From facts here adduced it will be seen that for a great many years, until Irish manufacturing industries were crushed by English law, commercial relations existed between Ireland and Rhode Island. Irish goods and Irish passengers were landed on the wharves in Newport and Providence, while outgoing ships took goods and passengers for the old land. Too long have these facts been forgotten or ignored. But a new era has dawned and the sun of investigation will yet bring forth even greater and more interesting developments.
IRISH SETTLERS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
BY MICHAEL J. O’BRIEN, NEW YORK CITY.
John Burns, a native of the city of Dublin, where he was born in 1730, was a prominent character in Pennsylvania history. He emigrated to Philadelphia when quite young. He prospered in business in that city, where we are told “he took a prominent part in all local and national questions, and was honored by his fellow-citizens with many positions of trust.” He was the first governor of Pennsylvania elected after the adoption of the federal constitution, and “retained in a high degree the respect and confidence of his fellow-citizens till his death.”
One of the very earliest white settlers in Greene County was Thomas Hughes, who emigrated from Donegal with his wife, Bridget O’Neill, to Virginia. One of his descendants, Thomas Hughes, wrote the memoirs of his family in 1880, in which he said: “The motive that sent our first ancestor to this country from his native Irish home was of this character, i. e., a desire for religious freedom; he was a devout Catholic.” “Settling,” he continues, “in the valley of Virginia, in Loudoun County, before the year 1739, Thomas Hughes, son of Felime or Felix, and his wife, with his brother Felime or Felix, all from Inver, in Donegal, Ulster, first laid the foundations of his family in this country.”
“Thomas Hughes was a noted hunter, and in one of his expeditions into the backwoods, which lasted for several months, he spent some time in what is now Greene County, Pennsylvania, the soil and general appearance of which pleased him so well that he determined to make his future home there. This he did in 1771, and was one of the very first white settlers in that country. He located where Carmichaelstown now stands, but several years afterwards exchanged farms with a party named Carmichael, and called his new place Jefferson, after his old county in Virginia.”
His nephew, Felix Hughes, also settled in Pennsylvania, where he erected a fort or blockhouse as protection against the Indians and wild animals. It was a building of only one story and a half, of hewn logs and rough boards, and as an instance of the primitiveness of the period when this Irish pioneer settled in this locality, this building was looked upon as “an elegant house!” His wife’s name was Cinthia Kaighn (or Kane). In 1780, he set out with others to Kentucky to look up lands, but the party was attacked by Indians while descending the Ohio and, after a narrow escape, Hughes returned to Greene County, where he spent the remainder of his days. He and his father were buried in Neill’s burying ground, near Carmichaelstown. Their descendants are still found in considerable numbers in Greene and Fayette counties, Pennsylvania.
A prominent Irish Catholic who settled early on Sherman’s Creek, was Henry Gass. He and his brother erected log cabins on Indian lands in Perry County, but were dispossessed from there in 1750, when they located at Falling Springs.
Patrick Gass, who was born in the latter place in 1771, and who is said to have been the first white man to make an overland trip to the Pacific, is presumed to have been a son of Henry Gass. The original name, of course, was Prendergast.
Among the earlier Irish inhabitants of Carlisle is found the Prendergrass family, whose name is identified with almost all the larger settlements west of Carlisle. Kline’s Carlisle Gazette of November 29, 1797, gave an account of the death of the aged Philip Prendergrass, which occurred two weeks previously, in which it described him as “an old inhabitant of this borough.” The name is found on the “list of taxables” in 1762. He took part in the expedition of Kitanning, in 1756, to repulse the Indians. It was a member of this family, Garrett Prendergrass who, in February, 1770, purchased the ground now occupied by the city of Allegheny, from the Six Nations. The old Prendergrass homestead was near Hanover, and is still occupied by the family. It was built in the last century by an Irishman names Byrnes, who married into the family.