Irish
Irish Famine (PBS/Destination America)
Fleeing Famine
Even before the famine hit, decades of British rule in Ireland had driven many Irish farmers into severe poverty. They lived a hardscrabble life with little access to education. The potato was their main source of food, so when disease caused the potato crop to fail, famine quickly took hold, starving millions. Many of the poor and hungry fled to the United States. Most of these new arrivals were illiterate and had few skills outside of basic farming. They found their first jobs in America as laborers, mostly in the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Upon arrival, thousands of immigrants were drafted to fight for the Union cause in the Civil War. Over 75 percent of those men were killed in battle.
The majority of Irish immigrants settled in New York and Boston, but hundreds of thousands made the journey to California.
Opportunity in California
From the 1850s through the 1870s Irish immigrants in Northern California found access to opportunity by working on the railroads, as prospectors, or as employees in the gold mines. The San Francisco area was more welcoming than other parts of the country because unlike the East, there was no Protestant anti-Catholic elite there; Catholicism was and would remain the dominant religion in the city. Still, even in San Francisco, the Irish, along with Chinese immigrants, occupied the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.