SOME IRISH CONTRIBUTIONS TO EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY.
Paper read before the American Irish Historical Society, January 8, 1910, at its twelfth annual meeting at Hotel Plaza, New York City.
BY MICHAEL XAVIER SULLIVAN, PH. D.
When in the course of time a new nation has become firmly established and has taken its place among the powers of the world and leisure is afforded men to look back to the early days of their country in an historical way so dear to man’s heart, it is pleasing to the student to find that the race from which he springs has played a prominent part even in the early days of his nation.
It is in such a spirit of pleasure that we find ourselves convinced on making but a preliminary survey of our early history that in the foundation, the creating, the strengthening, and maintenance, of this great republic, the Irish race from which you and I spring has done its duty and has done it well.
In speaking of the part the Irish race has played in this great land I do not intend to indulge in self gratification, nor to give the Irish greater praise than they deserve nor to take from others in extolling those in whom ran the blood that runs in you and me. Every race that played its part in creating the American nation should be given its meed of praise, but in loving our land for what it has been to us and for what it has inspired, we are but the greater patriots in giving just praise to that race from which we spring for its noble duty in the cause of justice and of freedom.
The present paper does not purport to be a detailed study but merely touches on the high points of the Irish contributions to early American history.
In February, 1903, Miss Linehan[[5]] read a paper before the Connecticut Historical Society. This paper contains an excellent account of the earliest immigration of Irish to this country. From her paper may be quoted:
“The early Irish came to this country in three distinct periods, the first dating from 1621 to 1653, the second from 1653 to 1718, and the third from the latter period to the Revolution.”
It is with the third period that we shall deal for the most part.
In 1737, according to Rev. J. A. Spencer,[[6]] “multitudes of laborers and husbandmen in Ireland unable to procure a comfortable subsistence for their families in their native land embarked for Carolina. The same writer again, Vol. 1, p. 214, speaking of New Hampshire in 1738, says: “the manufacture of linen was considerably increased by the coming of the Irish Immigrant to this colony.”
“During the whole period of her controversy with Britain,” says Mr. Grahame,[[7]] “America increased in strength from domestic growth and from the flow of European emigration. No complete memorial has been transmitted of the particulars of the emigration that took place from Europe to America at this period, but (from the few illustrative facts that are actually preserved) they seem to have been amazingly copious. In the year 1771 to 1772 the number of immigrants to America from the north of Ireland alone amount to 17,350, almost all of whom emigrated at their own charge, a great majority consisting of persons employed in the linen manufacture or farmers and possessed of some property which they converted into money and carried with them. Within the first fortnight of August, 1773, there arrived at Philadelphia three thousand five hundred emigrants from Ireland. About seven hundred Irish settlers repaired to the Carolinas in the autumn of 1773.”
Pennsylvania very early had a large Irish colony. In 1699 James Logan accompanied William Penn to his new plantation and became one of the leading men. According to Spencer, Vol. 1, page 186, he was many years colonial secretary and member of the Council. He governed the Colony for two years after the death of Penn’s widow and previously in Penn’s absence. Charles Gookin, a gentleman of ancient Irish family, was governor of Pennsylvania from 1709 to 1716.
According to Grahame, Vol. II., page 84, “In 1729 no fewer than six thousand two hundred and eight European settlers resorted to this Province.” They are thus particularized by Anderson in his Historical Deductions of the Origin of Commerce; English and Welsh passengers and servants, 267; Scotch servants, 43; Irish passengers, 1,155; Palatine passengers, 243. At Newcastle, in Delaware, passengers and servants, chiefly from Ireland, 4,500.
The colony of Maryland was founded in 1634[[8]] by Cecilius Calvert, with Leonard Calvert as first Governor. Foremost among the Irish families early in Maryland were the Carrolls, all of whom threw their influence on the side of independence and at least three of whom played particularly distinguished parts in the subsequent conflict. The first of them to come to Maryland was Charles Carroll, who was a clerk in the office of Lord Powis in the reign of James the Second and who left Ireland on the accession of William and Mary in 1689. Before he was two years in Maryland he was appointed Judge and register of the land office and receiver of the rent of Lord Baltimore. His son, Charles Carroll, was one of the most prominent men in the colony, whose son, Charles, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Charles, the signer’s cousin, John Carroll, a priest of God, was sent with Franklin, Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase in 1776 to secure the coöperation of the French Catholics with the American cause. After the war, Father Carroll became Bishop and Archbishop. Daniel Carroll, cousin of both Charles and John, was one of the foremost members of the first Congress. He was a member of the Continental Congress for four years and a delegate to the convention that framed the Constitution of the United States. His farm formed a part of the site of the present City of Washington. Associated with him in Congress was Thomas Johnson, whose grandfather, also Thomas Johnson, came from Ireland in 1689 with Charles Carroll, the founder of the Carroll family in Maryland. He was three times Governor of Maryland, Chief Judge of the General Court of Maryland and Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
In regard to South Carolina[[9]] Ramsay says, Vol. I., page 20, “Of all other countries none has furnished the province with so many inhabitants as Ireland. Scarcely a ship sailed from any of the ports that was not crowded with men, women and children.” Among the prominent men of Irish origin were the Moores, Rutledges, Jacksons, Lynches, Polks, Calhouns, who distinguished themselves as patriots and statesmen.
