Barney Corrigan, with his wife and ten children, came to Quincy in 1840 from Tyrone County, Ireland. In 1843 he settled on a farm southeast of the city, purchased from a soldier of 1812 an Irishman by the name of Constantine Clark. His children all married after coming to America, and had large families, excepting Edward, who died a few years after his arrival. The old homestead is still in the family, having passed from Barney Corrigan to his son James, who raised a family of seven sons and two daughters. James occupied the farm for fifty-three years, and at his death it passed to his son Daniel, whose brother, James B. Corrigan, has been Treasurer of Adams County for two terms of four years and deputy treasurer for several terms.
Among the steamboats running from St. Louis on the upper Mississippi between 1827 and 1836 which were owned or commanded by Irishmen were the following: The Omega, by Captain Rafferty; the Shamrock, by Captain May; the Emerald, the Gypsy and the O’Connell, by the Reynolds Brothers, and the Josephine, by Captain Clark.
Our subject has run away with us and has taken us far beyond the limits we designed when we commenced these notes. The field occupied by the Irish-American pioneers of the upper Mississippi Valley, in even the vicinity of Quincy, is not exhausted by these notes.
REV. FRANCIS MAKEMIE—THE PAUL OF SEAGIRT ACCOMAC, THE KNOX OF CHESAPEAKE, AND FOUNDER OF ORGANIZED PRESBYTERIANISM IN AMERICA.
BY REV. HAVERGAL SHEPPARD, D. D., MINISTER OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH AT SCHENECTADY, N. Y.
Just fifty-five years after the accession of the House of Stuart to the British Crown; years born of those awful times of the Reformation, when men hated each other for their creed rather than for their conduct; in the year in which Cromwell died, 1658, Francis Makemie was born in that little out of the way village of the north of Ireland, Ramelton, County Donegal.
That beautiful arm of the Atlantic, called by the natives Lough Swilly, lay hard by his home and undoubtedly many were the times as a boy he played on its shores or swam in its clear, cool waters.
Like many of the world’s great preachers, he became hopefully pious at the age of fifteen, according to his own testimony in his answer to Keith’s “Libel Against a Catechism,” published by Francis Makemie, in Boston, 1694, he says:
“’Ere I received the imposition of hands in that Scriptural and orderly separation with my holy and ministerial calling, that I gave requiring satisfaction to Godly, learned and judicious, discerning men, of a work of grace and conversion, wrought in my heart at fifteen years of age, by and from the pains of a Godly schoolmaster; who used no small diligence in gaining tender souls to God’s service and fear.”
At seventeen he was enrolled in the University of Glasgow in the third class, with the ministry in view. Next we see him, January 28th, 1860, appearing before the Presbytery of Laggan at St. Johnstown, Ireland, with a recommendation from his Pastor, Mr. Thomas Drummond, and so began his theological training and examination; from time to time he presents himself before the Presbytery and is examined by a competent committee.