The article below may give you some hints. As I suspected a large number came from Co. Mayo, as did my relatives. Suggest you contact Michael O'Malley at the Cleveland PD as he might have some more detailed background info to share. Dick Conoboy -------------------------------------------------- By MICHAEL O'MALLEY Plain Dealer Reporter They first settled along the crooked river near Lake Erie in the early 19th century - a fairskinned race of people who spoke the New World's mother tongue, but with a funny, sing-song cadence called a brogue. It was a brogue, however, with a twist of England and a dash of Scotland - the accent of Ireland's north, where Protestants outnumbered Catholics. And it was the Protestants - mostly Presbyterians - who made up the first major waves of Irish immigration to this country. Throughout the 18th century, hundreds of thousands of Protestants from Ireland's northern region, called Ulster, immigrated to America, looking for a better life. Many early Irish immigrants were dock workers along the Cuyahoga River. Pictured here are Mike Hurley and Mike Joyce, standing in front, and the Carney brothers in back. It was their offspring who played a major role in settling the Western Reserve, clearing and farming land and, in 1824, helping establish Western Reserve College (later Case Western Reserve University) so young men could study for the ministry. "They helped lay the foundation of education here," said retired Cleveland State University Professor Thomas Campbell, an Irish immigrant. Centuries of persecution of Irish Catholics by England have been well-documented, but Irish Protestants, primarily middle- class Presbyterians, felt the crown's heavy hand as well. England, which regarded the Irish as its subjects, forced Presbyterians and other religious sects to pay tithes to the Anglican Church, restricted them from exporting commodities and imposed stiff land rents, said Campbell. About 10,000 unemployed weavers left Ulster for North America each year from 1771 through 1774. Immigration was halted during the American Revolution, but resumed in 1783, with the northern Irish again the bulk of Irish immigrants. "They were a very tough, humorless, driven people," said CSU history Professor Allan Peskin, who has traced the Protestant Irish roots of eight American presidents. "Good Indian fighters. They built the frontier." The frontier at that time included Ohio, but in 1827, with the completion of the first part of the Ohio Canal, Cleveland was becoming a bustling port. The canal diggers, called navvies, were mostly Irish Catholics. Many diggers, who were paid 30 cents a day along with a couple of shots of whiskey, died of diseases before they were 30, or moved on to dig other canals. Irish Catholics didn't come to Cleveland in droves until the 1840s, fleeing a potato famine. Pre-famine Irish settlers here included Issac Reid, who came in 1832. Reid, a Presbyterian, worked for a steamboat parts manufacturer, earning $20 a month, and built a house where he rented rooms to immigrants. In 1835, he purchased 80 acres in Newburgh Township, planting potatoes, oats, corn and apples and raising cattle, hogs and sheep. "There is imegrants [sic] coming in here every day from all quarters of the world and a great sirculation [sic] of money," Reid wrote in an 1834 letter to his family in Ireland. "Cleveland about ten years ago there was . . . about 8 or ten houses in it and at this present time I think it is as large as Hillsborough," a town in County Down. The Famine Irish, mostly Catholics, began a mass exodus from Ireland in 1846. The next 10 years saw 1.8 million leave in schooners called "coffin ships," in which one in five died during the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of thousands of the refugees settled in American industrial cities, usually where they had a relative or a neighbor from the old country, so their communities were - and still are - dominated by people from a certain area in Ireland. In Cleveland, it is County Mayo, on the rugged West Coast. Common Mayo names include Sweeney, Lavelle, Gallagher, Kil- bane and O'Malley. They settled along the industrial banks of the Cuyahoga River, primarily in a cluster of hillside shacks called Irishtown between the Columbus Rd. bridge, north along the river valley to land under the Detroit- Superior Bridge. They worked on the docks and in the steel mills, and some settled farther up the river near the mills in Newburgh. By 1870, the cityÕs population was about 12 percent Irish. The Irishtown area was called the Angle, anchored by St. Malachi Catholic Church. Records of the times are sketchy and those who were literate did not write about the Irish community. Who would chronicle squalor and poverty? "The story of the Irish was told over the backyard fence and in the bars," said retired Cleveland fireman Tom Stanton, 67, a West Side storyteller himself. "Very little writing. We were defensive about what we were." The history was passed down orally through generations of characters with nicknames such as Skid Stanton, Doughnuts Gallagher and Skin-the-Cat Patton. As one story goes, the first Catholic bishop of Cleveland, the Rev. Louis Amadeus Rappe, encouraged the Irish to assimilate into American culture, but the Rev. James Conlon, pastor of St. Patrick Church on Bridge Ave. in Ohio City, encouraged them to stick to their own kind. Conlon's message created a solid Irish community throughout the West Side that is largely intact today. On the other hand, many East Side Irish are only recently finding their roots, four and five generations later. Their ancestors heeded the bishop and left the riverbed ghetto. Many of Cleveland's early Irish stories centered on bareknuckled fights and whiskey binges. William Masterson, a genealogist and Cleveland native living in Indianapolis, said the hard Irishmen were quick to square off in his grandfather "Grady's saloon in the Angle. "They would fight the Battle of the Boyne [a 1690 battle between Catholics and Protestants] every Saturday night and you had to throw them out," said Masterson. But the Irish also seized opportunities here, and since they spoke English, they had an advantage over other European immigrants. They started as fish mongers, saloon keepers, carpenters, shoemakers, dock workers and peddlers, and worked their way into politics and government jobs. "The Irish have moved up the economic ladder," said economist John F. Burke of Cleveland Heights. "Although there are still a lot of Irish pols and cops, they've become lawyers and entrepreneurs." "Our grandparents were ashamed of themselves and they had to prove they were Americans. But I think we've done that and as a result we have integrated into the society, but we were also able to keep our ethnic heritage" -----Original Message----- From: James O'Donnell [mailto:jfwlodonnell@erols.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:28 AM To: OHCUYAHO-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [OHCUYAHO] Newbug Does anyone know if there is one county in Ireland from which the majority of immigrants came, when arriving in Cleveland in the 1860's.? I'm interested in those that settled in the area known as Newberg. It seems this is true in other states I've researched. Thanks for any help. Joe ---- My ancestors immigrated from Conty Limerick (near the Tipperary border) to the Newberg area between 1848 and 1860. Later moved to he near West Side - Lorain and 45th St. Jim ==== OHCUYAHO Mailing List ==== Please visit the Cuyahoga County GenWeb website at (http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohcuyaho/cuyaoh.htm) ============================== Census images 1901, 1891, 1881 and 1871, plus so much more. Ancestry.com's United Kingdom & Ireland Collection. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13968/rd.ashx

Thanks for your help. Article is very interesting. Joe __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo