wrong, including its assertion that the Pleasant Hour was run by "his widow," who in fact died more than three years before her husband.

The Pleasant Hour property was sold in May, 1900, for $22,500 (equivalent to about $643,000 in 2015). The buyer assumed a mortgage for $9,500.

The days of the Pleasant Hour were over, and it became a memory. For some it seemed to represent a golden age of Irish dance and music, and as late as 1919 some of the performers at a musical "Benefit Entertainment" were described as "the best that formerly made records in Old Kerrigan's Pleasant Hour, away back in the days when Irish step dancing, Irish music and Irish comedy were in the zenith of their popularity in this city. To those who knew Kerrigans, it will be like a visit to the old place."

A note on Kerrigan's Taylor set of pipes:

Francis O'Neill wrote that Kerrigan's Taylor set was the first made by the Taylors after they arrived in New York. Perhaps this was as early as 1872. On the other hand, an announcement for the Orphan's Benefit program at the New York City Academy of Music, December 11, 1879, touts Kerrigan and his "new $600 [equivalent to about $14,000 in 2015] Irish bagpipes." This may be the set shown in the Kerrigan and McCarthy photograph, above, circa 1880.

In 1895 Kerrigan advertised for sale a "first class" set of Taylor pipes. As a working musician, surely this was not his only set.

O'Neill wrote in 1913 that the Taylor pipes "are treasured as a precious heirloom by his children." The 1899 article, "The Closing of the Pleasant Hour," always suspect, says the pipes, valued at $5,000 (about $143,000 in 2015), "fell heir to" John Kennedy, "one of Kerrigan's proteges."

Tom Busby (1912-2000), living in New York and a keeper of the piping flame in the mid-twentieth century, wrote in 1998 "... I have sent four sets of pipes home [back to Ireland]. Mick O'Brien's and Thomas Kerrigan's pipes were the first pipes that Taylor made in America. I bought them to save them from the dump. I did not need them. I could have sold them for much more than I paid for them but I did not want the wrong people to get them, so I kept them for a long time, 'till Martin Carrigan of Clifden, Co. Kilkenny, heard I had them. He is related to Thomas Kerrigan, N.Y.C., in whose basement Taylor made the pipes. ... Now I believe his son, who is a doctor, is playing them." There is no indication of how Busby acquired them, how he knew what he had, and when he sent them to Ireland. As far as the public record goes, there the matter rests.

It is not impossible that Kerrigan had more than one set of Taylor pipes. What became of the set made in the basement? What of the "new" $600 set from 1879? And the set advertised for sale in 1895? Were these all references to the same set? So much potential for speculation! So little data.

Selected References

Busby, Tom "Two Historic Sets of Pipes" An Píobaire vol. 3 no. 37 September 1998 p. 23
https://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=1012&mediaId=25983

"The Closing of the Pleasant Hour" [names John Kennedy as a "protege"] New York Sunday Telegraph June 18, 1899 p. 5 column 6
New York NY Morning Telegraph 1899 - 1816.pdf

"Country Property for Sale." [classified ad.] New York Press May 17, 1896 p. 18? column 4
New York NY Press 1896 - 0876.pdf

"Dances of Old and of To-day." New York Herald Sep. 1, 1895 fifth section p. 4 column 3
New York NY Herald 1895 - 5279.pdf

"Death of Piper Kerrigan." [James T. Barry, his wife's cousin, executor of estate] NY Irish-American Jan. 31, 1898 p. 1 column 6
GenealogyBank.com

"Entertainments. Return of the Great Star Troupe" Boston [MA] Post Oct. 20, 1875 p. 4 column 9
Newspaperarchive.com

"Feis-Ceoil and Seanachas" New York Herald April 16, 1884 p. 10 column 1
New York NY Herald 1884 a - 0653.pdf

"Give an Honest Irish Lad a Chance" [list of appearances in songsters] Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, English Folk Dance and Song Society, accessed March 2018
https://www.vwml.org/roudnumber/4522

"Irish Bagpipes. For sale" NY Irish World and American Industrial Liberator June 1, 1895 p. 8 column 5
19th Century US Newspapers

"The Irish Pipers. A Treat in the Way of an Evening of Irish Music." [credited to the New York Sun] Ogdensburg [NY] Advance and St. Laurence Weekly Democrat June 9, 1887 p. 3 column 4
http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83031423/1887-06-09/ed-1/seq-3/

Kelly, Michael personal communication April 6, 2018

[Kerrigan] "Obituary." New York Irish World and American Industrial Liberator Jan. 29, 1898 p. 5 column 7
GenealogyBank.com

[Kerrigan obituary] New York Clipper Feb. 5, 1898 p. 812 column 1
New York NY Clipper 1897-1899 - 0381.pdf

"Knights of the Red Branch. Their Banquet on St. Patrick's Day." NY Irish-American April 4, 1874 p. 1 column 4
GenealogyBank.com

"The Late Neal Conway." [obituary] New York Clipper Jan. 28, 1888 p. 734 column 3
http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=NYC18880128.2.44&srpos=4&e=--1880---1905--en-20--1--txt-txIN-mcevoy+piper-------

"Light Footed Railroad Hands." ["Thompson is one of Kerrigan's pupils"] Jersey City [NJ] News March 13, 1890 p. 2 column 3
Library of Congress Chronicling America
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87068097/1890-03-13/ed-1/seq-2/

Meagher, Patrick "A Letter of Interest" The Pipers' Review vol. 1 no. 1 1979 p. 2
https://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=1036&mediaId=26318

O'Neill, Francis Irish Minstrels and Musicians Chicago 1913 pp. 161, 261

"The Orphans' Benefit." New York Herald Dec. 7, 1879 p. 12 column 6
New York NY Herald 1879 c - 2049.pdf

"Prof. M. J. Carney's Benefit Entertainment" NY Advocate April 19, 1919 p. 6 column 2
New York NY Irish American Advocate 1919-1921 - 0157.pdf

"Sunset Cox on Irish Heroes." [Kerrigan with rheumatism] New York Herald March 18, 1889 p. 4 column 1
New York NY Herald 1889 - 1007.pdf

"Vanquished Cowboys" [men only at the Pleasant Hour; forcibly ejecting three cowboys] NY Evening Telegram Jan. 4, 1894 p. 6 column 3
New York NY Evening Telegram 1894 Jan - Jun Grayscale - 0024

"Wrecked the Saloon. Two Men Grow Violent After Being Ejected." NY Evening Telegram April 13, 1887 p. 1 column 2
New York NY Evening Telegram 1887 Jan - 1887 Apr Grayscale - 0900.pdf

Nick Whitmer
July 2018 additions Jan. 2019