Massachusetts Commemorates Irish Patriot John Boyle O'Reilly on June 15 at Hollyhood Cemetery in Brookline

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Mass at the John Boyle O'Reilly grave, June 2019. photo courtesy of AOH

On Saturday, June 15 at 11 a.m., the Irish-American community of greater Boston gathers to honor Irish patriot, writer, orator and leader John Boyle O'Reilly, at his gravesite at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline. 

The annual event is organized by the Massachusetts State Board of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

The annual commemoration at O'Reilly's gravesite started shortly after his death in 1890 and has continued through today.   A few years after O'Reilly's death in 1890,  the family made plans to bring a large stone from the church in on which O'Reilly had carved his initials with a nail as a young boy in Howth, County Meath.   The caretakers of the church, which was abandoned and in disrepair, took the stone and shipped it to Boston.  It arrived in February 1894.

 A friend of O'Reilly, the sculptor John Donoghue, then made a bronze portrait bust of O'Reilly, and placed it on the face of the bolder, to be set above the grave at Holyhood in Brookline, Mass.  It was unveiled on Memorial Day, with O'Reilly's wife, Mary Murphy and their four daughters in attendance, along with several thousand of their friends and followers. 

The Massachusetts Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Ladies AOH have been holding the annual John Boyle O'Reilly commemoration and mass annually since the 1970s, and schedule it for the third Saturday each June. 

O'Reilly Monument in the Fens


O'Reilly Marker at Hull Public Library

O'Reilly is also honored along the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail in Hull, where the O'Reilly family had its summer home and where O'Reilly died on August 10, 1890.

Lear more about other John Boyle O'Reilly markers and memorials throughout Massachusetts. 


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