Another Irishman, Charles Macarty (McCarthy), was one of the founders in 1677 of our town of East Greenwich. The town of Warren in this state was named in honor of an Irishman, Sir Peter Warren, whose deeds of valor no word of ours need chronicle.
Irish Rhode Islanders are heard from in the capture of Louisburg, and there the bones of some of them repose to this day.
The Revolution found among its most ardent supporters in Rhode Island men of Irish lineage. The Blacks, the Dorrances, the Sterlings, the Larkins, and a host of other people of Hibernian origin are evidence of this.
General Knox, a member of the Boston Charitable Irish Society, was here during the early part of the Revolution; Gen. John Sullivan, son of the Irish schoolmaster, commanded the Rhode Island Department for a considerable period, and was in command of the patriot forces at the siege of Newport and the battle that ensued. His brother James, the Governor of Massachusetts, received in after years the degree of LL.D. from Brown University.
You see, therefore, gentlemen, that Rhode Island is rich in historic material for your society. The shaft needs but be sunk to bring the treasures to the surface. Your coming here on this occasion helps to sink it.
We Rhode Islanders are very proud of our little state. That much of the Irish chapter in the history of this state is but little known we acknowledge and regret.
Yet some of it we do know. We recall many noble men that Ireland has given us—Berkeley, McSparran, Brown, Jackson, and the rest. We recall the Irishman Wilson, who was head of one of the first free schools opened in Providence, and of those other Irish schoolmasters here at an early day—Kelly, Reilly, Knox, Phelan. May their memory be in benediction!
We know, too, that Irish blood was not wanting in the veins of Perry and of Burnside. At least two of our governors could truthfully claim an Irish ancestry on the one side or the other, and at least three of our secretaries of state. We know that at the founding of Rhode Island College, now Brown University, the first funds for the institution came from Ireland, generously contributed by Irish men and women.
We are aware that many people of Irish extraction have married into families of other extractions, some of these families representing the oldest in the state. Thus we learn from the colonial and state records that a Mahoney wedded an Olney, that a McGowan married an Angell, that a McCarthy married a Maxson, that a Connor became the wife of a Robinson, a McLoughlin the wife of a Steere, a Murphy the husband of a Pitman. We see, moreover, that Prudence Mathewson became Mrs. Kelley, that Harriet Thayer became Mrs. Patrick Brown, that Rachel Aldrich wedded David Flynn.
Patrick Cunningham, the records show, was married in Providence to Mary Goddard; Sally Mahoney became the wife of Asa Capron. The records further show the marriage of persons bearing the following names: Heffernan and Coggeshall, Flanagan and Cornell, Riley and Sabin, Fallon and Cook, Connor and Odlin, Burke and Greene, Kenney and Chadwick, Mulholland and Hooper, Hurlihy and Thorp, Carroll and Slater, O’Brien and Newcome, McGee and Perkins, Donohue and Sutleff, Egan and Wilson, and a long list of others.