Many communities within Lennox & Addington have strong immigrant roots. As the townships along the front of Lake Ontario filled up, the sons and daughters of the original Loyalists pushed settlement northward. Many of the remaining lots were filled by immigrants from the British Isles eager to take advantage of new opportunities. Waves of English, Scottish, and Irish settlers arrived after the War of 1812.
Irish families in particular sought settlement in regions of Lennox & Addington. More than 500,000 people left Ireland for British North America between 1815 and 1845, many of whom were famers, labourers, and tradesmen. A second mass migration between 1845 and 1852, fuelled by the Irish Potato Famine, forced another million impoverished Irish citizens to flee. Erinsville, settled in 1836, became a large Irish Catholic Community, and nearby Tamworth became predominantly Protestant Irish in the 1840s.
