IRISH PIONEERS IN BOSTON AND VICINITY.
BY HON. JOHN C. LINEHAN,[[6]] CONCORD, N. H.
[6]. Died in September, 1905. He was a founder of the Society and its first treasurer-general. This paper was the opening one of a series contributed by him to the Boston Pilot, in 1890, and bearing the general title of “How the Irish Came as Builders of the Nation.”
“The Massachusetts Bay” was, of all the original thirteen colonies, the most hostile towards the Irish, and it made but little difference with the Puritans whether the former were Catholic or Presbyterian, all fared alike, and were looked upon as people neither to be encouraged nor tolerated.
However, they continued to come in, despite this dislike, in one capacity or another, and one—Captain Patrick—appears in the records of 1632. Florence McCarthy was a resident of Boston in 1686. He was a butcher by occupation, and one of the founders of the first Episcopal Church in the town.
Esther MacCarty’s name is signed to an indenture, as a witness, about the same period. According to Palfrey, New England, up to the beginning of the great Irish emigration, was more unmixed in blood than any county in England. While this may seem true of Massachusetts, it will hardly apply to New Hampshire, and will not stand investigation in the Bay State, for according to the same authority, 400 or 500 Scotch were transported by Cromwell to Massachusetts in 1651, and thirty-four years later 150 families of French Huguenots came, followed in 1719, by 120 families of Irish, mainly from the North of Ireland. To these mentioned by Palfrey must be added, on the authority of Drake, 200 families of the unfortunate Acadians sent to Massachusetts about 1750.
No mention is made at all of the thousands sold into a kind of slavery by Cromwell to New England and the West India Islands, from Ireland, and yet, between 1651 and 1655, on the authority of Prendergast, over 6,000 boys and girls, mainly from the South of Ireland, were shipped to those two points.
The addition of 400 or 500 Scotch, 150 families of French Huguenots and the unknown number of Irish arriving in Massachusetts in less than twenty-five years from the establishment of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, will justify a contradiction of this statement of Palfrey’s. The Acadians and the Irish are prolific, and in this respect could keep pace with their English neighbors, and a comparison of the well-known New England families of the past hundred years, with an equal number of families in any English county, will prove it, for names, as a rule, are the surest guides to nationalities, and scattered over New England, from the dates named, are families bearing well-known French and Gaelic names, many of them slightly changed, but enough left of the original to trace the transformation. When the War of the Revolution broke out, this mixture of English, Irish, Scotch and French blood was pretty well compounded, and it was not surprising that the men of the new American race humbled Britain, and brought her to her knees.
Adams and Hancock, Sullivan and Knox, Stark and McClary, Revere and Bowdoin were, in New England, representatives of the nations mentioned, while the names of Washington and Jefferson, Moylan and Carroll, Mercer and Paul Jones, Laurens and Marion, showed that the same process was at work throughout the colonies.
Many Americans, no matter whence they sprung, now mount the “Anglo-Saxon” hobby, which, like a circus steed, has been so well padded by writers of history that there is little danger of a dismount, and in order to be in harmony with the aristocratic trend of the age, a double hitch is provided by trotting out the “Scotch-Irish” nag as a running mate, a trifle bony, perhaps, and a little ungainly at first, but time, good feeding and careful grooming, will make a perfect match, for both are of the same stock-humbug—a princely origin, for in this age humbug is king, and its capital, unlimited, is wind.
While Irish blankets and Kilkenny rugs were mercantile commodities in New Hampshire before King William of “glorious and immortal memory” had trigged the wheels, Irish butter was a most desirable article in Boston, as we find that John Hancock, among other goods advertised in his Faneuil Hall store, speaks of “Newcastle coal and Irish butter cheap for cash.” Cork from time immemorial being the great butter mart, it would not be at all surprising if some of the light-footed and light-hearted sons of that lively city came over with butter. McCarthy is one of the great Cork names, and in addition to Florence and Esther, named between 1680 and 1760, Elizabeth, Thade, William and Calvin Maccarty are met quite frequently in the records of the town of Boston, all persons of means and holding responsible positions.
Florence was town constable in 1693, and Thade Maccarty was elected to a similar position in 1673. For damage to her house, blown up to check a fire, Mrs. Elizabeth Maccarty was awarded the sum of $300 and Maccarty’s corner, on King Street, was a locality frequently mentioned. Florence was a man of consequence, and one of the leading men in his business. Leave was given him, in 1693, to build a slaughter house, and from the frequent mention made of him he must have been the John P. Squire of his day at the Hub. William Bryant was a servant of Capt. William Hudson in 1679, doubtless one of Cromwell’s transports, many of whom were, by that date, scattered over New England, especially in what is now Maine and New Hampshire. Larry is quite common along the border, between the Pine Tree and Granite states, and the first met in history bear the distinctive given names of Cornelius, Dennis and Teige. O’Leary is a South of Ireland name, and the presence of persons bearing it so early in the colonies, substantiates what is stated by Prendergast in the Cromwellian Settlement.
Eugene Linch (Lynch) came to Boston from Virginia in 1712. The name of Lynchburgh in the “Old Dominion” denoted the presence of this good old Galway name. Eugene found a wife in Beverly; and although bearing an aristocratic Norman name, he was not good enough to reside in Boston, being ordered to go to Beverly and stay with his wife. James Bettrell, “an Irish shoemaker,” had better luck, however, being allowed to remain, on giving bonds. James Barry was a noted huntsman in 1702, and was complained of for allowing his dogs to run loose. The town constable ordered him to shut them up.
There is quite frequent mention of ships loaded with passengers from Ireland, bound for Pennsylvania or Virginia, putting into Boston, from stress of weather, want of provisions, or sickness among the people on board. Care was taken by the town authorities to prevent the landing of any of the passengers, and the records are full of such instances, between 1700 and 1800, and the town constables were at their wits’ ends to keep the unwelcome visitors out, for those who landed in other parts of the country came by land to Boston, attracted, no doubt, by the rising trade and manufactures of the future metropolis of New England. Of this class, undoubtedly, was Charles Conner, his wife and child, who came from Philadelphia in 1732, only to be ordered out of town at once—a fate many of his nationality had to suffer during this epoch.
