CAROGA — Caroga resident David Cummings is eager to set up an old Irish Catholic fraternity in Hamilton, Fulton and Montgomery counties.
One reason: distance.
“Gosh, to tell you the truth, selfishly, it's a long, stinking drive, believe it or not, to get to Saratoga,” said Cummings, a member of the Saratoga Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Johnstown had an AOH chapter at least in the early 1900s, according to the Fulton County Historical Society. It’s not clear why or when the group dissolved.
Beyond Saratoga, the 188-year-old group currently has divisions in Watervliet, Cairo, Troy, Schenectady and Albany. Should Cummings’ plans come into fruition, his group would be dubbed the Tryon County division, an ode to Montgomery County’s predecessor in the 1700s.
Four non-AOH members so far have expressed interest in applying for his division. He expects about four to six Saratoga members to transfer once the group is established.
Here’s the crux: Cummings, 76, needs 15 brand new recruits in order to get a charter from AOH. In recent months, he’s struggled to hit that number.
“I have been working since the end of January to try to smoke some interest out through the churches and hit some of the local restaurants and bars that I knew had a history or a background with the Irish,” he said. “We're really just not getting interest.”
He plans to get the group started as soon as possible. Last weekend, he discussed the matter with national representatives in Greene County.
“If you lived in Fulton County, I would have absolutely had your name, which is kind of a non-committal, no money, no nothing requirement,” he said. “But I need 15 people willing to say they'll put their name on an application.”
Cummings moved to Caroga from Saratoga County at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was born in Gloversville, but has spent a chunk of his life in the neighboring Capital Region county.
He’s been in the Saratoga division twice: 1981 to 1986 and then rebirthed the group from 1999 to present. His interest in the culture sparked after taking three courses on Irish history at University at Albany in the 1970s.
Fulton County’s Irish heritage dates back to Sir William Johnson, the Irish-born founder of Johnstown. Members of his family had converted from Catholicism to the Anglican Church in order to maintain a “middle-class” stature in Ireland, according to Johnstown Historian Noel Levee.
A pocket of Irish immigrants ended up settling in Middlesprite, an agrarian-centered hamlet in Ephratah in the 1800s. During that time, a bevy of Irish immigrants worked the tanneries and mills in the Glove Cities.
It was normal for groups like AOH to find a place in the culture of the time, said Fulton County Historian Samantha Hall-Saladino.
“We actually had a lot of clubs and social clubs based on ethnicity and religion and stuff like that in that area that don't exist anymore … like tons of them,” said Hall-Saladino. “It's crazy.”
Once surrounding the Holy Trinity Church — then known as the St. Patrick’s Church — was an Irish neighborhood in Johnstown. Levee said that this formed in response to bigotry.
“If it was a crappy job of slapping the leather and skinning it and all that stuff, they did it and then basically, they elevated after doing it for so long,” Levee said. “Still, there was prejudice from the WASP [white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant] society against Irish Catholics and that’s why, in Johnstown, a lot of the Catholics were up by St. Patrick’s Church.”