There were probably other Irish people eating roasting ears in the Blue Grass region one year before the Declaration of Independence was read in Philadelphia, but their names have not been preserved. Certain it is that the people living in this settlement, first peopled by the Shannons and the Jordans, as soon as they heard of the Revolutionary battle of Lexington, Mass., named their settlement after that battle. They were certainly not English sympathizers to do this.
In 1775 Ben. Logan settled where the town of Stanford is. Both his father and mother were born in Ireland. Logan was a companion of Boone. He planted the first corn in what is now known as Lincoln county, was a colonel in the militia, and was one of the most daring of the early pioneers.
Daniel Boone, in 1775, found in Powell’s Valley, Richard Hogan, Hugh McGarry, Thomas Denton, and their families. These located afterwards at Harrodstown. Mrs. McGarry and Mrs. Hogan were the first white women to go up Salt river, which historic stream is now so frequently mentioned in connection with the defeated candidates after elections. The Hogans and the McGarrys have frequently “gone up Salt river” since, figuratively speaking, but the Indians were not waiting for them on the banks with a tomahawk as they were for Mrs. Hogan and Mrs. McGarry in 1775.
People of Irish birth or extraction were pioneers in the educational line in this commonwealth, even before the Declaration of Independence. Bishop Spalding, in his notes on Kentucky, says that Mrs. William Coomes, an excellent Catholic lady, taught school in Harrodsburg in 1775. This was before a church or a court was opened in Kentucky. Smith, the historian, though not a Catholic, agrees with Bishop Spalding, and says that “in the year 1775 Dr. Hart and William Coomes settled Drennon Spring in Henry county, but afterward moved to Harrod’s Station. Dr. Hart practised medicine, and Mrs. William Coomes opened a school for children.” “Thus,” he observes, “the first physician and the first school teacher in Kentucky were both Catholics.” Whether they were Irish or not they got the credit as being of that race, as did all the Presbyterian Irish in the early history of the state get the reputation of being Scotch.
Joseph Doniphan taught school in Booneboro in 1779, and the children of Daniel Boone were his pupils. Nothing is known of his early history, but it has been asserted that his proper name was Donavon, and was corrupted into Doniphan or Doniphant.
A writer with the leisure and means could strike a rich field in looking up the names of the Irish connected with the early settlement of the state, and it is no exaggeration to say that seventy-five per cent. were of that nationality.
REV. RICHARD HENEBRY, Ph. D.,
Professor of Keltic Languages and Literature, Catholic University, Washington, D.C.
HON. EDWIN D. McGUINNESS,
Ex-Secretary of State, Rhode Island; ex-Mayor of Providence.