Drake, in his Landmarks of Boston, says: “About 1718 a number of colonists arrived from Londonderry, bringing with them the manufacture of linen and the implements used in Ireland. These emigrants also introduced the general use of their favorite vegetable, the potato.”
They were not met with a warm welcome, however. So many were coming from Ireland, in 1718, that Dea. John Marian was ordered to appear before the courts and take such steps as he might deem proper to keep them away from the town of Boston, and in this respect the authorities were impartial. No distinction was made between the natives of Cork or Belfast, Londonderry or Limerick, the followers of the old faith or the new; all were treated alike; it was enough to know that they were Irish. But despite all the obstacles thrown in their way, they kept coming, and so fast that finally the town council resolved that some steps must be taken to register them, so in case any of them became a town charge, their nationality might be known.
To that end all persons receiving or entertaining any of the Irish people were ordered to notify the authorities, on penalty of being fined twenty shillings for the first forty-eight hours and ten shillings for every twenty-four hours afterwards. Repeated warnings were given, but were as often disregarded. January, 1719, John Maccanis, wife and four children, were ordered to leave (John McGuinnis would be nearer the mark). Two shiploads, under command of Capt. Robert Holmes and a Captain Dennis, were refused permission to land, the same year. In September, 1744, three Irish boys and sixteen Irish girls were captured by a French privateer and forwarded from Capt. Breton to Boston. Among them were James Connor, Thomas Bryan, Charles White, Mary Roberts, Mary Price, Sarah Agin, Mary Benson, Margaret Anderson, Sarah Hathay, Elizabeth Campbell, Mary Hammell, Eliza Fitzgerald, Sarah McMahon, Bridget McNamara, Eliza Dunster, Fanny Brady, Jenny Richardson, Kathleen Morris, Mary Derham. No doubt these poor waifs were looked after by the Charitable Irish Society, which was then instituted about seven years. The feeling against their nationality was gradually wearing away, and the settlements of their countrymen in New Hampshire were already furnishing the best fighting men against the French and Indians.
As early as 1758, the Macs, with many other well-known Irish names, were taking a prominent place in the town records. McCarthy, McCarroll, McClane, MacCluer, McConnell, McCown, McCullum, McDaniel, McDonnell, McDonald, McElroy, McFadden, McFarland, McGowan, McIntire, McKeen, McKey, McKnight, McKenzie, McLean, McNeal, McPherson, McQuestion, Mooney, Montgomery, Moore, Murphy, Ryan, Powers, Welch, etc., were entered side by side with their English neighbors, so that there is no question that Boston had within its borders when the Revolution broke out, a large share of that stock,—the Irish—which made its influence felt during the struggle, and which furnished in the massacre one of the first victims, in the person of Patrick Carr.
Besides Boston, there were few towns in New England where an Irishman could not be found between 1700 and 1800. In the contingent from Ipswich, Mass., in 1755, at Lake George, were John Fitzpatrick, William Connolly and Thomas Looney, and in the records of deaths in the town’s history is that of James Fitzgerald, who died in 1727. Americans bearing these names, some of them changed slightly, are found all over the country—Fitzes and Geralds, Patricks, and Connollys, the latter changed to Colony and Collony. The modern Fitzes discard any but a Norman origin, however, and the Patricks are, of course, “Scotch-Irish.”
Jeremiah Smith, born in Ireland in 1705, came to Massachusetts in 1726, locating at Milton. He was accompanied by his wife. He was the first to raise potatoes in the town, and the first to manufacture paper in the colony, and perhaps in the country. A neighbor of his, a Mr. Babcock, having raised two bushels of potatoes from seed given him by Mr. Smith, came to the latter and told him he did not know what on earth to do with so many. Mr. Smith told him not to fret, he would buy them of him. Babcock said he did not know what to do with his Irish help; they did not understand raising American vegetables; he sent one of them out to get some green corn for dinner the other day, and he came back without any, saying that “he had dug up five or six hills, and the divil a kernel of corn could he find.” Smith told him that the Irish knew as much about raising corn as the Americans did about raising potatoes, and knew less how to use them. Smith was a member of the Presbyterian Church in Boston. He bears honorable mention in the town history, and was respected by all his fellow-townsmen. He died in 1790.
John Sullivan was also interested in the manufacture of paper, in that section, between 1780 and 1790, and associated with him in the business were Patrick Connor and Michael McCarney. Others of Irish birth in the town at the same time, who were prominent in its affairs, were Peter O’Kelly, Hugh McLean, Peter McElroy and James McClary. That was quite a group of Irishmen in a suburb of Boston, and there was no question but that they were men of enterprise and push. O’Kelly, with his wife and six children, went to South Carolina in 1796. McCarney was one of a corporation, organized in 1798, the Mill Creek and Neponset River Company, for the manufacture of paper. Their mills were situated near where the chocolate manufactory of Walter Baker was afterwards located. McCleary’s name appears on the rolls of the Charitable Irish Society in 1789. This is one of the names noted in New Hampshire’s military and civil history. Maj. Andrew McClary, of Stark’s regiment, was killed at Bunker Hill. He was one of the finest looking, as he was one of the bravest, men in the army, and his death was then looked upon as a great loss to the cause of Independence.
Among those who went with a colony from the Massachusetts Bay to Delaware, in 1644, were John Nolin and his wife. The Swedes, who were already located there, looked upon the newcomers as interlopers, and made it very unpleasant for them. The result was the appointment of a commission to investigate the alleged outrage on the Massachusetts men. John Nolin was one of the principal witnesses, the Swedish governor having placed him in irons. Nolan was undoubtedly the correct way of spelling the name, and it would not be at all surprising if, like Darby Field of New Hampshire, he was one of the “Irish soldiers for discovery.”
