Irish Americans of Cleveland
History of the Cleveland Irish
Settling in Cleveland
from The Irish Americans & Their Communities of Cleveland
by Nelson J. Callihan &
William F. Hickey
Whatever the toll it took in lives, the Ohio Canal, among other things, made Cleveland a very important city. It transformed it into a strategic location, an exchange point for goods from the South, as well as the East, not to mention foreign shores. In no time long lines of wagons jammed its streets and vessels of every description crowded its twisting river, the Cuyahoga. By 1830, with the canal only a bit more than half completed, Cleveland was on its way to becoming a boom town.
