Josephine Patricia Smith Collection

Creator: various

Extent: 4 boxes

Abstract: Materials related to Josephine Patricia Smith including photographs and sheet music.

Call number: JPS2018-01

Language: The material is in English and Irish

Background Information:

Josephine Patricia Smith was a harpist, pianist, and musicologist. Smith was born in Manchester, England on March 3, 1902 of Irish parents who had emigrated from County Mayo. She was one of 14 children. Her mother was Annie O’Rourke Smith and her father was John Smith. The family surname had originally been McGowan. Her father began using the English translation “Smith” when he came to England.

Josephine received instruction on the piano as a child in Manchester. Her father and sister Anna Winifred were also musical. For more than thirty years prior to her death on June 22, 1979 articles Smith wrote about the origin and conveyance of traditional Irish folk songs and dance music were published intermittently in the Irish Echo and the Irish World and Gaelic American.

As a musicologist, Smith researched the works of Bunting, Petrie, Thomas Moore, Captain Francis O’Neill, and Charlotte Milligan Fox. Additionally, Smith researched and wrote about more than fifty Irish folk songs including “Londonderry Air” sometimes referred to as “Danny Boy,” “The Foggy Dew” of which there are several versions, and the “Bard of Armagh.” Her writings include references to the last Harp Festival held in Belfast in 1792, the blind harper Turlough O’Carolin, other Celtic populations, and the influence on American music of Irish music brought by early settlers.

Smith was also a harpist who performed on and taught the traditional Irish folk harp and the larger concert pedal harp. For years she adjudicated the harp competition at the United Irish Counties Feis in New York City. Smith’s most well-known harp student is likely Deidre Danaher. Additionally, Smith was a piano accompanist and coach for opera students and Metropolitan Opera involvees. As a pianist, Smith was was classically educated under famed Austrian pianist Sister Emmanuel. She studied at Notre Dame college in Manchester, England, before coming to America to pursue music.

Smith also arranged music for the harp. Unfortunately, the Josephine Patricia Smith Collection of Traditional Irish Music for the Harp published in 1973, which was intended to be the first of a series, was the only volume of her musical arrangements to be published.

Smith was married to tenor Seamus O’Doherty, also known as James J. O’Doherty. He was born on December 7, 1902 in County Donegal, Ireland to Susan Donelly Doherty and James Doherty. Neither made a living from their musical endeavors. Smith died on June 22, 1979 at the age of 77. O’Doherty died on August 25, 1980. Both are buried in St. John's cemetery in Queens.

Smith and O’Doherty were personal friends of the Pearse family, including Padraic Pearse, schoolteacher and patriot executed in 1916, his sister Bridget from whom Smith took harp lessons, and their mother Margaret Pearse who had introduced the couple.

The Josephine Patricia Smith Collection was donated in 2000 by C. Patricia Sullivan, AIHS volunteer and harp student of Josephine Patricia Smith. The collection was processed and this finding aid was created in 2026 by Melanie Zhang, AIHS intern and senior at New York University studying History.