John Patrick of Barre, Mass., was a lieutenant in the company recruited in that town, at the outbreak of the Revolution. His father was an emigrant from Ireland, and the original name was Kilpatrick. His descendants are scattered through New England, and like all sprung from Gaelic stock, have been prolific. He died in 1807, aged sixty-eight. Gen. M. R. Patrick, provost marshal of the Army of the Potomac, and at his death superintendent of the Soldiers’ Home at Dayton, Ohio, was one of his descendants. In harmony with the usage of the day, the descendants of the lieutenant derive a “Scotch-Irish” ancestry for the founder of the family.
Among the births recorded in Boston in the returns of births and baptisms, from 1630 to 1699, are Francis, son of Thaddeus and Eliza MacCarty, February 19, 1666; Thaddeus, son of the same parents, in September, 1670; Margaret, born February 25, 1676; Catherine, born January 23, 1679, of the same parents; Elizabeth, daughter of Florence and Elizabeth MacCarty, born December 25, 1687; Thomas, son of the same, born February 5, 1688 (evidently a mistake in dates); William, son of the same, born February 3, 1690. Mrs. Eliza MacCarty died July 6, 1696. Florence waited a little over a year before taking another partner, but not thinking it best to live alone, he married Sarah Newwork on August 24, 1697. She presented him with another Sarah in 1698.
The William MacCarty mentioned, became a noted shipmaster, and had the reputation of being a fine navigator. He was an enterprising man, fully up to the standard reached by his father and grandfather. The son, Rev. Thaddeus MacCarty, born in 1721, was a graduate of Harvard College and a minister in the Congregational Church. He was called to the pastorate of the first parish in Worcester, in 1746, where he remained thirty-seven years. He married a Welsh girl, and by her had fifteen children. He is described as being tall and slender, with dark eyes, sonorous voice and very pleasing address. He was a prolific writer, and like James Sullivan of another Munster family, one of the most scholarly men of his day; he died in 1784. His son, Thaddeus, born in 1747, was a noted medical practitioner. He first located in Dudley, then changed to Fitchburg, Mass., where he established a hospital for the treatment of smallpox by the Suttonian method. Here at one time he had 800 patients. He afterwards removed to Keene, N. H.
Another son, William MacCarty, was quartermaster of Colonel Bigelow’s Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment in the Revolutionary War. Thus, in Massachusetts, three of the best known South of Ireland families, O’Brien (in Maine), MacCarty and Sullivan, were represented before and during the Revolution; and it is pleasant to record that all were true to the cause of Independence.
The Mackues had a representative in Timothy, son of Timothy and Ann Mackue, born October 20, 1699, probably one of the McCues or McHughes, all the same. Sarah, daughter of William and Olive McLoughlin, was born on October 29, 1689; and Eliza followed on September 10, 1691, who was joined by Mary, born on March 22, 1694. These undoubtedly are the ancestors of many McGloughlins, McLathlans, or Lafflins, as the fancy seized their descendants to alter the spelling, just as the name McCarthy became in time Maccarty, Maccartie, MacCarter, Carter or Carte, varied occasionally by Carty. On February 14, 1658, not a great many years after the founding of the colony, “James Webster a Scotishman & Mary Hay an Irish maid were married.” Mary was, no doubt, one of the poor girls torn from her home in Ireland, but hard as her lot was, she was fortunate in not being sent to the West Indies; but would it not be of interest to find, at the present time, the descendants of the Scotch laddie and the Irish lassie, the Websters of 1658?
Another couple, married April 5, 1692, bear names that denote Irish blood—Andrew Rankins and Grace Butler. The ceremony was performed by Gov. Simon Bradstreet. Daniel, son of Dermin—probably Dermot—Mahoone, was born Oct. 4, 1646. The next child born to the couple, on August 29, 1648, bore the well-known Irish name of Honour, and the name itself must have been Mahon, or Mahoney. Mrs. Mahone died November 8, 1656, and her husband, like his countryman, McCarty, did not remain single long, as another child, Margaret, was presented him on June 3, 1661, but it was after his death, which took place on April 2, 1661. His widow, Margaret, did not long grieve for him, for in the following July, 1661, the record reads, “Bryan Morfrey (Murphy) an Irishman & Margaret Mayhoone widow were married 20th July by John Endecott Governor.”
The Murphys were on hand “airly,” and no doubt made their mark, but where are their descendants? Hannah, daughter of John and Ann Cogan, was born September 6, 1636. This may be one of the characteristic names of England, but is more common in Ireland, being carried there by Milo De Cogan, one of Strongbow’s Norman knights. John was born to Garrett and Mary Bourne, May 30, 1643. Both given and proper names have an Irish appearance. The first Kelly having the honor of being entered on the records of births was Daniel, son of David and Elizabeth Kelly, born December 18, 1647; like the Murphys, they were on hand early; and also like the Murphys, are of the undiluted old stock, Gaelic to the core. Today, on account of the prominence of the name, it is as American as it is Irish, and what is still better, the spelling remains the same in both countries.
The first Butler, who heads the roll of a long line of descendants, and a representative of one of the most illustrious names on two continents, makes his bow in August, 1653, in the person of Benjamin, son of Stephen and Jane Butler. November, 1656, “Edmond Coussins of Pulling Point and Margaret Bird an Irish maid servant to John Grover of Rumney Marsh were married.” An Irish linnet to a French Huguenot, probably. Mary and John Bohanno, another Scotch laddie, and an Irish lass, were blessed with a little Mary on May 9, 1658. From these records it can be safely inferred that the exiles from Scotland and Ireland, the victims of Cromwell’s tyranny, were, in their persons, uniting the two branches of the old Gaelic race, as frequent mention is made of marriages between them.
