Archeology in Lowell

Three archeology professors from Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland arrived in Lowell this week to work jointly with professors and students from University of Massachusetts Lowell in an archeological dig of the front lawn of St. Patrick's Church on Suffolk Street in Lowell. From a preliminary examination of records of the earliest Irish in Lowell, it appears that the church's lawn may be the portion of the Acre (the neighborhood in which the Irish first settled)that has changed the least since the early- to mid-Nineteenth Century.

Yesterday I stopped by the dig at lunch time and ended up assisting with some documentary research for the team, providing them with contemporaneous plans and documents that may help identify who lived where back in the 1830s. The archeologists stressed that this is just a "reconnaissance dig" which will help ascertain whether deeper and more extensive excavation will be worthwhile.