Antebellum
Most of the Irish immigrants to Indianapolis settled originally on east coast cities, but gradually moved westward to find better employment opportunities. With internal improvements seen as one way toward development in 1832, the Indianapolis newspaper Indiana Journal advertised for Irish workers to come work for the Wabash and Erie Canal, enticing them with $10 a month wages and cheap land. The Mammoth Internal Improvement Act defined the expectation of several Irish workers being available to work on such projects as the Indiana Central Canal and the National Road. However, once the Panic of 1837 struck, many Irish became unemployed.
The 1840s saw the Irish begin to form small communities within the city, especially in the same poorer areas that free blacks resided. They created what would become St. John Catholic Church in 1840, after celebrating their first Catholic Mass in 1837 at a tavern on West Washington Street. Greater numbers of Irish came during the decade due to the Irish Potato Famine, and relief efforts were started by the Indianapolis Irish to support those still in Ireland.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Irish In Indianapolis
Famous quotes containing the word antebellum:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)