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Irish Special Interest Group

I-SIG Logo The Irish Special Interest Group (I-SIG) meets four times a year in the East Room at St. Louis County Library Headquarters located at 1640 So. Lindbergh.

These brainstorming sessions are open to the public, so come, share your Irish research experiences and hear what others are finding.
 

The Irish in St. Louis


By 1850, 43 percent of all St. Louisans were born in either Ireland or Germany. Irish immigrants often brought limited skill levels, putting them into direct competition with free blacks in cities for lower level jobs. In this case, economics drove politics; Irish immigrants in cities tended to be strongly pro-slavery, out of fear that liberating African-American slaves would create a glut of unskilled labor, driving wages even lower.

Irish immigrants in St. Louis congregated in two areas. Some lived in the “Kerry Patch” area on the near north side—a violent, dangerous, and impoverished neighborhood. Others lived around Cheltenham, centered around the intersection of present-day Hampton and Manchester. After rail connections to St. Louis opened in 1852, the clay and fire brick industry grew quickly. Irish immigrants worked in local clay mines. The first priests at St. James the Greater Parish, in today’s Dogtown neighborhood, were Irish when it was founded in 1861. Later in the decade, the Archdiocese commissioned St. Alphonsus Liguori Church (the “Rock” Church on North Grand) for the growing number of Irish immigrants.

[Information taken from] http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/immigrant.htm