O'Donnells
The fictional O'Donnell family in Rutherfurd's New York is one of the huge number of Irish families who came to the city long before the terrible Famine. The Irish community was quite widely dispersed thoughout the city, but a large group lived next to the German community on the Lower East Side, and here Mary O'Donnell becomes friends with Gretchen Keller. Her brother Sean, a habitue of the dangerous Five Points enclave, rises to fortune under the aegis of Tammany Hall.
