Part 34

The dazzling array of Irish names by which the annals of America has been graced is far more extensive than the ordinary observer would suppose.

To some of the friendly and to all of the unfriendly a man to be Irish must bear a pronounced Celtic name.

It is a fact from the most reliable authority that many Irish on coming to this country adopted English names, many taking the names of colors and trades. Dr. Thomas Dunn English says “they often took the names of Black, Brown, Grey and Green, or as fancy may dictate.” He says “the names were generally retained on this side of the Atlantic.” He also adds: “In the eighteenth century as well as the latter part of the seventeenth century, Philadelphia, then the greatest commercial port, was the spot of the greatest debarkation of the Irish hosts. While many remained in the east there was a time when the greatest portion pushed their way into the western wilds where the land could be had for the asking. They scattered themselves over the slopes of the great Allegheny range and its various spurs and tributaries.”

From Londonderry in New Hampshire down to Coloraine in the far south, Dr. English says he found many Celtic names changed with the “Macs” and “O’s” dropped. He said: “If nevertheless all these names were blotted out and their place taken by those of English or German sound the character of the original settlement would be known by the prevalence of certain words and survival of certain customs.”

Spencer, the historian, says: “Multitudes of laborers and husbandmen from Ireland embarked for the Carolinas. The first colony of these located in 1737 near Santee.” He also says “emigration to America was so heavy as to show the depopulation of whole country districts in Ireland.” Ramsey, the historian of the Carolinas, declares “that of all the European countries none has furnished this province with so many inhabitants as Ireland. Scarcely a ship,” he says, “sailed from any Irish port for Charlestown that was not crowded.” All this, he declares, occurred years and decades before the revolutions.

Jenkins, in his life of President Polk, says: “About the year 1735 two large parties from Ireland sought the wilds of America, one by the Delaware to Philadelphia and the other by Charlestown, South Carolina.”

New York World’s History of the United States says: “An Irish colony under Ferguson settled in South Carolina in 1679.”

There was a combined movement of Celts, Catholic and Presbyterian and Quakers to South Carolina and of all the colonies sent out by the prolific isle none had greater Americans than the emigration between 1750–’70.

At any rate it may challenge comparison with any other—Jackson, Calhoun, O’Kelly, O’Grady, Polk, Crockett, Houston, McDuffie, Adair, McKemy, McWorter, O’Farrell, McNairy. All these are of Irish extraction and still (some of them Americanized by dropping the O’ or the Mc) adorn the annals of their states or nation. If anyone had said, in 1692, that a British parliament could succeed in exiling thousands of Catholic and Protestant Irish in such a way as to make them fight side by side with Catholic Frenchmen and non-sectarian colonists against the United Kingdom he would have been denounced as a fool. The wise men would have told him that legislative folly might do wonders, but it could not work miracles. Yet that is just what parliament accomplished, for scarcely was the ink dry on the treaty of Limerick (which provided that Catholics should enjoy in Ireland such rights as they had enjoyed in the reign of Charles II) when it was violated by a series of laws that now make honest Englishmen blush. It is needless to repeat the black details. Says one British writer: “The laws were so many and so atrocious that an Irishman could scarcely draw a full breath without breaking a law.”

Grimshaw’s History of the United States, 1821, says: “Philadelphia in 1683, which was begun on the site of the Indian village, Coquanoc, derives its name from a city in Asia Minor celebrated in sacred history for its having been the seat of an early Christian church. During the first twelve months of its foundation about a hundred houses were erected and, since that period, it has received a continual accession of inhabitants from Ireland and Germany.” It also says: “In the interval between 1730 and the period when this history will relinquish the distinct colonial proceedings to conduct the narrative of a more sublime and awful period when individual interests combine and move forward with a unity of action there was an annual influx of emigrants. These were principally from Germany and Ireland. The Irish and German people at an early day brought the useful arts and manufactures into Pennsylvania. The Irish and French emigrants had enjoyed a large share of civil liberty and boldly contended for total enfranchisement from regal domination.”

Grimshaw says, in relating an incident of the war of 1812: “Scenes of the most distressing kind were occurring in the Chesapeake. It was now that Admiral Cockburn was satiating his unmanly and unsoldierlike propensities in a species of warfare at once reflecting dishonor. At first his depredations were directed against the farm houses and seats of private gentlemen. These were plundered, their owners in the rudest manner insulted, and cattle which could not be removed were wantonly destroyed.

“Georgetown and Fredericktown were destroyed. The people of Frenchtown, after firing a few shots, fled on the enemy’s approach with the exception of an old Hibernian, named O’Neil. This heroic citizen continued the battle alone, loading a piece of artillery and firing it himself, until, by recoiling, it ran over his leg and wounded him severely; and even then, exchanging his piece of ordnance for a musket, and limping away, he still kept up a retreating fight with the advanced column of the British. He was, at length, made prisoner, but soon afterwards released.” Holmes (Annals of America) says: “From Dec. 31, 1728, to Dec. 31, 1729, there entered the port of Philadelphia 5,655 Irish immigrants, 243 Germans, 267 English and Welsh and 43 Scotch.”

