To go back a little before the founding of the college, history tells us of eight Irish schoolmasters who taught in Rhode Island during the eighteenth century. Rev. James MacSparran, Rev. Marmaduke Brown, Stephen Jackson, “Old Master” Kelly, Knox, Crocker, Terrence Reilly and John Phelan.
MacSparran was an Irishman who settled here about 1718. For forty years he was pastor of St. Paul’s Church in Narragansett, where he taught many pupils at his home, among them Thomas Clapp, afterwards President of Yale.
Rev. Marmaduke Brown, the son of Rev. Arthur Brown, a native of Drogheda, county Louth, Ireland, where his mother was also born, was the Rector of Trinity Church, Newport. He also had a school there. In 1763 he had a school of thirty, fifteen of each sex. He was a member of the first Board of Fellows of Rhode Island College, now Brown University.
Stephen Jackson, a native of Kilkenny, came to America in 1724. In 1762 he was living on Benefit Street. One of his grandsons was for years town clerk of the town of Providence, and one of his great-grandsons was Governor of Rhode Island.
“Old Master Kelly” taught school at Tower Hill, South Kingstown, for a great many years. Among his pupils was Oliver Hazard Perry, who, we claim, was the son of an Irish mother. I have not gone into the ancestry of Commodore Perry in detail, as the proper place for the treatment of that subject is the history of the Irish Rhode Islanders in the war of 1812.
“Before 1800, Messrs. Knox and Crocker, natives of Ireland, taught school at Bowen’s Hill (Coventry) and the neighborhood.” (Cole’s History of Washington and Kent Counties.)
Terrence Reilly and John Phelan were schoolmasters in the time of the Revolution, but after the founding of the college.
But the first man who ever caused the idea of a college to take definite shape was none other than the ablest educator of them all, the Irish bishop, George Berkeley, who was born in Kilkenny. He started for America in 1729 for the purpose of educating and Christianizing the American Indian. He arrived in Newport in the same year. His first idea was to establish a college in Bermuda, but he soon changed his plan and determined to establish it in this state. His plans did not mature and he returned to Ireland. Shortly after his return he sent to Yale College the best collection of books ever received in this country up to that time. He also gave to the college a deed of his farm of ninety-six acres in Rhode Island, to be held by trustees for the support of three scholarships, to be bestowed upon the best classical scholars. The Rhode Island farm was rented in 1762 for a period of 999 years, and the Dean’s Bounty, as the fund is called, is still in existence and devoted to the same purpose. He also contributed to the libraries of Harvard, King’s College (now Columbia University), and the Redwood Library of Newport. He was a famous scholar and poet and is best known as the author of the line:
“Westward the star of empire takes its way.”
William E. Foster, librarian of the Providence Public Library, says of him (in speaking of the founding of Brown): “By thus anticipating by a third of a century the actual establishment of a college in Rhode Island, his plans unquestionably had an important bearing on the steps leading up to it.”