The Irish Immigration
Foundations of Faith and Labor
The first substantial immigrants to arrive in Woonsocket were the Irish. Between the 1820’s and 1840’s as the Blackstone Canal and the Providence and Worcester Railroad were built through the Blackstone Valley, many Irish immigrants worked as laborers building these facilities.
The first recorded Irish resident of Woonsocket was Michael Reddy, who settled in the Woonsocket region in 1826. Reddy worked on the construction of the Blackstone Canal, and he and a few other Irishman were so attracted to the area, that they determined to establish their homes in Woonsocket.
Reddy and his companions were soon followed by other Irish immigrants and by the 1850’s the area of Church and Cato streets was predominantly an Irish residential neighborhood. Woonsocket’s Irish faced the same problems that other Irish immigrants to the United States faced, nativist prejudice against the Roman Catholic faith of the Irish.
The Irish, like other immigrant groups won a gradual acceptance in Woonsocket and other parts of the nation. Their willingness to fight and die in the Civil War was a major factor in their acceptance by Americans.
After the Civil War, the Irish continued to arrive in the region, many to work in the local textile mills. The opening of the Woonsocket Rubber Company’s Alice Mill in the 1890’s attracted a substantial number of Irish men and women to Woonsocket. The mill was built and operated by Joseph Banigan, once a poor Irish immigrant who became the President of the nation’s largest rubber company, The U.S. Rubber Company.
Sadly, traits of Irish ethnicity have all but vanished from Woonsocket. Their most lasting contribution, the establishment of Roman Catholicism in the city still remains, but strictly Irish organizations and institutions no longer exist in Woonsocket.
