Feb 9, 2017 — By WSU News Services — As family lore goes, in the late 1800s my grandmother, her two sisters and brother slipped across the Canadian-American border looking for work in the mills around Boston.
They were young, Catholic, orphaned Irish-Canadians with no prospects. At that time, some people wouldn't hire Irish people, and my grandmother found it was helpful to claim to be of English ancestry since her last name could