Hon. John C. Linehan spoke briefly, saying: “I think there is not a prouder title than that of American citizen. I am proud of it. I glory in it. But as I believe that a man who cannot love his mother cannot love his wife, a man who is false to the land of his birth can never be true to the land of his adoption. New Hampshire presents a rich field for the society’s research.
“Our first governor was an Irishman. Darby Field, an Irish soldier, discovered the White Mountains, and there was not a battle of the French and Indian wars in which Irish blood was not spilt just as freely as in the battles of the Civil War.
“If we do our work, the American people, of whatever birth, will put the present Scotch-Irish myth where it belongs.”
Joseph Smith, secretary of the Lowell Police Board, urged work on the part of every member. “We cannot deal in hurrah business,” he said. “We must produce the cold documents and facts that no one can dispute, and eliminate from history its imaginary and fictitious bluffs. All must work in investigation in their own towns and vicinity. We must organize in every town and city, and every year have a meeting of this parent society to garner and publish our discovered and compiled facts. This cold documentary evidence cannot be disputed, and falsehood and fiction will cease.”
Osborne Howes, the seventh in line from an Irish settler of Cape Cod, said it was not so much a matter of self-laudation, but to create a spirit in the people. He believed in the necessity of a race living up to its ideal, and the higher the ideal could be placed the better for all of the race; they will have something to look forward to, something to eliminate.
Paul Du Chaillu heartily endorsed the purpose as a most laudable one. “But don’t be self-laudable,” he advised, “you want the facts, the truth; unearth the truth for truth’s sake; present it to the world and don’t be afraid of opposition. Defy it.”
Charles A. De Courcey, of Lawrence, spoke of the feeling and experience and slurs cast upon every school child of Irish parentage in the past, and to some extent to-day. “We were foreign. We did not feel at home. But we began to know. We began to feel at home. We learned of our race’s participation in the up-building of the nation. We will prove our part in America’s history; then the children as Americans can feel as Americans.”
The Rev. John J. McCoy, in an able speech, declared: “The records are so honorable that, although it is rather late to make the start, we all ought to find very pleasant work in assisting to look them up.”
Editor George H. Moses, of the Concord Monitor, Senator Chandler’s paper, ex-Mayor Hugh J. Carroll, of Pawtucket, and Hon. P. J. Flatley, of Boston, made speeches, urging the conduct of the research with true historic spirit.
Mr. Flatley, in his impromptu speech, handled the “Scotch-Irish” myth without gloves.