 on your left, at 40 Wasson Street. You’ll also see many more concrete homes built by Witherbee, Sherman along Wasson Street. Stay on Wasson Street, go straight at the intersection with Main Street. Wasson Street now becomes Joyce Road.
Churches played an important role in mining society: “The priests assigned to the various parishes fulfilled expectations. Sts. Peter and Paul in Mineville retained its role as Mother Church for both Mineville and Witherbee. The Port Henry parish still held mostly Irish, with some Italian and Polish families. When the Eastern Europeans clamored for their own priest and parish, the bishop responded by allowing the establishment of a Polish Church, St. Michael’s, in 1910…. The Catholic Church joined with Witherbee-Sherman to demand loyalty and to help foster the sense of community. It served as one of the permanent authorities of the town, and that authority changed as the ethnic composition varied. Irish Catholics had arrived during the nineteenth century; the twentieth century arrivals included Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, French, Spanish, and Austrio-Hungarians. These new Catholics demanded (or were thought to require) different functions from their Church. They expected and received more direct intervention from the priest in non-religious aspects of their lives than had the Irish.” – Valerie Rosenquist, The Iron Ore Eaters