Museum Review: New Canal Lighthouse Museum

March is Louisiana’s Irish American Heritage Month, and my personal immigrant connection to New Orleans is through my Irish Heritage. Today, we credit Irish immigrants with making New Orleans into one of the world’s cosmopolitan cities, helping to shape the accent, and building the New Basin Canal. I always knew that some of my mom’s ancestors came from Ireland to New Orleans. I recently realized that their immigration coincided with the years of the “Potato Famine” or the “Great Hunger”.

My grandmother’s grandmother was a first generation Irish New Orleanian born in 1861. Her parents were both born in Ireland, as was her eventual husband. Her family settled in the Irish Channel. She ran a boarding house on Chippewa Street, like many other Irish women who immigrated to New Orleans and other American cities.

“Many Irish women, married and widowed, ran boarding houses as a means of support. Married Irish women could do so as well as sew on contract or help out in other kinds of family enterprise. The mother of Archbishop Williams of Boston had immigrated to the United States as a single woman and after marriage managed a boarding house while her husband worked as a blacksmith. When he died she ran both the boarding house and a grocery story in order to underwrite her son’s education. Some of the Irish boarding houses run by women also expanded into hotels and restaurants.”

Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century

New Basin Canal

The mass immigration of Irish people in the mid-19th century coincided with the building of the New Basin Canal in New Orleans. “Substantial Irish communities exploded in size across the last half of the nineteenth century in San Francisco, Omaha, Memphis, New Orleans, Cleveland, Detroit, and Denver. The Irish showed up in large numbers wherever workers were needed,” Diner writes.

In the 1830s and 1840s, they hadn’t yet figured out how Yellow Fever spread. But they knew it killed many people who did not grow up in New Orleans. The nickname “The Stranger’s Disease” appeared during this era. They chose to hire Irish people to dig the canal because the cost of losing enslaved people who may die during the construction was greater than the cost of paying Irishmen to dig. They did not also lose an asset when an Irish person died. The Irish had no defenses against the tropical disease. A coinciding cholera epidemic caused the death of 8,000 or more Irish immigrants digging the canal. Ghost stories will tell you that they buried them where the fell — under the sidewalks lining Ponchartrain Boulevard today.

The Lighthouse Museum

The New Canal Museum is located in the lighthouse at the mouth of the New Basin Canal. This is the only portion of the canal that remains today. Before the mid-20th century when it was filled, the canal cut from the lake to the area near where the Superdome is today. There was a turning basin at the end. The canal made it easy to move goods into the city using the lake as a shortcut. The turning basin made it possible for large barges to turn around instead of having to back out of the canal.

The museum is where I learned about the Victorian hinges still used all over New Orleans. There are images of the lighthouse completely destroyed during hurricanes, but the hinges remain locked in place.

This location is also unique in how many women served. A significant portion of the tour focused on these special women.

I signed up to visit the New Canal Museum through the New Orleans Public Library’s Culture Pass. There is a volunteer tour guide who is extremely knowledgeable about the lighthouse, the canal, and New Orleans. He provides a free tour. He also knew about the Irish influence on New Orleans, including pointing me to to the Celtic Cross Memorial on Pontchartrain Boulevard, which I will share in a coming post.

Irish New Orleans: Other options for learning more about the Irish influence on New Orleans

New Canal Lighthouse Museum

Celtic Cross Memorial on Pontchartrain Boulevard

Irish Cultural Museum

St. Patrick’s Church

Gallier House and Gallier Hall

Irish Channel

Irish New Orleans Trivia

James Gallier was born James Gallagher in Ireland.

Alexander O’Reilly, an Irish mercenary at the service of the Spanish crown, was the Spanish governor who murdered the Frenchmen and gave the famous street its name.

Margaret the Bread Lady was an Irish immigrant whose time in New Orleans was so impactful that a statue of her at the intersection of Prytania and Camp streets was one of the first public statues of a woman in the country.

Delphine LaLaurie was born Delphine MaCarty. Her great grandfather was a captain in the Irish regiment of Albemarle who escaped the tyranny of the English kings to France and became a knight of St. Louis. Delphine’s grandfather came to Louisiana from France in 1732.

Source:

Diner, Hasia R. Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. The Johns Hopkins University Press © 1983 Baltimore, Maryland.