“The Irish homes of Illinois,
The happy homes of Illinois,
No landlord there
Can cause despair,
Nor blight our fields in Illinois!”
THE IRISH VANGUARD OF RHODE ISLAND.
BY THOMAS HAMILTON MURRAY, BOSTON, MASS.
Irish settlers are found in Rhode Island at a very early period. They were contemporaneous with Roger Williams, John Clark, William Coddington, and other leading men and proved sturdy, energetic members of the community.
Some of these Irish pioneers doubtless came to Rhode Island as soldiers in the Indian wars, and when the latter were over “remained and went not away.” Others, in all probability, came as settlers from St. Kitts, Jamaica, Montserrat, and Barbadoes. During Cromwell’s atrocious regime in Ireland thousands of Irish were transported not only to the continent of North America but also to the West Indies. Other thousands followed them, forced from home by the iniquitous English policy of extermination.
It is not at all unlikely that Rhode Island received many of these hardy refugees and became to them a land of asylum and a permanent home. Nor can it reasonably be doubted that Connecticut, Plymouth and “the Bay” likewise contributed Irish settlers to Rhode Island at early periods and in goodly numbers. In “Winthrop’s Journal,” under date of 1635, is an entry indicating that even as early as that a considerable immigration from Ireland to New England was under way. Thus readeth the entry: