Great Hunger Memorial 25th Anniversary Commemoration

The Maine Irish Heritage Center and the local Ancient Order of Hibernians will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the dedication of the Great Hunger Memorial in the Catholic Ground in Western Cemetery on August 11, 2024. The Most Reverend Bishop Robert P. Deeley, bishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, will give a blessing.

The Memorial was dedicated by the AOH on August 15, 1999, to mark the final resting place of twelve-hundred Irish Catholics, most without headstones, who are interred in what became known as the Catholic Ground. Most of these Irish people were escaping poverty, famine, and disease between the early 1830s and the mid-1850s, especially during An Gorta Mór, Irish Gaelic for “the Great Hunger” (the Great Irish Potato Famine, 1845-51). They came from many Irish counties. Numerous Irishmen were killed in accidents as they worked on the railroad throughout Maine. At least six Civil War soldiers are known to be buried here. Hundreds were the children of Irish immigrants who succumbed to myriad illnesses that were prevalent in the 19th Century.

Every August the AOH sponsored a Mass and commemoration at the memorial until the COVID pandemic hit four years ago.

The ceremony will begin at 12:30 PM, followed by a reception at the Maine Irish Heritage Center, the former St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, where most of the Western Cemetery Irish worshipped.