The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
1875-1926
This project is co-funded by Ireland’s Department of Culture, Communications & Sport and Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade as part of America 250.
Ellen Beirne, the founder of the Irish recording industry, was born in 1875 in Cloontumpher near Dromod, County Leitrim. At the age of 15, she emigrated to New York City, where she would become known as Byrne or O’Byrne. In 1898, she married Dutch immigrant Justus DeWitt and the couple opened a shop on Third Avenue in Manhattan that sold her fellow Irish immigrants imported Irish goods, musical instruments, record players and cylinder recordings. Knowing her customers’ hunger for Irish music, she arranged in 1916 for button accordionist Eddie Herborn and tenor banjo strummer James Wheeler to record “The Rocky Road to Dublin” and “The Stack of Barley.” Columbia issued the 78-rpm disc, but the company was so dubious of its commercial appeal that the records were only pressed on the condition that O’Byrne DeWitt had to buy all 500 copies. Ellen’s judgment was sound – the record sold well, and her shop would later issue 78s on her own label. After her death in 1926, her son, Justus continued his mother’s work by issuing Irish music in Boston on the Copley label.
