In Rhode Island, Irish people are on record as far back as 1640, and for many years after that date they continued to come. Edward Larkin was an esteemed citizen of Newport in 1655. Charles McCarthy was one of the founders of the town of East Greenwich in 1677, while in this vicinity as early as 1680 are found such names as Casey, Higgins, Magennis, Kelley, Murphy, Reylie, Maloney, Healy, Delaney, Walsh, and others of Irish origin. On the rosters of the Colonial militia who fought in King Philip's war (1675) are found the names of 110 soldiers of Irish birth or descent, some of whom, for their services at the battle of Narragansett, received grants of land in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register for 1848 contains some remarkable testimony of the sympathy of the people of Ireland for the sufferers in this cruel war, and the "Irish Donation," sent out from Dublin in the year 1676, will always stand in history to Ireland's credit and as an instance of her intimate familiarity with American affairs, one hundred years prior to that Revolution which emancipated the people of this land from the same tyranny under which she herself has groaned. And yet, what a cruel travesty on history it reads like now, when we scan the official records of the New England colonies and find that the Irish were often called "convicts", and it was thought that measures should be taken to prevent their landing on the soil where they and their sons afterwards shed their blood in the cause of their fellow colonists! In the minutes of the provincial Assemblies and in the reports rendered to the General Court, as well as in other official documents of the period, are found expressions of the sentiment which prevailed against the natives of the "Island of Sorrows." Only twenty years before the outbreak of King Philip's war, the government of England was asked to provide a law "to prevent the importation of Irish Papists and convicts that are yearly pow'rd upon us and to make provision against the growth of this pernicious evil." And the colonial Courts themselves, on account of what they called "the cruel and malignant spirit that has from time to time been manifest in the Irish nation against the English nation," prohibited "the bringing over of any Irish men, women, or children into this jurisdiction on the penalty of fifty pounds sterling to each inhabitant who shall buy of any merchant, shipmaster, or other agent any such person or persons so transported by them." This order was promulgated by the General Court of Massachusetts in October, 1654, and is given in full in the American Historical Review for October, 1896.
With the "convicts" and the "redemptioners" came the Irish schoolmaster, the man then most needed in America. And the fighting man, he too was to the fore, for when the colonies in after years called for volunteers to resist the tyranny of the British, the descendants of the Irish "convicts" were among the first and the most eager to answer the call.
Although it does not appear that Irish immigrants settled in the Province of New York in such large numbers as in other sections, yet, as far back as the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Irish names are found on the records of the Colony. O'Callaghan, the eminent archivist and historian, refers to "Dr. William Hayes, formerly of Barry's Court, Ireland," as one of New York's physicians in the year 1647, and from the same authority we learn that there were "settlers and Indian fighters in New Netherland" named Barrett, Fitzgerald, Dowdall, Collins, and Quinn in 1657. In records relating to the war with the Esopus Indians (1663), and in fact as early as 1658, frequent references are made to "Thomas the Irishman", whose name was Thomas Lewis, a refugee from Ireland to Holland after the Cromwellian war. Lewis is on record in 1683 as one of the wealthiest merchants of New York and a large owner of real estate in the present downtown portion of the city. Such names as Patrick Hayes, John Daly, John Quigly, and Dennis McKarty appear among its business men between 1666 and 1672, and in a "Census of the City of New York of the year 1703" we find people named Flynn, Walsh, Dooley, Gillen, Carroll, Kenne, Gurney, Hart, Mooney, Moran, Lynch, Kearney, and others, all "Freemen of the City of New York." In the "Poll List" of the city from 1741 to 1761, more than one hundred such names appear, while among the advertisers in the New York newspapers all through the eighteenth century I find a large number of characteristic Irish names.
