Think & Drink: The Irish in America

Long before St. Patrick’s Day parades turned rivers green and filled taverns with shamrocks, Irish immigrants arriving in America often encountered a very different welcome. We don’t have to look far to find their story.

When construction began on the Illinois & Michigan Canal in the 1830s, thousands of immigrant laborers came to northern Illinois looking for work. Irish immigrants made up the largest part of that workforce. They cleared trees and boulders, excavated earth and stone, and pushed heavy wheelbarrows up narrow planks to carve a 96-mile canal across the Illinois prairie. The work was brutal. Canal laborers put in 12- to 14-hour days for about a dollar a day. They lived with their families in rough shantytowns along the canal line, where crowded conditions, poor sanitation, disease, dangerous blasting work, and accidents were facts of everyday life. Through their labor and sacrifice, they built the waterway that transformed northeastern Illinois.

Many Irish workers remained in the region after construction ended, becoming farmers, merchants, laborers, business owners, and residents of the communities that grew along the canal. And those experiences are just one chapter in the much larger story of Irish immigration to America.

Join us for our next Think & Drink, The Irish in America, with Dr. John F. Lyons, Professor of History at Joliet Junior College.

Using primary sources—including music, photographs, newspaper articles, and political cartoons—Dr. Lyons will explore the experience of 19th-century Irish immigrants, from famine-era migration and widespread anti-Irish prejudice to their growing influence on American politics, labor, religion, culture, and community life.

Admission is free, but registration is appreciated.