Where They Settled
Where They Settled
The vast majority of the Irish settled in cities, towns and mining and industrial areas. These poor rural farmers and labourers became the new “urban pioneers”. They lived in poverty and squalor in the ghettos of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. They gradually expanded westward to Buffalo, Jersey, San Francisco and the Mid-West as new roads, canals and railways opened up the country.
Often, when Irish people settled in a new location others from the same locality decided to move to the same place. For example the vast majority of the Irish in Cleveland were from county Mayo. Having emigrated to America during the Great famine, they began to drift inland from the Eastern seaboard looking for jobs. They worked on railroad, canal building and labouring on the docks. Many more Mayo people immigrated to Cleveland during the 1870s. They settled, mostly on the West Side of the city and gradually built parishes and communities there. The names to be found there today, Kilbane, Corrigan, Sweeney, O Malley, Lavelle, Murphy, Patton, McGovern and Stanton are testament to their Mayo heritage.
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