Irish-Catholic Immigrant Life In South Bend, Indiana: Refined Earthenwares and the 19th-Century Social Worlds of the Midwest

Abstract

When Father Edward Sorin established the University of Notre Dame in the 1840s, he sought Catholic laborers to assist him in the enterprise. He purchased land south of campus and created a residential neighborhood for Catholic immigrants, many of whom were Irish displaced by an Gorta Mór the Great Hunger. An archaeological field school in 2007 investigated the homelots that comprised this residential enclave. Analyses of the refined earthenwares from the Fogarty family were coupled with other historical and material evidence to elucidate the ways in which Irish-Catholic families negotiated the complex cultural landscapes of their new city.