Then and Now: A view to Our Lady of the Gibson Center

At the dawn of the 20th century, both Conway and North Conway had attracted a fair number of Catholic residents. The earliest were Irish, who came in the 1870s and ’80s to work in the hotels and the mills.

Later, French Canadians began drifting south, taking similar work, but it was the granite quarries that drew the heaviest concentrations of Roman Catholics. By June of 1900, there were 142 natives of Italy living in Conway, every one of whom had immigrated within the previous decade and most within two or three years. Almost all of them were men who took jobs in the quarry at Redstone, and most lived in the two dormitories there, but a few had brought wives and many of the others soon began looking for them.