James Curry was the name of one of Clark’s soldiers who proved himself a rather extraordinary fellow, and a fearless pioneer. A band of Indians had wounded a comrade of his named Levi Teel, in his own house, when Curry was present. Seeing the enemy coming he jumped up into the loft of the house, with the hope of driving them away before Teel could have time to open the door to admit them. He shot three times and killed an Indian every time. He then got down to see what had happened to Teel, and found him transfixed by one of his hands with a spear to the floor. Curry got up again into the loft and tumbled the whole roof down, weight-poles and all, on the Indians, who were standing at the door with spears in their hands. Their chief was killed, and the others ran away.
Curry hurried to Kaskaskia for help, and at last saved himself and companions from death. He was at the capture of Fort Gage and Sackville, the names given by the British to the old French forts. Curry was a great athlete, contending in all sorts of games, and was not unlike Thomas Higgins, another great Irish Indian-fighter of a later date. In all desperate and hazardous services, Clark chose him first of all, to act in places of peril and danger. Curry and Joseph Anderson, who afterwards lived and died on Nine Mile Creek, Randolph county, went out hunting, and the Indians, it is supposed, killed Curry, as he went out from their camp and never returned. This was the sad end of one of our bravest and most patriotic Irish-American heroes, “the noble-hearted James Curry,” as he is styled in history, and whose services were so conspicuous in the conquest of Illinois. His body was never recovered.
Edward Bulger was a private in Capt. Joseph Bowman’s company in the Illinois campaign. He was afterwards an ensign in Capt. William Harrod’s expedition against Vincennes, and in General Clark’s first expedition against the Indians in Ohio. He was mortally wounded in the battle of Blue Licks, 1782, at which time he had been promoted to the rank of major. He was one of the early explorers of Kentucky, where he was with Hite, Bowman, and others in the spring of 1775. These were probably the first white visitors to what subsequently became Warren county. Hugh Lynch was another of this party, and William Buchanan another. Daniel Murray was the name of an Irishman who supplied provisions for Clark’s Illinois army.
One of the forgotten heroic men who did great service to the republic in the Revolutionary War was Oliver Pollock, an Irishman born. He performed the same kind of service in the West that Robert Morris performed in the East. He financed General Clark’s military campaign in Illinois and Indiana, and without his aid they must have been failures. He was born in Ireland in the year 1737 and came to America with his father. On account of his intimacy with General O’Reilly, who was then governor of Cuba, he was able to borrow from the royal treasury of Spain the sum of $70,000, which he lent to the state of Virginia for Clark’s use in the campaigns mentioned. He was not reimbursed, and consequently was not able to make good what he had borrowed, which caused his arrest and imprisonment in Havana. He died in Mississippi in 1823.
In 1777, when Clark was approaching Kaskaskia to surprise the British, then in possession of the fort, he took two men from a party of American hunters led by one John Duff, that he met on the way, to act as his spies. They had left Kaskaskia but a few days before. These men were James Moore and Thomas Dunn, as to whose nationality, from their names, there can be no mistake.
General St. Clair, a Scotsman, was afterwards military commander of the Northwest. He was succeeded by General Anthony (Mad Anthony) Wayne, who conducted the war with the Indians in 1791. Under St. Clair the battle of Fort Henry was fought and resulted in a great American disaster. But General Wayne gained a great victory at the Maumee Rapids on August 20, 1794, which led to the suspension of hostilities.
One of the authorities that we had recourse to in writing these annals is the “Pioneer History of Illinois,” by ex-Governor John Reynolds, a man of Irish parentage, born in Pennsylvania, and who filled nearly every office, legislative, judicial, and administrative, in the state of Illinois. His place of residence was Cahokia, a short distance north of St. Louis, on the Illinois side.
John Reynolds in his “Pioneer Days,” described his father as “an Irishman who hated England with a ten horse-power,” and there is no surmise in saying that he himself hated her just as much, as he was an ardent admirer of “Old Hickory.” Neither did he want to be set down as an Anglo-Saxon. He repulsed the insinuation in the following emphatic language:
“Our old enemies, the English, and their American friends, give us the name of new Anglo-Saxons. It is true the most of the Americans are the descendants of Europeans, but the preponderance of blood is not of the Anglo-Saxon race. There are more of the descendants of the Irish and Germans in the United States than of the English.” If that were true seventy years ago, certainly it is so to a far greater extent now.
We have already alluded, in connection with Curry’s achievements as an Indian fighter, to the name of Tom Higgins. One of his noted encounters with Indians is described in Governor Reynolds’ book, with thrilling effect. This noted Irish-American pioneer resided in Fayette county for many years, where he raised a large family, and died in 1829. He received a pension, pursued farming, and at one time was doorkeeper of the general assembly at Vandalia.