But, if names are to be accepted as a criterion, those who examine the Census Returns, in conjunction with the records of land grants, the parochial registers, the Colonial Records that have been collected and edited by the secretaries of state, the court and church records, the Revolutionary rosters, the old newspapers, the Registers of Historical Associations, and other similarly reliable records, must at once conclude that a goodly percentage of the people were of old Irish stock.
It must be borne in mind also that the Census enumerators made no returns of unmarried persons. This fact is important, when we place beside it the statements of reliable historians that the Irish exodus of the 18th century largely comprised the youth of the country. From the records which we have already quoted, we know that thousands of the Irish youth became indentured servants after their arrival in the Colonies, and it is not likely that these people, even though married while still in servitude, were considered of sufficient importance by the census enumerators to be included in the lists of the “heads of families.”
One who examines these records for traces of the Irish settlers will be surprised to find a most inviting field of retrospect and research ever widening before him. We do not need to wander into the field of romance, as some writers occasionally do, in search of proof that at the beginnings of the Nation the Celtic element figured to a larger extent than it has been credited with at the hands of our historians.
There is so much of dry fact concerning them in these hitherto obscure records as to make it a perplexing thought for the investigator where to begin upon an exposition of the part played by the Irish Colonists and their descendants in shaping the destinies of the future Republic. Theirs is generally a prosaic story of trials bravely borne, of victories snatched from rude nature in the face of many difficulties. The pioneer settlers lived a simple but rude life on the frontiers of civilization, free from the artificialities of our latter-day mode of living, but they made the wilderness which they found to blossom as the rose and to become a fair habitation for the generations that have succeeded them.
Their story would hardly be worth relating were it not for the fact that it affords the proof that men and women of our race and blood were of the “warp and woof” from which has been evolved the new and composite race, miscalled “Anglo-Saxon,” which has made this Western Hemisphere the leader among the nations of the civilized world.
It is in the Census of the Southern States that Irish names appear in the greatest numbers. During the first half of the 18th century there were large immigrations of Irish people to the Carolinas, who spread themselves over an immense area, reaching from the Santee river to the eastern boundary line of Georgia, and as far north as the dividing line of North Carolina. Doubtless, the majority of those on the Census Returns bearing Irish names were descendants of those early settlers, rather than natives of Ireland.
The historian Lossing says: “Between the years 1730 and 1740 an Irish settlement was planted near the Santee river in South Carolina, to which was given the name of Williamsburg Township. Up the Pedee, Santee, Edisto, Savannah and Black rivers settlements spread rapidly, and soon the axe and the plough were plying with mighty energy, and from the North of Ireland such numbers departed for Carolina that the depopulation of whole districts was threatened.”
Williamsburg he calls a “hotbed of rebellion” during the Revolutionary war. As soon as General Francis Marion received his commission from Governor Rutledge, we are told, “he sped to the district of Williamsburg between the Santee and Pedee to lead its rising patriots to the field of active military duties.” (The rosters of General Marion’s brigade contain a large number of Irish names.)
Ramsay also refers to these Irish settlements and deals with them at length in his History of South Carolina. He says that the district was named Williamsburg by an Irishman named James, who came to the Colony with his father in 1733. It is now called Kingstree, and the county in which it is situated is still named Williamsburg.
Sims’ Life of General Marion says: “the people of Williamsburg were sprung generally from Irish parentage. They inherited in common with all the descendants of the Irish in America a hearty detestation of the English name and authority. This feeling rendered them excellent patriots and daring soldiers wherever the British lion was the object of hostility.”