THE IRISH Many escaping famine on Emerald Isle did well in America

The last of six parts

The large advertisement in the Bangor Whig & Courier on Sept. 4, 1890, was a sure sign that an Irish immigrant’s son had made something of himself.

It said, “I respectfully inform you that all arrangements for the opening of my NEW DRUG STORE have been attended to, and you are cordially invited to call and inspect its thorough completeness … The Prescription Department will be under my immediate supervision, and with my experience in the drug business in this city, coupled with the thorough Pharmaceutical training I received at the New York College of Pharmacy, you are assured of accuracy in this Department … Assuring you of constant attention and soliciting a share of your valuable patronage, I am, Yours obediently, JOHN P. FRAWLEY, Ph. G.”

John Patrick Frawley was one of a growing number of Irish immigrants’ children and grandchildren entering Bangor’s middle class. While they were making their way, however, hundreds of thousands more Irish continued to emigrate to America. It is a myth that most of the Irish arrived during the potato famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s. More than 650 Irish residents lived in Bangor in 1910, according to the U.S. Census, second among foreign groups only to Canadians.

John Patrick’s grandfather, also named John, was evicted from his small farm in County Clare by his absentee landlord in 1847 during the famine. He was transferred to a larger farm, but in 1850, he emigrated to Canada with his family and his brother’s daughter. His wife died during the voyage, and his youngest daughter died shortly after their arrival in Saint John, New Brunswick.

The exact details of the Frawleys’ migration – why they left and how they fared once they arrived in Saint John – are unknown, but their descendant John T. Frawley of Hampden, in “Into the Melting Pot,” a presentation last fall to students at Penobscot Valley Senior College, summed up the experience for most Irish at that time in three terms: “starvation, religious persecution and poverty.” Frawley is a retired Bangor city engineer.

This first John Frawley in the New World died in Saint John. His son Patrick, progenitor of the line of interest here, came to Bangor about 1860 when he married Bridget Cleary. They had two children, one of whom was John Patrick Frawley, destined to be called “the dean of Bangor’s druggists” in the city’s newspapers.

They lived on Broad Street near Pickering Square on the edge of what then was known as the Devil’s Half Acre, where saloons and other evidence of riotous living existed in abundance. Later, after his father died at age 38 when John Patrick was only 6 years old, the family moved up to the Third Street area, another Irish neighborhood located behind Bangor Gas Works.

John Patrick had no shortage of commercial mentors. Because of state prohibition, however, they were not always on the right side of the law. His father was connected to a saloon, a restaurant and a grocery store at various times, according to the City Directory. His mother took up running a small grocery store after her husband’s death.

John Patrick went to work, probably during his high school years, for Caldwell Sweet, a well-known Main Street pharmacist. His grandson John T. recalled, “My aunt told me that when [my grandfather] got his first job, on his first day of work his mother called him back and gave him a nickel and said businessmen should never go to work without some money in their pocket.”

Sponsored by the Bangor druggist, John Patrick went on to attend the pharmaceutical school connected to Columbia University. Graduating in 1888, he returned to Bangor to work as a clerk for Sweet and then as manager of another pharmacy. By the time he married Isabel Gallagher the next year, he was already “one of the most popular drug clerks of the city,” declared a newspaper announcement of the wedding.

Bella, as she was known, came from lower Union Street, also in the Acre, where her father, Thomas, ran a saloon and a grocery store. Like so many other Irish tradesmen, he got into trouble occasionally as this newspaper item from the Whig & Courier on Oct. 29, 1870, attests:

“The police visited yesterday the half-acre in common parlance devoted to his Satanic Majesty. They seized on the premises of Charles Dolan 6 bottles containing small quantities of gin, rum, whiskey, brandy and wine and a barrel containing 12 gallons of ale. At John McCann’s was confiscated a barrel containing 42 gallons whiskey; … in a shed back of Thomas Gallagher’s a barrel containing 10 gallons of gin and a keg containing 3 quarts of rum …” Dolan and McCann were related to Gallagher by marriage.

John Patrick Frawley’s rise to success was rapid. He opened his first drugstore at Main and Cross streets in 1890. Despite being burned out in two fires, he remained in business there until his retirement in 1944. During this period, he acquired two other drugstores, the Fowler Drug Co. on Main Street, managed by his son Francis, and the Warren Drug Co. at Hammond and Central streets, managed by his son Alfred. A third son, Walter, John T.’s father, took over the management of the first store as his father grew older. All three boys went to Columbia University as did their father.

With the businesses came financial success. In 1904, John Patrick bought a big Victorian house on Ohio Street, well outside the immigrant neighborhoods of his youth. He became one of the first men in Bangor to own an automobile, as well as one of the first to be involved in an auto accident.

As the years went by he became a civic leader. He was a member of the City Council, the Board of Public Works, a president of the Rotary Club and a charter member of the local Knights of Columbus chapter. An active member of St. Mary’s parish, his wife was president of the church’s charitable society for many years.

A leader in the effort to rebuild the city after the great fire of 1911, John Patrick Frawley was a leading member of the group that acquired the site of the old Norombega Hall, which became the park and fire brake Norumbega Parkway in later years.

One of John T. Frawley’s favorite family photographs shows his grandfather sitting beside Harry Atwood in the famous stunt flyer’s automobile. John Patrick was active in bringing Atwood to Bangor for a weeklong, morale-boosting carnival downtown the summer after the fire. Atwood became the first person to fly an airplane over the Queen City.

Flying was an apt metaphor for Frawley’s rise to success. Not only was he frequently called “the dean of Bangor druggists,” but by the time he died in 1950, he also had evolved into “the dean of Main Street businessmen” in a front-page obituary in the Bangor Daily News. The son of a poor immigrant who had eked out an existence near the Bangor waterfront had become one of the city’s best-known business and civic leaders.