One would scarcely expect to find an Irishman in the old Dutch settlement of Beverwyck as early as 1645. Yet such is the case, for "Jan Andriessen, de Iersman van Dublingh"—(John Anderson, the Irishman from Dublin)—is mentioned as the owner of considerable landed property in the neighborhood of Albany and Catskill, and in every mention of this ancient pioneer he is referred to as "the Irishman." At Albany, between 1666 and 1690, we find people named Connell, Daly, Larkin, Shaw, Hogan, and Finn, all Irishmen, and in Jonathan Pearson's "Genealogies of the First Settlers of the Ancient County of Albany" and in his "Genealogies of the First Settlers of the Patent and City of Schenectady", I find 135 distinctive Irish names. These were mostly merchants, farmers, artisans, millers, and backwoodsmen, the pioneers, who, with their Dutch neighbors, blazed the trail of civilization through that section, rolled back the savage redman, and marked along the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers the sites of future towns and cities. In the rate lists of Long Island between 1638 and 1675, I find Kelly, Dalton, Whelan, Condon, Barry, Powers, Quin, Kane, Sweeney, Murphy, Reilly, as well as Norman-Irish and Anglo-Irish names that are common to Irish nomenclature. Hugh O'Neale was a prominent resident of Newtown, L.I., in 1655. In a "Report to the Lord President," dated September 6, 1687, Governor Dongan recommended "that natives of Ireland be sent to colonize here where they may live and be very happy." Numbers of them evidently accepted the invitation, for many Irishmen are mentioned in the public documents of the Province during the succeeding twenty years.
That the Irish continued to settle in the Province all through the eighteenth century may be seen from the announcements in the New York newspapers of the time and other authentic records. The most important of these, in point of numbers and character of the immigrants, were those made in Orange County in 1729 under the leadership of James Clinton from Longford, and at Cherry Valley, in Otsego County, twelve years later. On the Orange County assessment and Revolutionary rolls, and down to the year 1800, there is a very large number of Irish names, and in some sections they constituted nearly the entire population. In the northwestern part of New York, Irishmen are also found about the time of the Franco-English war. They were not only among those settlers who followed the peaceful pursuits of tilling and building, but they were "the men behind the guns" who held the marauding Indians in check and repelled the advances of the French through that territory. In this war, Irish soldiers fought on both sides, and in the "Journals of the Marquis of Montcalm" may be seen references to the English garrison at Oswego, which, in August, 1756, surrendered to that same Irish Brigade by which they had been defeated eleven years before on the battlefield of Fontenoy. In the "Manuscripts of Sir William Johnson", are also found some interesting items indicating that Irishmen were active participants in the frontier fighting about that time, and in one report to him, dated May 28, 1756, from the commandant of an English regiment, reference is made to "the great numbers of Irish Papists among the Delaware and Susquehanna Indians who have done a world of prejudice to English interests."
The early records, with hardly an exception, contain Irish names, showing that the "Exiles from Erin" came to the Province of New York in considerable numbers during the eighteenth century. The baptismal and marriage records of the Dutch Reformed and Protestant churches of New York City; of the Dutch churches at Kingston, Albany, Schenectady, and other towns; the muster rolls of the troops enrolled for the French, Indian, and Revolutionary wars; the Land Grants and other provincial records at Albany; the newspapers; the Town, County, and family histories, and other early chronicles, supplemented by authoritative publications such as those of the New York Historical and Genealogical and Biographical Societies—these are the depositories of the evidence that thousands of Irish people settled in the Province of New York and constituted no inconsiderable proportion of the total population.
The majority of the Irish residents of New York whose marriages are recorded in the Dutch Reformed church were, doubtless, of the Catholic faith, but, as it was necessary to comply with the established law, and also so that their offspring might be legitimate, they could be bound in wedlock only by a recognized Minister of the Gospel. As there was no Catholic church in New York prior to 1786, the ceremony had to be performed in the Dutch Reformed or Protestant church. Many of these Catholics were refugees from Ireland on account of the religious persecutions. Like the people of Ireland in all ages, they were devoted to their religion, and while, no doubt, they eschewed for a while association with the established churches, yet, as time went on, they and their children were gradually drawn into religious intercourse with the other sects, until eventually they became regular communicants of those churches. The variations which from time to time were wrought in their names brought them further and further away from what they had been; in their new surroundings, both social and religious, they themselves changed, so that their children, who in many cases married into the neighboring Dutch and French families, became as wholly un-Irish in manner and sentiment as if they had sprung from an entirely different race. That fact, however, does not admit of their being now included in the category "Anglo-Saxon."
In a work entitled "Names of Persons for whom Marriage Licenses were issued by the Secretary of the Province of New York, previous to 1784," compiled by Gideon J. Tucker (when Secretary of State), and taken from the early records of the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, we find ample corroboration of the church records. Page after page of this book looks more like some record of the Province of Munster than of the Province of New York. It is a quarto volume printed in small type in double columns, and there are eleven pages wholly devoted to persons whose names commence with "Mac" and three to the "O's." Nearly every name common to Ireland is here represented.