Patrick Ford

Who was Patrick Ford?

Patrick Ford was an Irish-American journalist and land reformer.

Ford was born in Galway to Edward Ford and Ann Ford, emigrating with his parents to Boston, USA in 1845, never returning to Ireland. He wrote in the Irish World in 1886 that "I might as well have been born in Boston. I know nothing of England. I brought nothing with me from Ireland—nothing tangible to make me what I am. I had consciously at least, only what I found and grew up with in here."

He left school aged thirteen and two years later was working as a printer's devil for William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator. He began writing in 1855 and by 1861 was editor and publisher of the Boston Tribune, also known as the Boston Sunday Tribune or Boston Sunday Times. He was an abolitionist and pro-union.

During the American Civil War Ford served in Union forces with his father and brother. He saw action in northern Virginia and fought at Fredericksburg.

He spent four years after the war in Charleston, editing the Southern Carolina Leader, printed to support newly freed slaves. He settled in New York in 1870 and founded the Irish World, which became the principal newspaper of Irish America.