Bohanno was undoubtedly Bohan or Buchanan, both from the same root. John Morrell, an Irishman, and Lysbell Morrell, an Irishwoman, were married, August 31, 1659. March 15, 1661, John Reylean, an Irishman, and Margaret Brene, an Irishwoman, were married by John Endicott, Governor. John, son of John and Sarah Starkey, was born on September 23, 1666, abbreviated later on to Stark. Barry appears on the roll, January 8, 1688. James, son of James, being born on that date. Kenney does not appear until 1691, when, on February 13, Moses and Margaret Kenny were blessed with the gift of a daughter. Like Butler and Kelly, this is not one of the most common names in America, as it is in Ireland—McKenna, Kenna, Kenny. Mulligan turns up in 1681, in the person of Robert, son of Hugh and Eleanor Mulligan, born on August 9. The Millikens and Mullikens can trace the stream and find the source, perhaps, here. Morrissey (spelled Morris and Morrisse) appears in 1655.
Edward Morris and Dermon (Dermot) and Honora Morrisse are mentioned quite often—some of the transports, undoubtedly. Another of the exiles, or the child of one, was Johanna Heffernan who married Christopher Vale in 1692. Mary Lynch married James Townsend in 1693, and Henry Townsen wedded Mary Keefe the same year—two more “Scotch-Irish” unions if names are an index to nationality—and still another at the same time was that of Mary Peard to Samuel Swetman.
The good old name of Hayes, in the persons of Thomas and his wife, Bridget, shows up July 25, 1690, when unto them a child was born, named Eliza. This is like some other names mentioned, found now all over the country; in this case, Bridget must be the Eve of the modern Garden of Eden—the Hub—at least so far as the Hayes’ are concerned, for she was the first of the tribe in the Trimountain Paradise. Reilly has two representatives in John and Bridget Rylee, who had born to them on September 10, 1693, a daughter, Hannah. After 1700, Irish names peculiar to the South, as well as the North of Ireland, rapidly appear. In the records of the selectmen of the town of Boston, September 27, 1736, John Savell was required to give a bond for a servant imported from Ireland by Captain Arnold. James Wimble had to do the same for George Lucas’ wife and child from Ireland.
Captain John Carrell—Carroll—ditto, for twelve persons he brought from Ireland in his vessel. Dinish and Honor Cniae—Kenna—and their two boys, were of this number. September 29, Joshua Winslow, Esq., gave a bond for William Steward, wife and two children, imported by Captain Boyd. Steward was a cooper, and in the following November was admitted an inhabitant of the town.
THE IRISH IN AMERICA.[[7]]
BY HERBERT N. CASSON, NEW YORK CITY.
[7]. Published originally in Munsey’s Magazine, New York, April, 1906.
A certain green isle in a northerly sea is the historic home of the Irish people, but the present address of at least two thirds of the scattered race is “United States of America.” Boston, not Belfast nor Dublin, is now the greatest Irish city in the world; and the overwhelming majority of Irishmen who have risen to places of distinction have done so under the Stars and Stripes.
The historian who shall do full justice to the Irish branch of the human family has not yet appeared, either in the United States or elsewhere. Consequently, there are few races, if any, which have been so persistently misunderstood and undervalued. Even in this country, where such a mistake is least excusable, there has been a tendency in some quarters to regard the Irish as merely an element of the rank and file. The truth is that they have contributed their share of leaders and pioneers in almost every line of progress.
At least seven of our presidents have had more or less of Irish blood in their veins. Jackson, Buchanan and Arthur were the sons of Ulster parents; and the first American ancestor of Polk was an Irish immigrant. Monroe and McKinley were more remotely related to the “fighting race.” The latter, it is well known, was fond of saying, “We Irish.” Roosevelt, also, had several Hibernian twigs on his family tree. This, in itself, is an amazing record of Celtic leadership—to have helped to mold the character of seven American presidents out of twenty-five.
In the making of America, the Irish have been structural. No other word represents their influence so well. In the clearing of forests, the digging of canals, the building of railroads, and the extension of commerce, our civilization owes an incalculable debt to Irish hands and Irish heads.
In the traits of our national character, too, we Americans are all more Irish than we realize. Our versatility and buoyancy, our quickness of initiative, our free and unconventional ways, and the sporting instinct that leads us to take chances and beat records, are a few of the evidences of an Irish strain in our blood.
If the handiwork of the Irish were painted green, the average American city would be splashed on all sides with emerald hues. Yet there are few who are aware of this, even among the Irish themselves. A New Yorker, for example, may rise in the morning, bathe in water that comes from the Croton dam, built by James Coleman, ex-president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick; breakfast on Cudahy bacon; then take the subway, built by John B. McDonald, past the new College of the City of New York, built by Thomas Dwyer, to his office in a skyscraper built by John D. Crimmins, where he will cable to Alaska over a line laid by David Lynch, to order certain freight sent via James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad. Then, with a cigar bought from one of George J. Whelan’s 300 cigar stores, he will read the New York Sun, published by William M. Laffan and delivered by the American News Company, founded by Patrick Farrelly—and remark to an English friend:
“Yes, of course, this is an Anglo-Saxon country.”
When J. I. C. Clarke, the genial playwright, wrote his famous poem on “Kelly and Burke and Shea,” it was generally supposed to be a poetic fancy. On the contrary, I find it to be a simple matter of American history that the Kellys, the Burkes and the Sheas have been to the fore in every generation. They were all three in the battle of Lexington, as well as in the death-list of the Maine. When Hobson sank the Merrimac, a Kelly and a Murphy were his comrades in danger. Our first noted woman abolitionist was Abbie Kelley. William Darrah Kelley, of Philadelphia, was a Congressman for nearly thirty years. Hall Jackson Kelley was the founder of Oregon. The late Eugene Kelly, the New York banker, won renown as a philanthropist. Among the living members of this redoubtable family, James E. Kelly is a well-known electrical engineer. The Kelly Ax Company has a fifty-acre plant in Charleston, W. Va. Elsewhere * * * you will find the wonderful story of William Kelly, whose invention has added hundreds of millions to the wealth of the steel industry.