Speaking of Kentucky, H. Marshall[[10]] says: “John Finley explored Kentucky in 1767 and circulated accounts and descriptions which Boone authenticated and enlarged.” Finley was the pilot of Boone in 1769. No permanent settlements were made in Kentucky till 1775. According to Marshall, page 13, in this year, a few permanent settlements were made, particularly at Harrodsburg and at Logan’s Camp, later called St. Asaphs, and at Boonesborough, named after Boone, the leader of the first colony to the bank of the Kentucky River.
Associated with Boone in his hazardous labors we find Michael Stoner.
Logan, after whom the Camp was named, was of Irish parents, and was among the earliest settlers of Kentucky. He was a man of prominence. On page 42, Marshall says: “The names of Mrs. Denton and Mrs. McGary and Mrs. Hogan are worthy of mention, they being the first white females who appeared with their husbands and children at Harrodsburg.” Speaking of Mr. McGary he says: “For enterprise and daring courage none transcended Major Hugh McGary.” Others were Butler, McLellan and Hogan, all Irishmen, pioneers and among the first to explore the country beyond the Ohio. In the wars with Indians, Butler, Bulger and Logan were especially prominent.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony legislated against the Irish of all creeds and in 1720 ordered them out. “As early as 1632,” however, as may be read in Haltigan’s “The Irish in the American Revolution,” we find mention of Irish in Boston. In an old legal document of that year an Irishman named Coogan is described as the first merchant of Boston. Miss Linehan, previously referred to, says: “In 1718 a petition was sent to Governor Shute of Massachusetts by three hundred and twenty leading Irishmen, among whom were ministers, asking permission to settle in the State. The same year one hundred and twenty Irish families arrived in Boston and brought with them the manufacturing industry of linen and also introduced the use of potatoes. There was not a town incorporated from that time on but what contained the descendants of those men or of those who followed them directly.”
“In 1730 the First Presbyterian Irish Church was founded in Boston.”
The Boston Irish Charitable Society was founded in 1737 on St. Patrick’s Day.
James Sullivan, son of Owen Sullivan, the emigrant from Limerick and brother of General Sullivan, represented Massachusetts in Congress in 1788 and was later Attorney General and Governor of Massachusetts.
That the Irish were fairly plentiful in Boston in pre-revolutionary days is well brought out by Cullen.[[11]] He found that among the earliest records there appeared such distinctly Irish names as Cogan, Barry, Connors, McCarty, and Kelly.
In the register of births, marriages and deaths in Boston from 1630 to 1700 there was, according to Cullen, over two hundred entries of names distinctly Irish and probably many others just as certainly Irish, but not so entered. Under Cromwell’s government many Irish people were sent to New England. In 1654 the ship “Goodfellow,” Captain George Dell, arrived in Boston with a large number of Irish immigrants that were sold into service to such of the inhabitants as needed them. This service was only temporary, to pay for the expense of transportation.
During the two years, 1736–38, ten ships are on record as coming to Boston from Ireland with a total of nearly one thousand passengers.
On the rolls of Bunker Hill are very many purely Irish names.
“In New Hampshire,” writes John C. Linehan,[[12]] “as early as 1631, according to military records, the first representative of the Emerald Isle made his appearance in the person of Darby Field, an Irish Soldier.” According to the same writer, in Vol. I., “Provincial Papers,” 1641 to 1660, are found such names as Duggan, Dermott, Gibbon, Vaughan, Neal, Patrick, Buckley, Kane, Kelly, Brian, Healey, Connor, MacMurphy, Malone, Murphy, Corbett, McClary, McMillen, Pendergast, Keily, McGowan, McGinnis, Sullivan and Toole. Later records show that the Irish were very numerous in the early days in New Hampshire, even long before the settlement of Londonderry.
