Italian immigrants became permanent residents of Haverhill in the 1870s. The original Genoese first drew their relatives and friends from their home area to join them. Over the next few decades, they were joined by families from the central province of Abruzzi and from the towns and villages around Naples. Immigrants from parts of southern Italy, such as Calabria and Apulia and Sicily, settled here. All of the Italians, whether northern or southern, brought with them their culture, their vitality, their love of music, and their close family ties. Using over two hundred thirty vintage...

Irish immigration to Haverhill, Massachusetts, was a constant from the days of the Great Famine to the present. The immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren have become an integral part of the fabric of the city's history. Some were teachers, politicians, police officers, and business owners, while others spent their lives as city laborers and factory workers. Whether these new residents were wealthy or poor, well known or little known, their experiences in America could not eliminate their common ties to the Emerald Isle. They collectively share a place in this "family album" of...

Haverhill's immigrants--they came for the jobs that were so plentiful in the booming shoe industry. They came to flee poverty, insecurity, and massacres. They came because their relatives had come before them, or because they would find old neighbors in this new place. Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the early twentieth century was a magnet for newcomers. They came from such diverse and faraway places as Asia Minor and Eastern Europe. They were Poles and Lithuanians, Greeks and Armenians, and Italians and French-Canadians. They joined the Yankees and Irish who had previously immigrated to the...

James Maroney from Clare. "Capt." Nicholas Costello
from Kilkenny. The Lucey and Hodnett sisters from
Cork. The many Linnehans from Limerick. Bridget
McGovern from Cavan. These were some of Haverhill's
Irish. Some came by sailing ship during the years of the
Great Famine. Others came by steamship at the end of
the century. The immigrants hailed from every part of
Ireland, but especially from the province of Munster.
They were drawn to Haverhill, Massachusetts, to work in
its shoe shops, to cook and clean in its "big houses," and
to be laborers for the...