In 1611 it is estimated at about two hundred and eighty persons. In 1616 it increased to about four hundred. In 1618 it had increased to six hundred. In 1619 it had dropped to about four hundred. The census of 1620 gives it as eight hundred and eighty-seven. In 1621 it fell to eight hundred and forty-three. In 1622 it had increased to one thousand two hundred and forty, and in 1624 it was reduced to eleven hundred.
An idea can here be formed of the struggles of the first settlers of the Old Dominion against disease, famine, and the attacks of the Indians. In 1621 or 1622, the year is in dispute, there was a terrible massacre of the settlers by the Indians, the number of killed being given as “three hundred and forty-seven men, women and children.”
If names are any indication of the nativity of the bearers, the first Irish settlers arrived in Virginia during this troublesome period. Their condition in the colony could not be much worse than it was in their native land, for about that time the long struggle for the possession of the land, beginning with the Reformation, had taken root, not to end until the war between William and James.
In Hotten’s Original Lists of emigrants, among others is published the names of the following persons arriving in Virginia between 1616 and 1624: John Higgins, John Cannon, John Collins, John Healey, Francis Downing, John Fludd, Tege Lane, “of Corke in Ireland”; Tege Williams, “Irishman”; John French, of Washford “(Wexford) in Ireland”; Thomas Cawsey (Casey), James Connor, James Dore, Ann Mighill, John Duffee, Thomas Doughtie (Dougherty); John Moore, Giles Martin, Thomas Jordan, Francis Butler, Thomas Burns, “and Bridget, his wife”; Thomas Dunn, Edmund Blaney, John Burroughs, “and Bridget, his wife”; John Griffin, William Lacey, Alice Kean, Thomas Farley, A. Conoway, Hugh Hughes, Bryan Rogers, William Joyce, John Haney, Elizabeth Haney, Peter Jordan, Luke Boyse, Thomas Oage, his wife and son.
Some, undoubtedly, of the foregoing came here as the servants of English landed proprietors in Ireland, and there is no doubt that others came as actual settlers, for there is mention later of grants of land to some of them. Let that be as it may, however, here was quite an addition to the scant population of the colony of a liberal mixture of Irish blood with that of the early English settlers.
On the same authority, Hotten, there was a large increase of the same blood some years later, in 1635. Hotten copied his lists from the originals preserved in England. Many of the originals were either lost, mutilated, or destroyed. In consequence, they are incomplete. The period thus partly covered is between 1600 and 1700. The following names are published among hundreds of others in the lists as arriving in Virginia during the year 1635: Richard Hughes, Garrett Riley, Miles Riley, James Bryan, Thomas Murphie, Christopher Carroll, Philip Connor, Jo Dunn.
As the ages of the foregoing are given and the average was twenty years, it is fair to presume that they came over as servants. They are followed by Richard Fleming, Charles McCartee, Owen McCartee, Bryan McGowan, Patrick Breddy, Bryan Glynn, John Neale, William Redman, William Hart, Elizabeth Riley, Daniel Flood, William Hickey, John Herron, Edward Hughes, James Morfey, Robert Bryan, Dennis Hoggan (Hogan), Jo Dermott, Jo Butler, Jo O’Mullen, Charles Gibbon, Richard Kirby, Humphrey Buckley, Olough Berne, Daniel Vaughan, Bryan Hare, Thomas Connier (Connor), Jo Tullie, Donough Gorkie, Gerald Butler, John Griffin, Thomas Purcell, John Duffy, Edmund Butler, James Gavett and John Gavett, “Irishmen”; James Fenton, Thomas Dunn.
Hotten’s book also contains many names, Irish in appearance, of persons who went to Barbadoes during the same period, or later, and states that permission had been given many of them to go to New England and other parts of the English colonies between 1635 and 1680. That many availed themselves of the opportunity, and migrated to Virginia is evident from the names printed in colonial records and the state publications. That the greater part were useful citizens, and not a few of their descendants filled positions of honor and emolument in Virginia, and in the territories settled by her people, is quite clear.
Thomas Jordan, bearing the name both given and proper, borne by one of the emigrants of 1624, was a sheriff of Nansemond county, in 1718, and a public-spirited citizen.
Col. Fleming, a namesake of another of these sturdy immigrants, bore an honorable part in civil and military affairs before and after the Revolution, and has frequent mention in the publications treating of those stirring times.