Join local expert Matthew Jude Barker as he discusses topics from his most recent works, “Becoming American, Portland, Maine’s Irish and the Making of Immigrant America, 1840-1861” and “The Blue and the Green, The Irish of Portland Maine During the Civil War”. He will bring to life an amazingly transformative era in Portland history, discussing events such as the Great Hunger, immigration, Neal Dow and prohibition, bootlegging and crime, the "Rum Riot”, the Know-Nothings and nativists, Irish occupations, abolition, the railroad, the Panic of 1857, the war years, the Fenians, the Great Fire of July 4, 1866, and the dedication of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, among many other topics.