Merna once a center of Irish Catholic life

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Shown is an aerial view of Merna, taken in April 1934. Merna was once a rural center of Irish Catholic life in Central Illinois.

4 hours ago • Bill Kemp Historian/archivist McLean County Museum of History

The experience of most Irish immigrants in America, especially Irish Catholics, is one rooted in the urban environment — places like South Boston, Hell’s Kitchen in Lower Manhattan, Bridgeport on the south side of Chicago, or even the railroad-dependent Forty Acres neighborhood on Bloomington’s west side.

Yet for many Irish immigrants, life in the U.S. meant life on the farm, often first as tenants and then landowners. This St. Patrick’s Day is a fitting occasion to recall that McLean County has long been home to a sizable population of Irish-American farmers and country folk.

And what better example of this fact than Merna? Located about 10 miles northeast of downtown Bloomington at the intersection of Illinois Route 165 and East 1600 North Road, this unincorporated hamlet in Towanda Township is best known today as the home of Kelly's Merna Bar & Grill, popularly known as the Merna Tap. Yet from a historical perspective, Merna speaks volumes to a time when Irish Catholic immigrants helped populate the surrounding countryside.

Merna dates its origin to the development in the early 1880s of Illinois Central Railroad’s Kankakee Branch (later known as the “Bloomer Line”) that once ran northeast from Normal to Kankakee County. On April 16, 1883, brothers Patrick and James Merna filed a plat with the County of McLean for a station stop on the new IC branch. The ambitious proposal encompassed some five acres and featured five streets bounding four blocks of seven lots apiece.

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