19th-Century Urban Irish

They left Ireland in the mid-1800s during the famine of the potato blight and arrived in cities on the east coast: Providence, New York and Manchester, where they found work as tinkers, tradesmen, haulers and millhands. 

​Read their stories below.

1.  Lace Curtain Irish: The Peckenhams

2. The Elusive Donnellan Line