An Irishman Encourages His Countrymen to "Go South"
The vast majority of nineteenth-century Irish emigrants to the United States settled in cities in the Northeast. A smaller percentage headed for the western territories. Some Irishmen were encouraged to go South instead. After the Civil War, [...]
A Member of the Ladies' Home Missionary Society Visits a Five Points Family
The Five Points Mission grew out of several Protestant missionary organizations that aimed to improve conditions in the Five Points. At first they attempted to convert residents from Catholicism; later the Mission obtained pledges from Five Pointers [...]
A Five Points "Orphan" Is Taken In by Reverend Pease and the Five Points House of Industry
The Five Points House of Industry was organized by the Methodist minister Lewis M. Pease and headquartered in a notorious former slum building known as the Old Brewery. It was the first missionary effort in the neighborhood to offer vocational [...]
An "Irish Agent" Describes the Classes of Tenant Farmers
The following excerpts are from Valentine M'Clutchy, the Irish Agent (1845), a melodramatic novel by Irish writer William Carleton. Himself the son of a farmer whose family was evicted from their land, Carleton here offers a sympathetic description [...]