The Irish Catholics early differentiated into two classes, only one of which, with their children, remains to the present day. There were the "loose-footed fellows," who followed the railroad, worked for seasons on the farms, drifted on with the renewal of demand for railroad laborers, and disappeared from the Hill. Their places were taken, in the years following 1880, by American laborers, and a very few other foreigners, of whom I will speak below. The other class of Irish Catholics sought to own land. The details given above indicate their promptness in acquiring interest in the soil. From them has been recruited almost all the present Catholic population of the Hill, which in 1905 amounted in all to twenty-five households and one hundred persons.
Whereas the early immigration of Irish worked in all the dairies from one end of the Hill to the other, the land owned by Irish-Americans now is all in the central portion of the Hill, within a radius of one mile from Mizzen-Top Hotel. Within this mile also all the Irish laborers employed on the Hill are at work. They are employed about the Hotel, on the places of the wealthier landowners of the Hill, and in such independent trades as stone-mason, blacksmith or wheelwright. Only an occasional Irish-American is found among the hired hands on the dairy farms.
In contrast to the indifference of the original population of the town to education, it is worthy of note that the grandson of an Irish-American named above promises at this writing to be the first youth born in the town to graduate from a higher institution of learning, being in his last year at West Point.
The Irish population who have remained on the Hill are singularly homogeneous, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place. In the chapter on "The Ideals of the New Quakerism," I have commented on Irish acquisition of a character like that of the Quakers. The gentleness of manner, the quickness of social sympathy and the industrious quietness of the Quakers have come to be theirs. Yet they are loyal Catholics, and with very few exceptions support their Church in the village regularly. Many of them who have not conveyances have for years employed a stage-driver to transport them on Sunday morning to St. Bernard's Church. This church has been built by the Irish and Irish-Americans. At the time of their coming in 1840-1850, there was no Catholic church, and "if you wanted to hear mass said, you had to drive to Poughkeepsie." Later, a tent was erected for a time, for the Catholic services, then a Baptist church building was purchased. This building was destroyed by fire about 1875, and the present structure in the village was erected.
The Catholic population of the Hill is now equal to the Quaker population, there being of each twenty-five households; the old and the new. But each has gone through striking changes since the Catholics came, sixty years ago. "When I was a boy," says a prominent Irish-American, "you could hardly see the road here for the carriages and the dust, all of them Quakers going to the Old Meeting House, on Sunday, or to Quarterly Meeting. But now they are all gone." The religious faithfulness of those Friends of two generations ago has descended upon no part of the population more fully than upon the handful of Catholic families, who now drive to Pawling every Sunday in great wagon-loads, while the members of the Quaker households have closed their meeting houses forever.
Of the Irish-Catholic population here described only eleven are Irish born. The rest, about ninety in number, are American born of Irish parents.
The other elements who have been adopted into the Quaker Hill population are small in number in comparison with the Irish. They are among the working people, one Swiss, two Poles, who have bought small places at Sites 42 and 75, respectively; and two New York ladies who about 1890 purchased places at Sites 41 and 35, who have become a strong influence, being socially and religiously in sympathy with the original Quaker population. Their influence is described in the chapter upon "The Common Mind of the Mixed Community." Purchases of land have been made in the years 1905-1907, more than in the preceding decade, by persons coming from outside the Quaker Hill population, all of the buyers being from New York City. These purchases are all upon the outer fringes of the Hill territory, at Sites 107, 108, 111, 118, in the southwestern part, and Sites 6 and 10 in the "North End," and in the Coburn neighborhood, Sites 88 and others near the Meeting House, Site 139. The land in the central section has changed hands, in the years 1890-1907, only through the increase in the holdings of those who owned large estates before the period of the Mixed Community.