[6]. Died in September, 1905. He was a founder of the Society and its first treasurer-general. This paper was the opening one of a series contributed by him to the Boston Pilot, in 1890, and bearing the general title of “How the Irish Came as Builders of the Nation.”
“The Massachusetts Bay” was, of all the original thirteen colonies, the most hostile towards the Irish, and it made but little difference with the Puritans whether the former were Catholic or Presbyterian, all fared alike, and were looked upon as people neither to be encouraged nor tolerated.
However, they continued to come in, despite this dislike, in one capacity or another, and one—Captain Patrick—appears in the records of 1632. Florence McCarthy was a resident of Boston in 1686. He was a butcher by occupation, and one of the founders of the first Episcopal Church in the town.
Esther MacCarty’s name is signed to an indenture, as a witness, about the same period. According to Palfrey, New England, up to the beginning of the great Irish emigration, was more unmixed in blood than any county in England. While this may seem true of Massachusetts, it will hardly apply to New Hampshire, and will not stand investigation in the Bay State, for according to the same authority, 400 or 500 Scotch were transported by Cromwell to Massachusetts in 1651, and thirty-four years later 150 families of French Huguenots came, followed in 1719, by 120 families of Irish, mainly from the North of Ireland. To these mentioned by Palfrey must be added, on the authority of Drake, 200 families of the unfortunate Acadians sent to Massachusetts about 1750.
No mention is made at all of the thousands sold into a kind of slavery by Cromwell to New England and the West India Islands, from Ireland, and yet, between 1651 and 1655, on the authority of Prendergast, over 6,000 boys and girls, mainly from the South of Ireland, were shipped to those two points.
The addition of 400 or 500 Scotch, 150 families of French Huguenots and the unknown number of Irish arriving in Massachusetts in less than twenty-five years from the establishment of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, will justify a contradiction of this statement of Palfrey’s. The Acadians and the Irish are prolific, and in this respect could keep pace with their English neighbors, and a comparison of the well-known New England families of the past hundred years, with an equal number of families in any English county, will prove it, for names, as a rule, are the surest guides to nationalities, and scattered over New England, from the dates named, are families bearing well-known French and Gaelic names, many of them slightly changed, but enough left of the original to trace the transformation. When the War of the Revolution broke out, this mixture of English, Irish, Scotch and French blood was pretty well compounded, and it was not surprising that the men of the new American race humbled Britain, and brought her to her knees.
Adams and Hancock, Sullivan and Knox, Stark and McClary, Revere and Bowdoin were, in New England, representatives of the nations mentioned, while the names of Washington and Jefferson, Moylan and Carroll, Mercer and Paul Jones, Laurens and Marion, showed that the same process was at work throughout the colonies.
Many Americans, no matter whence they sprung, now mount the “Anglo-Saxon” hobby, which, like a circus steed, has been so well padded by writers of history that there is little danger of a dismount, and in order to be in harmony with the aristocratic trend of the age, a double hitch is provided by trotting out the “Scotch-Irish” nag as a running mate, a trifle bony, perhaps, and a little ungainly at first, but time, good feeding and careful grooming, will make a perfect match, for both are of the same stock-humbug—a princely origin, for in this age humbug is king, and its capital, unlimited, is wind.
While Irish blankets and Kilkenny rugs were mercantile commodities in New Hampshire before King William of “glorious and immortal memory” had trigged the wheels, Irish butter was a most desirable article in Boston, as we find that John Hancock, among other goods advertised in his Faneuil Hall store, speaks of “Newcastle coal and Irish butter cheap for cash.” Cork from time immemorial being the great butter mart, it would not be at all surprising if some of the light-footed and light-hearted sons of that lively city came over with butter. McCarthy is one of the great Cork names, and in addition to Florence and Esther, named between 1680 and 1760, Elizabeth, Thade, William and Calvin Maccarty are met quite frequently in the records of the town of Boston, all persons of means and holding responsible positions.
Florence was town constable in 1693, and Thade Maccarty was elected to a similar position in 1673. For damage to her house, blown up to check a fire, Mrs. Elizabeth Maccarty was awarded the sum of $300 and Maccarty’s corner, on King Street, was a locality frequently mentioned. Florence was a man of consequence, and one of the leading men in his business. Leave was given him, in 1693, to build a slaughter house, and from the frequent mention made of him he must have been the John P. Squire of his day at the Hub. William Bryant was a servant of Capt. William Hudson in 1679, doubtless one of Cromwell’s transports, many of whom were, by that date, scattered over New England, especially in what is now Maine and New Hampshire. Larry is quite common along the border, between the Pine Tree and Granite states, and the first met in history bear the distinctive given names of Cornelius, Dennis and Teige. O’Leary is a South of Ireland name, and the presence of persons bearing it so early in the colonies, substantiates what is stated by Prendergast in the Cromwellian Settlement.