The Dooleys, Pattersons, Glennans, Kevills, Barrys, O’Connors, Fitzgeralds, Keans, Rheas, Kendricks, Kellys, McChesneys, Goolricks, Wards, Higgins, Doyles, Lawlers, Rafters, Ferriters, McKenneys, McCrackens, Youngs, Coles, Macgills, O’Bannons, Irvings, Irwins, Nolans, O’Sullivans, Sullivans, Walshs, O’Neills, Kanes, Murphys, Ryans and a hundred others, came largely during the present century. Perhaps most of these families left Ireland in the great exodus which followed the famine of 1846–’47. Certainly Virginia received about that time the greatest number of immigrants who, unfortunately for themselves and for their race, have preferred for the most part to lead urban lives. But they and their progeny have not failed to leave the impress of their character upon the people among whom their lot was cast.
And it is not too much to say that in the years to come, when, in the expiring hours of the twentieth century, some chronicler pauses to consider the virtues and deeds of Virginians, he will dwell in loving admiration upon the talents and traits of those of Irish blood, who have already made bricks without straw, and won the confidence and esteem of their neighbors.
They are a people whose genius under the ægis of the Constitution enjoys here that freedom of thought and liberty of action which have been denied their fathers for eight hundred years—who love the Republic and its institutions next only to their God, and who read their own happiness and the fulfilment of all their earthly hopes in the increasing and enduring glory thereof.
Capt. Page McCarty, of Richmond, Va., writes: “I learned something of Irish-Americans from the papers of my father, governor of Florida at one time, and member of congress in 1839. The ‘Scotch-Irish’ appear to have established a theory of pre-emption or monopoly, and of that I learned but little. O’Brien, of General Washington’s staff, was from Alexandria, Va. Colonels McClanahan and Andrew Wagoner and Maj. Richard McCarty, of the Revolution, were descendants of a small group of Irishmen who named the little town of Kinsale on the Potomac about 1662. Daniel McCarty, speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1715, was of this set of people, and grandson of McCarty, of Clenclare, though I see that some of his kin are trying to Scotch-Irish him also. The main immigration of Irish was through Philadelphia and Charleston, S. C., and they penetrated to the mountains with the most adventuresome pioneers and met in the valley that extends from the Peaks of Otter to the headwaters of the Tennessee river.”
MR. BERNARD CORR,
Boston, Mass.
MR. EDMUND REARDON
Cambridge, Mass.
HON. PAUL KENDRICKEN,
Boston, Mass.