Londonderry, New Hampshire, was settled by Irish Presbyterians in 1719. Few settlements were more prosperous. In the process of time, according to Barstow, in his “History of New Hampshire,” page 130 (1853), the descendants of the Londonderry settlers spread over New Hampshire and Vermont.
Barstow speaks of them as Scotch, but as quoted by Linehan, p. 66, Rev. James McSparran, an Irish Protestant Clergyman of Rhode Island, writing in 1752, referring to the New Hampshire settlement, says: “In the province lies that town called Londonderry—all Irish and famed for industry and riches.”
In Maine, we may mention among the early Irish, the five O’Brien brothers, of Machias, including Captain Jeremiah O’Brien, who fought and won the first sea fight with the British. O’Brien’s exploits are well described by the Rev. A. M. Sherman in “The Life of Captain Jeremiah O’Brien of Machias, Maine.” Owen Sullivan, the father of Gen. John Sullivan and of James, Governor of Massachusetts, arrived at Boston, 1723, and settled in Berwick, Maine, about 1730. Being of an excellent education, he was a teacher in Berwick, Maine, and Somersworth, N. H. Several of the highest grade families of Massachusetts are descendant from Owen Sullivan.
The Irish have always been an upbuilding part of the population in New York. In O’Callaghan’s “Documentary History of New York,” as shown by M. J. O’Brien,[[13]] are found men named Gill, Barrett, and Ferris, settlers and Indian fighters in New Netherlands in 1657, and in 1673 Patrick Dowdall, John Fitzgerald, Benjamin Cooley, Thomas Basset, L. Collins, and Thomas Guinn were enrolled in the militia.
In the census of the City of New York in 1703, appear such names as Mooney, Dooley, Walsh, Carroll, Dauly, Corbett, Coleman, Curre, Kenne, Gilley, Gurney, Mogan, Buckley, etc., all with an Irish ring. In 1733 many others of clearly Irish origin are mentioned. In the muster roll of the militia of New York City in 1737, are such Irish names as Welsh, McDowell, Ryan, Mooney, Hayes, Donlon, Gill, Murfry, Magee, Kelly, Sutton, Farley, Sullivan, McMullen, O’Brien, etc.
John Anderson of Dublin was high in the affection of the old Dutch settlers of Beverwycks, now Albany, as early as 1645, as shown by Danaher in “Early Irish in old Albany,” N. Y., 1903. He is mentioned in the old Dutch records: “Jans Andriessen de Iersman van Dublingh,” and as an instance of his popularity he is affectionately referred to as Jantie or Jantien, meaning Johnnie or little Johnnie. As shown by the same writer, many Irishmen were early prominent in Albany.
Thomas Dongan, the son of an Irish baronet, governed New York in 1683. During his administration he did much to encourage education. He was a Catholic, tolerant of all forms of religion. In 1687 he promulgated the “Declaration of Indulgence,” which authorized public worship by any sect and abolished all religious qualifications for office.
In a work entitled “Names of Persons for whom Marriage Licenses were Issued by the Secretary of the State of New York previously to 1784,” compiled by Gideon J. Tucker (when Secretary of State), page after page looks more like a record of the province of Munster than of the province of New York. “It is quarto volume,” says O’Brien, “printed in small type and there are eleven pages devoted to persons whose names commence with Mac and three to the O’s. Nearly every name common to Ireland is here represented.”
Between 1600 to 1775, many Irishmen were teaching in the Colonies. Of these I may mention a few. In 1640, William Collins in New Haven; Peter Pelham, in Boston in 1734. Robert Alexander is justly regarded as the founder of Washington and Lee University; Rev. Francis Allison of Donegal, Ireland, came to America in 1735. In 1752 he took charge of an educational institute in Philadelphia and became vice provost and professor of moral philosophy in the College of Pennsylvania in 1755. Rev. Samuel Finley, native of Armagh, Ireland, was president of the College of New Jersey in 1761. Michael Walsh came to America in 1792. He was a teacher in an academy at Marblehead, Mass. Among his pupils was Joseph Storey of the United States Supreme Court. Harvard conferred a degree upon him. In 1737, John Sullivan taught school at Somersworth, N. H. William Donovan, an Irish schoolmaster, kept a grammar school in the town of Weare, N. H., in 1773. Humphrey Sullivan was a school teacher of Exeter, N. H. Darby Kelly taught school in New Hampshire, etc. Bishop Berkeley, author of “Westward the Star of Empire takes its course,” came from Kilkenny to Newport, R. I., in 1729. He donated to Yale College an excellent collection of books.
