In addition to the encomiums passed upon him both by Catholic and Protestant historians, the following, from De Courcy and Shea's Catholic Church in the United States, is here inserted:
"This able governor was not long enough in office to realize all his plans for the good of the colony, where he had expended, for the public good, most of his private fortune. In this, as in many other points, the Catholic Governor Dongan forms a striking contrast with the mass of colonial rulers, who sought their own profit at the expense of the countries submitted to them. To Dongan, too, New York is indebted for the convocation of the first legislative assembly, the colony having been, till then, ruled and governed at the good pleasure of the governor; and this readiness to admit the people to a share in the government is a fact which the enemies of James II. should not conceal in their estimate of that Catholic monarch."
Mr. Moore gives us the following particulars in his note, cited among the authorities to this article:
"This nobleman died without issue. His estates in America were settled chiefly on three nephews, John, Thomas, and Walter Dongan. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Vaughan Dongan, of the third battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, who died of wounds received in an attack on the British posts on Staten Island, in August, 1777, was son of the last-mentioned gentleman. John Charlton Dongan, another collateral relative of the Earl of Limerick, represented Richmond County in the New York Assembly, from 1786 to 1789. Representatives of this ancient family are still to be found in New York."
[NOTE.—The above article is condensed from a forthcoming work of Mr. R. H. Clarke, to be entitled, Lives of Eminent Catholics of the United States.]
Beethoven
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