Episode 26: Cooks, Coachmen, and "Second Girls"

More and more Irish immigrants began to share in Cleveland’s rising prosperity in the 1880s and 1890s. Cleveland was the industrial equivalent to Silicon Valley in the 1890s. Irish immigrants who had been living elsewhere were drawn to Cleveland. Along with those who had been here for decades, they were becoming businessmen, lawyers, and bankers. And prosperous families hired help. More and more new Irish immigrants, especially women, arrived in the US with the expectation that they would become servants. Working for Cleveland's most prominent families or for fellow immigrants, they became coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, cooks, maids, and nannies.