In the Footsteps of Bridget Murphy
The Life of an Irish Servant
In 1832, Joseph Brewster built a row house on Fourth Street in what was a quiet, exclusive suburb of New York City. Just three years later, it was purchased by prosperous hardware merchant, Seabury Tredwell. The Tredwell family continued to live in the house for almost 100 years.
Join Royal Oak for an unparalleled “back-stairs” tour which tells the heroic story of the Irish women who worked at the house. This tour also looks at the Irish who toiled in domestic service throughout 19th-century New York—overcoming homesickness, culture shock, and prejudice to cultivate a new home and identity on foreign soil. More Irish lived in New York City than in Dublin by 1860, making it the largest Irish population in the world.
We will visit four floors of period rooms, from the ground floor kitchen to the 4th floor servants’ quarters, examining what daily life was really like for the Tredwells’ Irish servants. We will learn how indispensable Bridget Murphy, just 16 when she arrived in 1852, and Mary Smith only 14 years old, were to the family and the functioning of the house
Servant bedroom. Merchant’s House Museum. Photo Schlecter 2015