In the Burke family, three heroic figures appear in the first chapter of our Revolutionary history—Thomas Burke, the first governor of North Carolina; Adamus Burke, chancellor of South Carolina; and John Daly Burk, historian, patriot and duelist. All three were fighters with pen and sword, who made an indelible mark on the Southern states a century ago. In 1872, when Froude cast some aspersions upon the Irish, it was Father Thomas Burke who took up the cudgels against him. And at the present time we have Burkes enough in the United States to fill a “Burke’s Peerage” of their own. There are two bishops who bear the famous name, at Albany and St. Joseph; one brigadier-general, at Portland, Oregon; one congressman, in South Dakota; a railroad president, at Cleveland; and a judge at Seattle.
As for the Sheas, at least four of them have buffeted their way to the front—Gen. John Shea,[[8]] who won his laurels in the Revolution; Capt. Daniel Shays, who first fought at Bunker Hill and then stirred up a little side-show rebellion on his own account; George A. Shea, an eminent chief justice of New York; and John Gilmary Shea, the historian of the Catholic Church in the United States.
[8]. Gen. John Shee.
In the American business world of today, a large proportion of the solid men—the men who stand like pillars under the heavy burdens—are of Irish blood. Most conspicuous of all stands the financier upon whom the mantle of J. Pierpont Morgan seems to have fallen—the man who is not only combining but coördinating American capital—Thomas Fortune Ryan. He is one of the greatest masters of financial statesmanship, who cuts the Gordian knots of finance and ties others of his own.
Equally immovable, in a different field, stands James J. Hill, born in Canada of Ulster parents. What this one man has done for the United States has never yet been fully told. He is the creator of the Northwest—the railway builder who has opened up a territory equal to a couple of Germanys—the steamship builder who has linked America with the markets of the East. He has made wide pathways of commerce from Lake Superior across 1,500 miles of wilderness and 5,000 miles of ocean to the ports of China, Russia and Japan. Ever since he double-earned his first dollar as a Mississippi roustabout, fifty years ago, his life has been a continuous obstacle-race; and there have been few occasions when James J. Hill missed a hurdle.
Two other railway presidents are Samuel Sloan, of New York, who was born when Madison was in the White House; and Richard C. Kerens, of St. Louis. Daniel O’Day[[9]]—every inch of him Irish—is one of the most important members of the imperial group of financiers who float the flag of Standard Oil. Forty years since, he was a laborer in the oil regions, whose main problem was to find a job; today, as he jokingly says to his friends, his main problem is to find out how to invest his surplus. Another New Yorker of Titanic mold is Alexander E. Orr, who was nineteen years old before he had seen any other country than Ireland. As a president of large commercial bodies, he has few equals. He is a director who directs. For nearly fifty years he has stood under the heaviest responsibilities, and was recently chosen, because of his ability and uprightness, to preside over the immense interests of the New York Life Insurance Company.
[9]. Recently deceased.
If we speak of great Irish bankers, where is there a large American city without one? In Pittsburg, for instance, where there are a score of banks bulging with steel millions, the dean of the financial fraternity is Thomas Mellon, who, like Alexander E. Orr, was born in Tyrone. In New York there are three, at least, who are too prominent to miss—Thomas M. Mulry, the new president of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, which was wholly Irish in its origin, and which holds a hundred millions in its vaults; Miles M. O’Brien, who was for some time the president of the board of education; and Samuel G. Bayne, who is notable for having organized national banks in seven states. Charles J. Bell is a conspicuous figure in the national capital, as John C. Davis is in Wyoming. And in Chicago John R. Walsh has been a notable banker and capitalist for twenty years. The recent collapse of his financial structure should not obscure the facts of his extraordinary career. To begin as a barefooted newsboy, and to struggle to a place of power in the sixth greatest city in the world, always preferring to fight big enemies rather than little ones—that was Walsh’s record.
Among the cattle kings of the West are Timothy Kinney, of Wyoming, and George Russell, of Nevada. Also in Chicago, Milwaukee and Omaha are four brothers who know something about the cattle and beef trade—four brothers whose parents left Kilkenny in the forties because black famine threatened them with starvation; who began their business life with no more chance of fortune than any day laborer in the United States, and who are today numbered among the few masters of the food supply of the world—Michael, Edward A., John and Patrick Cudahy.
Other weighty business men, scattered here and there, are John Flannery, the Savannah cotton king; Thomas F. Walsh, of Washington, who is the president of the Irrigation Congress; John D. Crimmins, the contractor who has added 400 buildings to New York; Patrick F. Murphy, president of the Mark Cross Company and well known in New York as an after-dinner speaker; Edward Malley, who began with a pack on his back and has now a department store in New Haven; Ephraim Dempsie, merchant and public man of Spokane; P. B. Magrane, a well-known merchant in the shoe city of Lynn; and William P. Rend, the coal magnate of Chicago.
Among the great Irish merchants of former days, the most notable was A. T. Stewart, whose New York store was the largest of its kind, either in America or elsewhere. His capital was $3,000 when he began to sell his Belfast laces, and more than forty millions when he died.
In the United States, as well as in Great Britain, many of the most distinguished judges have been of Irish blood. Among the nine justices who sit supreme over all American courts, two are Irish by descent—Judge Edward D. White and Judge Joseph McKenna. As yet, no one has compiled a list of the Irish judges in the various state Supreme Courts; but to take New York as an instance, we find five who are of unusual prominence—Martin J. Keogh, Morgan J. O’Brien, James Fitzgerald, George C. Barrett and Victor J. Dowling. It should also be mentioned that the chief judge in the Philippine Islands—John T. McDonough, formerly of Albany—is Irish born. William J. Hynes, too, a lawyer of whom Chicago is justly proud, began life in County Clare.
To answer fully the question “What have the Irish done for American education?” would need a small book in itself. Was not the late Pres. William Rainey Harper, the father of Chicago University, of Irish descent? This extraordinary man crowded the work of several centuries into less than fifty years, sacrificed his preferences as a student that he might carry the heaviest financial responsibilities, and died poor after having gathered a dozen millions for his university.
