Prior to the 1820s, the majority of German and German-speaking settlers in Philadelphia (such as the Pennsylvania Dutch) had belonged to Protestant sects. Starting around the 1820s, an increasing number of poor Catholic Germans began to immigrate to Philadelphia, though most German immigrants to Philadelphia continued to be Protestant. By the 1840s, in response to the starvation and poverty that would lead to Great Famine of Ireland, a growing number of impoverished Irish Catholic immigrants began to settle in Philadelphia, leading to a rise in anti-Catholicism, nativism, and anti-Irish sentiment among the majority Protestant population in the city. Hatred for the newly arrived Irish Catholic immigrants culminated in the bloody anti-Irish, anti-Catholic Philadelphia Nativist Riot of 1844 and fueled the rise of the Know-Nothing Party in Philadelphia. At the same time, as the number of poor and unskilled Irish Catholic and German immigrants increased, Philadelphia experienced an increase in freed and fugitive slaves from the South seeking refuge and employment in the city. Both blacks and Irish Catholics were at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Philadelphia at the time, and poor Irish immigrants often competed with African American ex-slaves for menial or unskilled work. The competition between the two ethnic groups led to the 1842 Lombard Street Riot. Also, beginning in the mid to late 1800s, immigrants from China began to settle in Philadelphia, establishing Philadelphia's Chinatown and further diversifying the city's demographics.