Among the organizations which have sprung from the ranks of the A.O.H. were the powerful Fenian Brotherhood, the Emmet Monument Association, and scores of smaller associations in all sections of the United States and Canada.  During the Know Nothing riots, the Order furnished armed defenders for the Catholic churches in New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, and it has ever been foremost in preserving its position as the hereditary defender of the faith.  In 1894, the Ladies’ Auxiliary was founded, and this body of women numbered in 1914 over 63,000, and had donated great sums to charity, education, and religion.  The A.O.H. had, in 1914, assets of $2,230,000.  It pays annually, for charity, sick and death benefits, and maintenance, over $1,000,000, and during its existence in America has donated nearly $20,000,000 to works of beneficence.  One of the most celebrated of the gifts of the Order was the endowment of the Chair of Celtic in the Catholic University of America, and one of its greatest gifts to charity was its contribution of $40,000 to the sufferers from the San Francisco earthquake.

The Clan-na-Gael is a society organized to secure the independence of Ireland by armed revolution.  Its organization is secret and it is the successor of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, called in America the Fenian Brotherhood, which promoted many daring raids and risings in Ireland in 1867.  The I.R.B. was perfected by James Stephens in Ireland, and by John O’Mahony in America, from 1857 to 1867.  An invasion of Canada was made in great force under the general direction of Colonel William R. Roberts, president of the Fenian Brotherhood, but was unsuccessful owing to the attitude of the United States Government, which declared that the Fenians were violating the principles of neutrality.  After the disorganization of the Fenian Brotherhood, the idea of revolution languished until revived by the founding of the Clan-na-Gael by Jerome J. Collins in 1869, and the membership during the twenty years from 1880 to 1900 included almost fifty thousand of the flower of the men of Irish blood in America.  The principle of revolution was first given organized public expression in America through the formation in 1848 of the Irish Republican Union, which was succeeded by the Emmet Monument Association, these societies influencing the creation of the Sixty-Ninth and Seventy-Fifth Regiments of the New York State Militia, and the Ninth Massachusetts, which became so famous for valor during the Civil War.  Although not putting forth all its strength, so as to allow full scope to the parliamentary efforts to ameliorate the state of the Irish people, the Clan-na-Gael is as vigorous a section as ever of the forces organized for the service of patriotism.