Of our Irish born educators, no one outranks William H. Maxwell, who has been for eight years the superintendent of New York’s public schools. Under him are 16,000 teachers and more than half a million children, the most lively and cosmopolitan army of youngsters in the world. Superintendent Maxwell has had to fight for every inch of progress in his development of the New York school system; but like the dogged Ulsterman that he is, he has driven ahead with his far-reaching projects, no matter whether the hue and cry was with him or against him.
“Nothing is too good,” he says, “for the taxpayer’s child.”
Speaking of public schools, it would be a sin of omission at this point not to mention the thousands of young women of Irish birth or parentage who are doing faithful work as schoolteachers in all parts of the United States.
The number of our Irish professors is comparatively small. Some who deserve special mention are Maurice F. Egan, of the Catholic University in Washington; James McMahon, of Cornell; Robert Ellis Thompson, of the Central High School in Philadelphia; and Thomas C. Hall, of the Union Theological Seminary in New York. A Gaelic chair was established in 1896 at the Catholic University by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and is filled at the present time by Prof. Joseph P. Dunn, who is of American birth. To John Tyndall, the notable Irish scientist, the United States owes a double debt, inasmuch as he not only delivered a course of lectures here in 1872, but devoted the proceeds to the cause of scientific research in America.
It is very seldom that an Irishman lacks the gift of speech. Take away our Irish orators and journalists, and this would be a dumb and cheerless country indeed. Here, for instance, is an offhand list of Irish writers of the past and present:
Capt. Mayne Reid, the idol of American boys, and a soldier in our War with Mexico; John Boyle O’Reilly, the editor and poet; FitzJames O’Brien, who wrote the famous short story, “The Diamond Lens”; Ignatius Donnelly, the most versatile and picturesque public man of his generation in Minnesota; Edwin Lawrence Godkin, of the New York Evening Post, a fighter in the high realm of national morality; Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution; Patrick Walsh, who was editor of the Augusta Chronicle and represented Georgia in the United States Senate; and Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune.
Among those still living are James Jeffrey Roche, now in the consular service; Joseph Fitzgerald, author and translator; William M. Laffan, proprietor of the New York Sun; George T. Oliver, of the Pittsburg Gazette; Eugene M. O’Neill, of the Pittsburg Dispatch; John McLeod Keating, who won fame by his fight against yellow fever in the South; and John F. Finerty, the eloquent founder of the Chicago Citizen.
Three great publishers of Irish birth have been Mathew Carey, of Philadelphia, the friend of Lafayette; Robert Bonner, founder of the New York Ledger; and Patrick Donahoe, founder of the Boston Pilot and Donahoe’s Magazine. The name of William Desmond O’Brien, too, deserves to be included in this paragraph. Mr. O’Brien was a wealthy contractor of New York who devoted eighteen years of his life to the preparation of an Encyclopedia Hibernica, and who died, broken-hearted, in 1893, with his great project unfinished. Among Irish-American publishers now living, the most notable is P. F. Collier, founder of Collier’s Weekly.
This power of expression, which is typical of the Irish race, rises frequently to the heights of art. The Goddess of Liberty, on the dome of the Capitol at Washington, was chiseled by the hands of Thomas Crawford, who was of Irish parentage, and whose son is the well-known novelist, F. Marion Crawford. Many an American city has been enriched by the genius of Augustus St. Gaudens, one of the best beloved and most eminent of American sculptors. The statue upon which St. Gaudens is now working, in his Vermont studio, is a heroic figure of Parnell for the City of Dublin, St. Gaudens’ birthplace. Among the landscape painters, Edward Gay, of New York, has held a place for forty years; and another veteran artist of Irish birth is William Magrath, who painted “On the Ould Sod”—a clever study of Irish character that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
It is to Dublin, also, that we are indebted for Victor Herbert, our popular conductor and composer, and for Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, the famous band master of Civil War times. There have not been so many Irish singers of operatic rank, although the Irishman who cannot sing at all is as rare as a white blackbird. Probably the most notable was Catherine Hayes, who arrived in this country in 1851, married an American husband and settled in California. Among the best-known dramatic stars of Irish birth now upon the stage are Ada Rehan and James O’Neil, and the elder John Drew was a son of Erin. Andrew Mack and Chauncey Olcott are the most popular of those who portray Irish life.
That the Irish have been in politics goes without saying. In most states they have furnished more than their share, both of bosses and of reformers. Richard Croker, the Tammany Hall leader, and Charles O’Conor, who overthrew the Tweed Ring, fairly represent the two contending forces in American political life. So much has been written indiscriminately of Irish bossism that it is nothing but fair to state that some of the present leaders of the “anti-graft” movement are Mayor Dunne, of Chicago; Mayor Fagan, of Jersey City; District Attorney Moran, of Boston; and Hugh McCaffrey, a member of Mayor Weaver’s cabinet, in Philadelphia. The late Patrick A. Collins, congressman, consul-general in London and mayor of Boston, was for years the foremost Irishman in New England.
In the present Congress there are dozens of members of Irish descent, but only three of Irish birth—Senator Thomas M. Patterson, of Denver, who has been for thirty years a national figure; Representative Bourke Cockran, who is unequaled in the Celtic flow of his eloquence; and Delegate Bernard S. Rodney, of New Mexico. Senator Thomas Kearns, one of the solid pillars of the state of Utah, was born in Canada of Irish parents; and James D. Phelan, the well-known Californian, was the son of a wealthy Irish merchant of San Francisco. Three other public men of Irish birth are Thomas Taggart, of Indianapolis; William McAdoo, of New York; and ex-Governor James E. Boyd, of Nebraska. And no Irishman will ever allow the fact to be forgotten that James G. Blaine, one of the greatest figures in all American political history, was of Irish descent. His great-grandfather, Ephraim Blaine, bore an honorable part in the Revolutionary struggle, and far back in colonial days the Blaines were among the hardiest pioneers of the Cumberland Valley.
