James Calhoun, grandfather of John C. Calhoun, came from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733, with his family, and settled in Pennsylvania, later removing to western Virginia, and at a later period, further south. In 1765 they established the “Calhoun settlement” in South Carolina, near the Cherokee Indian frontier.
James Blaine came from Ireland with his family prior to 1745. He settled in Toboyne township, Cumberland County, Pa., where he died in 1792. He left a widow and nine children. Col. Ephraim Blaine of the Revolution was one of these children. The late Hon. James G. Blaine of Maine was a descendant.
One of the officers in the Irish-French regiment of Dillon, during the American Revolution, was Patrick Murphy. His name is preserved in the military archives of France, and by its publication in Les Combattants Francais De La Guerre Americaine, is recalled and forever made known to the American people.
Mary Peisley was a native of Kildare, Ireland, and was born in 1717. She entered the Quaker ministry about 1744, came to America with Ann Payton, and perhaps other Quakers, about 1753, labored in New York, the Carolinas, Maryland and Rhode Island; returned to Ireland and married Samuel Neale of Dublin.
James Moore, who was chosen governor of South Carolina, was born in Ireland about 1640. He came to this country in 1655, settled in Charleston, S. C., wedded a daughter of Sir John Yeamans and had 10 children. One of his sons, also named James Moore, was likewise chosen governor of South Carolina.
Born in Ireland in 1705, Jeremiah Smith came to Boston, Mass., with his wife, in 1726, and finally settled in Milton, Mass., 1737. He was an intimate friend of Governor Hutchinson, Governor Hancock and other leading men. He engaged in the manufacture of paper, and carried on the business until 1775 when he retired.
The Virginia records show that Symon Tuchin was in that colony in 1625. He was master of the Due Return, and “having been banished out of Ireland was reported as strongly affected to popery.” Accordingly, “The Governor and Council of Virginia sent him as a prisoner, in January, 1625, to the Company in England.”
Mary Mallins, “from Bandon in Ireland,” was among those arrested in Boston, Mass., at the time of the prosecution of the Quakers, she being one of the latter. She and twenty-seven other Quakers were finally liberated by Endicott and were ordered to leave the jurisdiction at once, nor to return at their peril.
Morison’s Life of Judge Jeremiah Smith, who was a native of Peterborough, N. H., states that “He began to study Latin when about twelve years old, with Rudolphus Greene, an Irishman employed by the town to keep school a quarter of the year in each of the four quarters of the town.” Judge Smith was born about 1771.
John Mitchell, a native of Ireland, was muster-master-general of the Pennsylvania State navy, 1775–’76; acting commissary, 1776–’77; lieutenant on the Chatham, 1775; captain of the Ranger, 1776; a merchant in France after the Revolution; United States consul at Santiago de Cuba; admiralty surveyor of Philadelphia, Pa.