The Irish !!!!!!!

Irish immigrants arrived in Lawrence at its birth, which nearly coincided with the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, the event that drove great numbers of Irish out of Ireland. The Great Stone Dam, constructed in from 1845–1848 to power the nascent textile mills, was largely built by Irish laborers. The first Irish immigrants settled in the area south of the Merrimack River near the intersection of Kingston Street and South Broadway. Their shantytown settlement put them close to the dam being constructed, but away from the Essex Corporation row houses built north of the river to attract New England farm girls as millworkers. The religious needs of the Irish were initially met by the Immaculate Conception church, originally erected near the corner of Chestnut and White Street in 1846, the first Roman Catholic church in Lawrence. In December, 1848, the Reverend James O'Donnell erected "old" St. Mary's Church.[11] By 1847, observers counted over ninety shanties in the Irish shantytown. In 1869,[12] the Irish were able to collect sufficient funds form their own church, St. Patrick’s, on South Broadway.[10]





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