I recently returned from Ireland, where I examined records of Irish in the United States (and at a few locations in Ontario and Quebec) who contributed to the building of St. Mel's Cathedral (in Longford town). Collections took place at various locations around the US in the fall of 1842. It is reasonable to assume that most or all of the donors were Catholic and they had come from the geographical area served by the Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, which includes almost all of Longford, Leitrim below Lough Allen, and small slivers of Offaly, Roscommon, and Sligo. Typical Longford and Leitrim names are particularly prominently represented among the donors. Since collections took place in 1842, these were pre-Famine immigrants. It may be useful to some members of the list looking for early immigrants to know where communities of Irish from the above counties were known by Church authorities in the home country to be established before the Famine, since this might help interested persons to know where they might look for early-immigrant ancestors other than in the places they have already looked based either on family tradition or on locations shown in the records of family members from later dates. (At least in my family, moving about seems to have been common in the earliest days, and not necessarily in "obvious" directions.) New York and Boston contributed the largest number of donors--more than 4,000 persons each, sizable Longford/Leitrim immigrant communities for the time. Significant numbers of donors also contributed in Washington/Georgetown/Alexandria; Vicksburg/Natchez/New Orleans; Mobile; Coluumbus, Savannah, and Augusta, GA; Charleston and Columbia, SC; Halifax, NC; Petersburg, Richmond, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Pittsburgh, and Old Point Comfort, VA; Baltimore and Fredericksburg, MD; Philadelphia and Plattsville, PA; Buffalo, Rockport, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, and Rochester, NY; Newark and New Brunswick, NJ; St. Louis; Providence; Bridgeport, CT; Detroit; Dubuque, IA; Galena, IL; Cincinnati; and Louisville and Lexington, KY. Collections in Canada took place in Hamilton, Dundas, Kingston, St. Catherine's, and Toronto, Ont.; and Montreal. The presence of Irish communities of this sort in places like Detroit, Rochester, Utica, and Buffalo, as well as in Canadian communities, suggests that many of those immigrants had come via Canada; they are therefore unlikely to appear on shipping lists. Nancy Gray