At the opening of the revolutionary era, the whole Irish race threw its weight into the colonial scale. The Irish Commons, according to T. D’Arcy McGee in “The Irish Settlers in America,” refused to vote forty-five thousand dollars for the war. The Irish in England, headed by Burke, Barrè, and Sheridan, spoke and wrote openly in defense of America. The Irish in France were equally zealous. Counts MacMahon, Dillon, Colonel Roche-Fermoy, General Conway, etc., held themselves ready to volunteer into the service of America and afterwards at the desire of the American agent in Paris did so.
John Barry was the first Commodore of the American Navy. He was in many actions and was always successful. He has been called by naval writers “The father of the American Navy.” The first prize carried into the United States was a British ship captured by Captain O’Brien and brought into Marblehead.
Charles Thompson, an Irishman, was secretary to the first Continental Congress. He wrote out the Declaration of Independence from Jefferson’s draft. Mr. John Dunlap, a native of Strabane, Ireland, issued in 1771 the Pennsylvania Packet, the first daily paper published in America. He was printer to the Convention of 1774 and to the first Congress, and was the first who printed the Declaration of Independence.
Nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin: Secretary Thompson, Thornton for New Hampshire, James Smith for Pennsylvania, George Taylor, Pennsylvania; George Read, Delaware; Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland; Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina; Thomas McKean, a signer for Pennsylvania; Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina. Six of the thirty-six delegates to the Convention for ascertaining the Constitution were Irish: Read, McKean, John Rutledge, Pierce Butler, of South Carolina, Daniel Carroll and Thomas Fitzsimmons. The site of Washington is partly on the farm of Daniel Carroll, a cousin of Charles, the signer, and was presented to Washington by him.
As regards the Continental Army it may be said that Mr. George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of Washington, says in his Personal Recollections, that Ireland contributed to the Continental Army one hundred to one of any nation before the coming of the French. Among the French, as is well known, there were many Irish. Others have put the number of Irish in Washington’s army as high as fifty per cent. Since I have not been able to get original records regarding the Irish in the Revolutionary army I shall leave the question with the statement, supported by fairly wide reading on the subject, that to put it conservatively a very large number of the soldiers were Irish, or of Irish origin, as were many of the officers. The question of the Irish, composition of the army of the Revolution is being considered and an investigation of the muster rolls is being made by one of our members, so that in the near future the Irish contribution in this regard will receive an unquestionable verification.
The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick was founded at Philadelphia in 1771, where Catholic, Presbyterian, Quaker, and Episcopalian were united like a band of brothers. It was composed of the most active and influential men. The devotion of its members to the cause of freedom was acknowledged by Washington in a letter to the President of the Society where he described the Society as “distinguished for the firmness of its members to the glorious cause in which we are embarked.” Of the Society seven were generals in the Revolutionary army. Wayne, Stewart, William Thompson, Knox, Irvine, Hand, and Moylan, the latter being the first President of the Society. This Society rendered material assistance to the necessities of the army. At a time when everything depended on a vigorous prosecution of the war it was found impossible to arouse the public spirit of the Americans. In this emergency was conceived and carried into operation the plan of the Bank of Pennsylvania, established for supplying the army of the United States with provisions for two months. Ninety-three individuals and firms subscribed and the amount realized was three hundred thousand pounds. Of this twenty-seven members of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick subscribed one hundred and three thousand five hundred pounds.
John Sullivan and John Langdon, in 1774, seized the military stores at Fort William and Mary at the entrance of the Harbor of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and thus enabled the so-called rebels to fight the battle of Bunker Hill.
Richard Montgomery, who was born in the County of Donegal, Ireland, was the first general of the Continental Army to fall.
It is quite evident, even from the present surface survey of the part played by the Irish early in our history, that the Irish took a prominent part in the settlement of the original thirteen colonies. It seems strange, but yet it is true, that there is a paucity of recognition of the splendid services of the Irish emigrant on the part of some historians. Irish may be met with, however, everywhere in the early records. By hardy pluck and upbuilding, energy and sterling personality they made their way even in the face of prejudice and bigotry which were occasionally met with.
At the present day men of the Irish race and Irish ancestry are at the forefront in many lines of human endeavor, as might easily be shown by the quotation of names and achievements. I feel that in this glorious land of promise we have our eyes on the ideal and are ever improving, ever growing, doing our duty as we go, and leaving the world better, not only by deeds done and tasks performed, but better still by the cheering word and hearty sympathy, by the shedding of radiant happiness and buoyancy of spirit about us as the Irishman has been wont to do in all times and in all climes. We Americans of Irish descent can hold our heads high in the spirit of things done, in the fairness of our natures and the purity of our motives, seeking pure justice and asking but the favors that in all charity we give to others.