the Connemara refugees of Minnesota
Graceville, Minnesota, was originally granted to Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Wishing to settle the Minnesota prairie with Catholic Irish-Americans, he actively promoted settlement in Graceville and the surrounding region. The town was named for Bishop Thomas Grace and a special line was built across the prairie from Morris, Minnesota.
In summer 1880, Archbishop Ireland paid for the passage of a ship filled with Famine refugees from Connemara in County Galway. Arriving in Graceville too late to adequately prepare and having little grasp of English, the Irish language speakers were ill prepared for the massive blizzard which descended in the winter. As both the Protestant Freemasons of Morris and the English speaking Irish-Americans of Graceville both schemed to manipulate the situation for their own ends, the sufferings of the Connemara refugees became an international scandal.
With the future of his entire Catholic Colonization Bureau in jeopardy, Archbishop Ireland offered up the “Conamaras” as a sacrifice, condemning them as shiftless, lazy and drunken. In the early months of 1881, all but three families were evicted from their claims and resettled in a shantytown in Saint Paul which was instantly dubbed The Connemara Patch. Meanwhile, back in Graceville, the name “Conamara” became an insult, a pejorative term for a lazy, drunken failure.
Here is a slightly different story about it, from an apologist for Bishop Ireland. To me, it seems like a rush to make the countryside Catholic, and when it turned embarrassing, rather than examine his motives, the church hierarchy blamed the victims. Thus it is with everyone with religious motives. Their own righteousness simply cannot be questioned.
To be fair, that wikipedia page has had very little vetting.