The following was Pontiac’s reply: “Father, we have all smoked together out of this peace pipe, and as the great Spirit has brought us together for good, I declare to all the nations that I have made peace with the English. In the presence of all the tribes now assembled I take the king of England for my father and dedicate this to his use that henceforth we may visit him and smoke together in peace.”
The object of Croghan’s visit being thus accomplished he was prepared to depart, but before doing so he exacted a promise from Pontiac that the following spring he would appear at Oswego and enter into a treaty with Sir William Johnson in behalf of the Western nations associated with him in the late war.
In September, 1768, came John Wilkins, lieutenant-colonel of “His Majesty’s Eighteenth or Royal Regiment of Ireland,” and commandant throughout the Illinois country. Several companies of this regiment came with him from Philadelphia and occupied quarters at Kaskaskia. The experience of those troops was not good, but it was common to that of all new comers in the aguish “American Bottom.” The sickness among them was not only very great, but very fatal. At one time, out of five companies only a corporal and six men were found fit for duty.
Capt. Hugh Lord became the next commander of the Royal Irish regiment, and continued so until the year 1775. The British governor at Kaskaskia at this time was a Chevalier Rocheblave, strange to say, a Frenchman. It was at this time that the colonists began to defy George III, and the Irish soldiers of the old French outposts were persistent in showing sympathy for them, and their leaning toward the American cause was such that poor old Rocheblave declared it worried him to see men of British birth giving him more trouble than the French. After a time most of the Irish soldiers of Britain were drawn off for service elsewhere, and the French residents were organized into militia. Their captain was one Richard McCarty, a resident of Cahokia. There was another McCarty who built a water mill on the Cahokia creek near Illinoistown at a later date, who was known as “English McCarty.”
In 1777 Irish-Americans began to appear on the scene, with the invasion of Gen. George Rogers Clark, the Virginian. What Clark’s ancestry was remains in some doubt. His biographer, English, thinks his ancestors came from Albion, but is able to give no particulars. At any rate, he conquered that portion of British territory that had formerly belonged to the French, and from which five sovereign states of the Union have been carved. His army was composed of Virginians and Pennsylvanians, many of whom were Irish either by birth or by blood. He was materially assisted by the French settlers, under the leadership of Father Gibault, the republican priest of Kaskaskia. To the latter and one Col. Francis Vigo, a native of Sardinia, who was married to an Irish lady (a Miss Shannon), was the success of the Virginian invasion mostly due, and the annexation of the prairie country to American territory.
Clark affiliated very closely with the Irish. It is due to him to say that he was a brave and generous man, whose services to his young country can never be forgotten. His invasion of this wilderness and its conquest, it must be remembered, was under the direction of Gov. Patrick Henry of Virginia, and to him alone he was responsible. The first of his Irish relatives to deserve notice was William Croghan, a nephew of Maj. George Croghan, the British officer already alluded to. He cherished no love in his heart for Great Britain or her monarch. He had resigned the British for the American service. He left Ireland for America when quite young, and was long in the employ of the British as an Indian agent, like his uncle. He joined the American forces at Pittsburg and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He married Lucy Clark Rogers, sister of the famous general. When he joined the American forces he was assigned to Colonel Werder’s Virginia regiment, shortly after the battle of Long Island, and continued in active service for years.
He was promoted to the rank of major in 1778, and was assigned to Col. John Neville’s Fourth Virginia regiment and participated in the battle of Monmouth. He marched with the Virginia troops to Charleston, S. C., where the whole American army at that place was compelled to surrender to the enemy. In 1781 he was paroled and went to Virginia with his friend, Col. Jonathan Clark, brother of the general, and for a time was the guest of Colonel Clark’s father in Caroline county. It was there he met the woman who was destined to be his wife. He was afterwards a delegate to the Kentucky convention of 1789–’90, and was one of the commissioners to divide the land allotted to the soldiers engaged in the conquest of the Northwest. He left six sons and two daughters.
One of his daughters became the wife of Thomas Jessup, adjutant-general, U. S. A. His son George married a Miss Livingston, of the noted New York family. This son George greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, and subsequently in the Mexican War. He was a major at the time of his defense of Fort Stephenson at Lower Sandusky, and Congress presented him with a medal for his gallantry. A splendid monument has been erected to his memory at Fremont, Ohio. The elder Croghan died in 1822, and his widow in 1838.
Frances Eleanor Clark, youngest daughter of the old hero, married Dr. James O’Fallon, whom the memoir says was a finely-educated Irishman who came to America shortly before the Revolution. He was an officer during the War for Independence, and was the founder of the well-known O’Fallon family of St. Louis, which has been so conspicuous in the history of that great city. There is also a town named after one of the members of this family in St. Clair county, this state. To his two grandsons, John and Benjamin O’Fallon, General Clark willed 3,000 acres of land.
Another nephew and heir of the general was George Rogers Clark Sullivan, who was honorably identified with Indian affairs during the territorial period, and who left a long line of prominent descendants, after one of which is named Sullivan county in that state.