Did your parents or grandparents or great-grandparents come to Norfolk from Ireland? While our country is a melting pot of different cultures, languages, and heritages, Norfolk has a special affinity with the Irish. Names of Irish-American families who settled in Norfolk in the 19th century are familiar to us today: Curtiss, Dodd, Halloran, Hannafin, Mulville, O’Connor, Tierney, Torrant, and the list goes on. This summer the Norfolk Historical Society is celebrating the town’s Irish-American heritage in the exhibition “From the Mills to Main Street: The Irish in Norfolk.” Beginning with two Irish brothers who opened a woolen mill near the falls of the Blackberry River in 1836 and established the Catholic church, the Irish community grew by leaps and bounds. At turn of the 20th century, most of the stores in the center of town were owned and operated by Irish-Americans, and Irish masons, carpenters and contractors contributed to the physical growth of Norfolk as a summer resort.

The exhibition will include a family gallery with photographs of some of the Irish-American residents of Norfolk, such as the unidentified couple pictured here. This well-dressed man and woman had their picture taken in the O’Rorke Studio in County Sligo before departing for America. Although we don’t know their names, a clue can be found in the ownership of the photograph. It was given to the Historical Society by the family of the late William Vincent Sieller, a Norfolk author and for many years a teacher at Northwestern CT Community College. Census records show that Sieller’s mother, Mary Josephine Murphy, was born in Ireland and immigrated in 1894 at the age of 15. In Norfolk she married Pierre Sieller, a French immigrant, and they lived in the house on Ashpohtag Road where Bill Sieller would later take up residence. Perhaps it is Mary’s parents that are pictured in the photograph. We may never know.

If you have photographs that we could borrow to scan and reproduce, we can begin to more fully document the history of Norfolk’s Irish-American families. Please call the Norfolk Historical Museum at 860-542-5761.