Owen Higgins was a resident of Newport, R. I., very early. His wife was born in 1640. In 1701, his son Richard is recorded as a freeman in Newport.
Charles MacCarthy, a Founder of East Greenwich, R. I.
Charles MacCarthy was a resident of Rhode Island in 1677. When he came to the colony is unknown. He resided on the island of St. Christopher, otherwise known as St. Kitts, before arriving in Rhode Island, a fact mentioned in his will. Some of the recording clerks of those days were not particularly brilliant in writing proper names, Irish or otherwise. They appear to have in a way adopted the phonetic idea of spelling, that is, according to sound. But it frequently happened that some names sounded differently to different clerks and thus, as in the case of Charles MacCarthy, we have a variety of spelling. At the same time it should be said, in justice to the clerks, that there were instances, no doubt, when they should not be held responsible for variations that appear. Orthography was not fixed then as now.
The Rhode Island pioneer of whom we are treating has had his name rendered as Macarte, Macarta, Macarty, Mackarte, and Mecarty. In his will it is “Macarte,” but whether that was the form authorized by him, or whether it was the work of the clerk who drew up the will, cannot now be determined. The same name applied to other early Rhode Island people is also recorded as Maccartee and McCartie. The style “Mac Carthy,” used, for the sake of uniformity, in the caption of this paper, and in the text, is that common to the MacCarthys Mor, the MacCarthys Reagh, the MacCarthys Glas, and other grand divisions of this great Irish clan.
Charles, the Rhode Island settler, had a brother who went from Ireland to Spain. This brother had been exiled and may have been among the Irish troops who, in 1652, after surrendering to Cromwell and Ireton, were allowed to depart and enlist in the Spanish service. These troops embarked for Spain at Kinsale, Waterford, Galway, Limerick, and Bantry. With them also went many of the Irish nobility and gentry who had been ruthlessly dispossessed of their estates. In more propitious times some of these exiles returned from Spain. Charles’s brother did so and from Kinsale wrote to Charles whom he supposed to be still in St. Christopher, urging him to return to Ireland. But Charles had, in the meantime, left St. Christopher and was probably then in Rhode Island. Though long delayed, the letter finally reached its destination, but Charles never went back nor, it is believed, did he and his brother ever meet again.
In 1677, Charles was one of a party of forty-eight settlers to whom a grant of five thousand acres, to be called East Greenwich, was made by the general assembly of Rhode Island. The grant was awarded largely for services rendered during King Philip’s War (1675–’76). This would seem to indicate that Charles MacCarthy had been a participant in that war and it is quite within the bounds of probability that he had seen military service, too, in the Old Land. At a session of the general assembly held at Newport, R. I., May, 1677, it was
Ordered that a certain tract of land in some convenient place in the Narragansett country, shall be laid forth into one hundred acre shares, with the house lots, for the accommodation of so many of the inhabitants of this Colony as stand in need of land, and the General Assembly shall judge fit to be supplied.
It was likewise enacted that the said tract be laid forth to contain 5,000 acres. Of this, 500 were to be laid in some place near the sea, as convenient as may be for a town, which said 500 acres “shall be divided into 50 house lots and the remainder of the 5,000, being 4,500, shall be divided into 50 equal shares or great divisions.”
It was further decreed that the persons to whom the grant was made have the rights, liberties, and privileges of a town; also “that they, or so many of them as shall be then present, not being fewer than twelve, on the said land, [are] required and empowered to meet together upon the second Wednesday in April next and constitute a town meeting, by electing a Moderator and a Town Clerk, with such constables as to them shall seem requisite; and also to choose two persons their Deputies to sit in General Assembly, and two persons, one to serve on the Grand Jury, and one on the Jury of Trials in the General Court of Trials.”
Thus was launched the town of East Greenwich. The founders, no doubt, included “men from all parts,” and if names may be taken as a criterion several of them, in addition to Charles MacCarthy, were from Ireland. The date of the incorporation of the town was October 31, 1677, the year following the close of King Philip’s War and the overthrow of the Narragansetts. Later, the boundaries of the town were enlarged by the addition of 35,000 acres on the western border. Facing a great bay, it was hoped by the founders that the town might in time equal or surpass Newport or Providence. In 1741, the town was divided and the western part incorporated as West Greenwich. Both towns exist to-day, East Greenwich with a population of about 3,000, and West Greenwich with a population of between 600 and 700.