Rising to the religious world, we find many noted Irish names, alike in the Protestant and Catholic churches. There are no fewer than twenty-three bishops and five archbishops in this country who learned their first prayers on Irish soil. This may also be said of Cardinal Gibbons, who was born in the United States, but taken to Ireland in infancy. The five archbishops are John M. Farley, John J. Glennon, John Ireland, John Joseph Keane, and Patrick John Ryan. When was there ever before such a distinguished quintet of Johns?
Like St. Gaudens and Herbert, Dr. William S. Rainsford hails from Dublin. Thirty years ago he entered New York an unknown young curate, and proceeded to establish the foremost institutional church in America, having at the present time more than 5,000 members. Unfortunately, overwork has recently compelled him to resign.
Historically, there have been four Irish churchmen who have wielded a great influence in American affairs—Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, who persuaded 600,000 Americans to sign the pledge; Archbishop Hughes, of New York, who was sent to England by President Lincoln during the Civil War; Father Ryan, the poet of the South; and the Rev. John Hall, the pulpit orator of New York.
Nothing can be more absurd than to speak of the Irish as newcomers in America. No one but a resurrected mound-builder would be entitled to do that. For the last thousand years or more, wherever there has been any great enterprise on foot, in the thick of things there have always been men with the shamrock in their hearts. The ship that carried Columbus from the known continent to the unknown had a Galway man aboard—so we are told on good authority. And one of the maps which cheered Columbus forward showed a country across the ocean which was called “Great Ireland.” This far western land had been discovered, it was reported, by St. Brendan, an Irish monk, eight or nine centuries before.
There were a few Irish on the Mayflower, but the first large body arrived about twenty years later. There were five or six hundred of them—a forlorn and pitiful mob, forcibly transported from their native land. Those were the black days of Cromwell, when $25 was paid for the head of a wolf and $50 for the head of a patriot Irishman. In ten years probably 100,000 were driven out, and many of them came to the American colonies.
The first big Irishman in our colonial history was Gov. Thomas Dongan, who gave New York its earliest charter, and who deserves to be called one of the pioneer champions of popular rights in America. The second was the distinguished philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who came from Derry to Rhode Island in 1728, lured by a missionary enterprise that failed. All through the eighteenth century came a steady stream of the exiled Irish—men and women who had been toughened in a terrible school, and who were fit and ready for the perils of the American wilderness. Most of them were from the north of Ireland—from little Ulster, that giant-breeding province whose sons have made history in almost every country of the earth. They were the first across the Alleghanies. They settled Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania. Such men as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Matthew Lyon were their leaders. It was they who colonized Ulster County in New York and Londonderry in New Hampshire. The colonial hero of the Catskills was Timothy Murphy—so wrote Jay Gould in his famous History of Delaware County, published fifty years ago.
When the War of Independence began there were Irish on the firing-line everywhere. They had a personal as well as a colonial grievance against Great Britain; and here was a chance, at last, to even up old scores. A writer of those times describes them as “a hardy, brave, hot-headed race; excitable in temper; unrestrainable in passion; invincible in prejudice. They are impatient of restraint, and rebellious against anything that in their eyes bears the resemblance of injustice. They were the readiest of the ready on the battlefields of the Revolution.” These were not parlor virtues, but they were the kind that founded the American republic. “You lost America by the Irish,” declared Lord Mountjoy in the British Parliament.
In those critical days, while thousands were dilly-dallying, the Irish were hot for action. It was John Sullivan who struck the first blow, four months before the historic skirmish at Lexington, by capturing military stores at Portsmouth. The Sullivan family, of which he was a member, furnished three governors for the young republic. Their mother, in her old age, used to say that she had often worked in the fields carrying the governor of Massachusetts, while the governors of New Hampshire and Vermont tagged at her skirts. The first British warship was captured by an O’Brien; and John Barry became the official father of the American navy by receiving the earliest commission as captain. The first American general to fall was the brilliant Richard Montgomery, whose virtues compelled even Lord North to lament his death. It is an interesting fact, and one of which few are aware, that the three monuments in front of New York’s oldest church—St. Paul’s, on lower Broadway, are in memory of three famous Irishmen—General Montgomery, Thomas Addis Emmet and Dr. William MacNevin, the first scientific chemist of New York.
In 1776 three of the signers were of Irish birth—Matthew Thornton, James Smith and George Taylor. Five others, at least, were of Irish blood—Edward Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Thomas McKean, George Reed and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. The secretary of the assemblage, who read aloud the Declaration on the birth-morning of our republic, was Charles Thompson, Irish born and the son of an evicted farmer. And one of the first societies to back George Washington with men and money was the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Philadelphia, who raised half a million dollars and swung into line with a cheer. Only one of their members objected, and his name was struck from the society’s rolls. Washington was a frequent guest at their banquets and an honorary member, as President Roosevelt is of the same society in New York.
No history of the Revolution is complete without its Irish chapter. What with the dashing work of the Irish Brigade under Count Dillon; with the exploits of Mad Anthony Wayne and General Moylan, the Murat of the Revolutionary cavalry; and with the powerful aid of Burke and Sheridan in England, King George the Third found himself beset by Irishmen from all quarters. There were whole companies of Irishmen who fought for American independence under their own green flag, as loyal to their adopted country as to the land of their birth.
The most typical Irishman of pioneer times was Andrew Jackson, our seventh president. One secret of his greatness lay in the fact that there were many men of his mold and nationality in every American community. It is a fact that should cause every Irish heart to beat with pride that the first American president who rose from the rank and file, without the prestige of aristocratic birth or the polish of education, was the son of a rack-rented exile from Ulster. It may even be true that he was the first in the world’s history to climb so high, not by force of arms, but by the free choice of a free people.
“Old Hickory,” as his soldiers called him, has had no superiors as a popular leader. None of his enemies, and he made many of them, could question his honesty, his sincerity, his courage. He believed that the duty of a government was to protect the weak, curb the strong, and obey public opinion. During his presidency the United States bounded into industrial greatness and international prestige.
