Irish immigrants first arrived in large numbers to McLean County in the early 1850s. Initially, many came as railroad workers. They continued to arrive as part of the exodus resulting from the Great Famine. In 2000, the McLean County Historical Society, in conjunction with Central Illinois Irish-Americans and labor unions, raised funds for a monument commemorating the Irish railroad workers who died and were buried at Funks Grove. Archival materials and scholarly articles describing the Irish immigrant experience gathered over the years by the Historical Society were published together in a book, Irish Immigrants in McLean County, which is currently digitized and available on the Internet Archive.