Pieces of the Past

A dig site on Market Street in downtown Lowell has uncovered some hints about the lives of the city’s Irish settlers in the 19th century. 

Students from UMass Lowell, UMass Boston and Queen’s University Belfast were part of a team searching for artifacts from a grocery store and dwelling that was operated by Irish immigrant Patrick Keyes in the mid-1800s. The group wanted to get ahead of a new development planned for the parcel at 509 Market, which will, quite literally, cover over the past. 

Keyes was an entrepreneur and leading member of the Irish community in Lowell. In the 1870s, he served as a representative in the Massachusetts Legislature. His family owned the Market Street property until 1906. In the mid-1950s, the building became home to a nightclub called the Cosmopolitan Lounge. 

Led by archeologists, nine history majors used trowels, buckets and brushes in a search for clues about life more than 150 years ago. 

“It’s exciting to hunt for a glimmer or twinkle that could be a piece of glass or pottery, giving us a peek into the past, and to learn what people’s lives were like in the mid-19th century,” says UML history major Deirdre Hutchison, who grew up in Ireland. “I am fascinated by history and find it poetic that Irish immigrants helped build the canals in Lowell, and now I’m using a pickaxe to uncover their way of life all these years later.” 

Prof. Audrey Horning of Queen’s University, who helped lead the dig, says the team uncovered a variety of artifacts, including buttons, pipe stems, shoe heels, nails, clay pieces and marbles. 

“These will be researched and documented to preserve an urban history of a prominent Irish immigrant and the people who lived in the Acre area of Lowell,” she says. 

The project continues archaeological work started in 2010, when researchers hunted for clues of Lowell’s early Irish settlers at an excavation on the grounds of St. Patrick’s Church, also in the Acre neighborhood.