Overlapping Jackson came another typical Irishman, equally great in peace and war—Gen. James Shields. This remarkable man climbed to fame by half a dozen various paths. He was the hero of two wars, a judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, a governor of Oregon, and the only American who has had the honor of representing three states in the United States Senate. Like Jackson, he was gentle and chivalrous in private life, and an incarnate fury on the field of battle. His whole career was one of romantic knight errantry and adventure. He was a wit and a maker of epigrams. One of his happiest replies was on one occasion when he was asked to name his greatest victory.
“My greatest victory,” he answered quickly, “was won on the day when my sweetheart, Mary Carr, said ‘Yes.’”
After the terrible famine caused by the failure of the potato crop in 1845 and the following years, the Irish poured into America in mighty hosts. Since that time more than four millions have arrived here, ready with Celtic buoyancy for the battle of life in a new land, and yet almost heart-broken to leave the green fields of their fathers.
“Is it hard to die, Barney?” asked a friend of a dying Irishman.
“It is,” replied Barney; “but not so hard as it was to leave Ireland.”
But they went to work with a laugh and an “Irish hurrah.” Whether they knew it or not, they had arrived when they were most needed. The era of railroads and steamships had begun. Great cities were being built and being rebuilt. The factory system was being established in New England. The iron and steel trade had secured a solid foothold. And so, while the Irish had nothing to offer at first but labor, labor was what the United States was most urgently in need of at that stage of its development.
When the Civil War put American manhood to the test the Irish were everywhere—in the thickets of the Wilderness, at the Bloody Angle of Gettysburg, on the crimson field of Chancellorsville. Standing for state rights—the rights of which John C. Calhoun had been the great exponent—were Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne, Senator Regan, the Texan, and others. Standing for the Union were Sheridan, Meade and Meagher, whose dashing valor is one of our national boasts. Unquestionably “Little Phil” Sheridan deserves a high place, not only among American generals, but among the foremost military commanders of the world. Today, among the retired veterans of the United States Army there are three brigadier-generals of Irish birth—Richard Comba, John J. Coppinger and William Quinton.[[10]] There is also one rear-admiral—Joseph Trilley.
[10]. To these three should be added: Brig. Gen. Bernard J. D. Irwin, Brig. Gen. Michael Cooney, Brig. Gen. James W. Scully, Brig. Gen. Charles P. Eagan, Brig. Gen. William E. Dougherty, Brig. Gen. John R. McGinness and Brig. Gen. John J. O’Connell, all natives of Ireland.
For more than two hundred years the sons of Ireland have been among the pathfinders who prepared the way for the American nation in its mighty sweep from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No region has ever been too remote or perilous to daunt the Irish pioneer. Whoever discovers the North Pole will no doubt find a Kelly or an O’Brien already on the spot. It was Capt. John J. Healy, for instance, who was the commercial discoverer of Alaska; and when the United States first took possession of that frozen country, four of the sixteen white men in its largest settlement were found to be subscribers to the Irish World. Gen. Patrick E. Connor was a trail-maker in Utah, as Philip Nolan and Sam Houston were in Texas. Henry W. Oliver, the late steel king of Pittsburg, who had the most dramatic career of ups and downs that western Pennsylvania has ever known, was the first Pittsburgher to realize fully the value of the Lake Superior iron ore. In consequence, he piled up a forty-million fortune. Missouri had Brian Mullanphy, who left a fortune for the assistance of poor immigrants. In fact, when the history of any western state is written, it will be found that among the army that cleared the way there was always an Irish brigade.
The plain, straight truth about the Western Irish is more wonderful than any fanciful tale woven in the loom of Arabian imagination. Talk about Monte Cristo or Sinbad the Sailor! They are paltry adventurers compared with men like John W. Mackay or Marcus Daly. With his three partners, also Irish—James C. Flood, James G. Fair and William S. O’Brien—John W. Mackay changed the silver markets of the world. Within a comparatively few years these four men took a treasure of $150,000,000 from one hole in the side of a Nevada mountain—the famous Comstock lode. Always ready for big enterprises, Mackay put his millions behind James Gordon Bennett’s dream to link America and Europe together by an Atlantic cable, and drove the scheme ahead to complete success. What Marcus Daly did in Montana was different only in detail. He, too, “grasped the skirts of happy chance” with a grip that landed him and his friends among the most powerful money kings of his generation.
All five of these Irishmen began at the lowest rung of the ladder. They made themselves the leaders in a country of strong and daring men, by being the strongest and most daring of all. And today their children have linked their fathers’ names by marriage with some of the proudest families in the older states—the Oelrichses, Vanderbilts, Duers and Girards, as well as to the princely Colonnas of Italy.
Whether it is the versatile genius of the Emmets of New York; or the fighting pluck of “Bucky” O’Neil, who was killed with the Rough Riders at Santiago; or the sagacity of John Mitchell, who is the leader of 150,000 miners—whether it is the sheer brain force and inventiveness of a Fulton, a Morse or a McCormick, or the quaint and witty wisdom of “Mr. Dooley,” there have always been qualities of the Irish head and the Irish heart that brought honor to the little home-land of the Celt.
“There is nothing negative about the Irish,” said Patrick Ford—which is exactly what anyone who knows the rugged old journalist would have expected him to say. They may be on the wrong side of the quarrel, but one thing is always certain—they are never on the fence. They care little or nothing for obstacles and adverse circumstances. They are the best of friends and the best of enemies—the quickest with either the open hand or the fist—the most loyal to a cause and the most rebellious against a tyranny. They live closest to hope and farthest from despair.
“Why,” said Maurice Healy, an Alaskan fur trader, “I’m only 700 miles from a bank!”
You can bend and twist an Irishman, but you can seldom break him—the records of insanity and suicide prove this. He “works hard in time of peace and fights hard in time of war,” as President Roosevelt has said. Impulsive, daring, constructive, indomitable, the Irishman has done indispensable work in this land of his choice.
“May his shadow never grow less!”—so say we all.