Against the Grain: The History of Buffalo's First Ward

Against the Grain tells the story of a group of mostly Irish immigrants who toiled in the hulls of grain ships and in other waterfront industries in an area called the First Ward of Buffalo, New York. The First Ward was a geographically isolated area of Buffalo primarily inhabited by settlers from the south and west of Ireland, but was also home to enough Germans, Poles, and Italians to make life even more interesting. This economically deprived area produced an abundance of historically im...