Rev. S. F. Hotchkin, in Penn’s Greene Country Towne, writes: “In 1729 Miss Elizabeth McGawley, an Irish lady, brought hither tenantry to the Dickson property between Nicetown and Frankford and had a chapel there. A priest named Michael John Brown was buried in a stone enclosure not far away. Roman Catholic services may be traced, as Watson says, to a letter of Penn to Logan, in 1708, wherein he mentions that Mass had been celebrated in Philadelphia and that the services were held in a frame building on Cor. of Front and Walnut Sts.”

The _New York Sun_, in commenting on Galletin, says his sponsors were John Smilie, Blair McClenachan, and Thomas McKean, sturdy leaders of the strong Philadelphia Irish colony of that era, 1789.

John Sanderson’s Biography (1823) of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, says: “In Pennsylvania the Quakers reared the most durable monuments of their fame, and advanced of their most elevated grade the interests of their order. The freedom, liberality and benevolence of their policy invited among them, as well from the adjacent provinces as from Europe, a numerous population; and the industry of the German, the

## activity and enterprise of the Irishman joined to the pre-existing order

and economy of this province, raised it to a sudden height of prosperity which has been seldom equalled in the history of nations.”

Drake, in his Landmarks of Boston, says: “About 1718 a number of colonists arrived from Londonderry, Ireland, bringing with them the manufacture of linen and the implements used in Ireland.”

Early records of the Town of Derryfield, now Manchester, N. H., 1751–’82, says: “On Sept. 23, 1751, at the call of John McMurphy, the proprietors, free-holders and inhabitants of Derryfield gathered at the inn of John Hall for the purpose of laying the foundation of self-government. Its early inhabitants were made up of Irish, who had begun to settle within its bounds as early as 1718, mostly near Amoskeag Falls. About 100 families settled there at that time.”

Harris’ Memorials to Oglethorpe (1841) says: “Governor Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia’s Mother was Elenora Wall, an Irishwoman of Rogane, Ireland.” Charles Dempsey was an able assistant to Governor Oglethorpe and did much to settle differences between Florida and Georgia. Under Governor Oglethorpe, as a military officer, was a Patrick Sutherland. That there were thousands of Irish settled not only in New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, but Maine, Virginia, Massachusetts and New York, in colonial days, may be attested if we are to believe Prendergast in his book, “Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” he says: “Thousands of Irish were sold into a kind of slavery by Cromwell to Massachusetts and the West India Islands from Ireland. Between 1651 and 1655 over 6,000 boys and girls, namely from the south of Ireland, were shipped to those two ports.” It seems difficult for some writers to give credit and justice to a people against whom they have an unwarranted prejudice—prejudice stimulated by ignorance of facts or malice.

After the quotations from the most reliable authorities as to the early settlement of America in colonial days by the Irish, it is to be wondered at which of the afore-mentioned causes impelled the president of a great university to give credit to other peoples in the settlement and upbuilding of America and omit the important part taken by the Irish.

Was it malice or ignorance that caused a gentleman holding one of the two highest positions in the United States government from Massachusetts, to give the Irish but partial credit in his paper, “Distribution of Ability in the United States,” published in the _Century_ Magazine? The honorable gentleman quotes Appleton’s Encyclopedia of Biography for his authority, which, if closely examined, it will be found that his time or vision must have been exceedingly limited. A careful examination of the above authority will prove malice or ignorance or delegating the examination to some Celtophobe of the Goldwin Smith stamp. These writers can be truly accused of carelessness or credulity. The colonial settlers from Ireland did not claim to be anything but Irish,—God had not created at that time the new breed of higher animals, the Scotch-Irish.

Mr. James McMillen of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the _New York Sun_, refers to an article of Dr. Lyman Abbot in the _North American Review_, in which “he (Dr. Abbot) declares that the great forces which contribute to our civilization in this country are not Celtic, Slavic, Mongolian or African, but Anglo-Saxon.” Mr. McMillen adds: “From the very beginning we have been in the front ranks with our Anglo-Saxon brethren and will not be crowded out at this late day by any authority who would place us in the same category with the African, Mongolian or Slavic so long as we continue to demonstrate our equality if not superiority to the Anglo-Saxon.” The Abbots, Lodges, Eliots, Fisks and other minor satellites will find it an impossibility to eliminate from the pages of American history the absolutely necessary part taken by the Celt in the originating and perpetuating American liberty, institutions and ideals. The misinformers of history should stop to consider that civilization is not made up only of heat or cold, light or darkness, but a community of human beings, with likes and dislikes, with hopes and aspirations, with hearts beating with passion or sentiment and while human peculiarities are modified to a certain degree by condition and environment, they are not wholly changed. This will apply to the early Irish and English settlers of America. It would be a very uncertain belief to suppose that the thousands of Irish who settled in America in colonial days to escape the lauded Anglo-Saxon civilization, would tamely submit to a continuance of it in this broad land of liberty and opportunities.

The Celt came to America to better his condition and not for exploitation and plunder; and his splendid sentimental and kindly nature did have a modifying effect on the character of the brutal Saxon and if much of the land of America in colonial days was claimed as the land of the Saxon the sun that gave it national heat and light was Celtic love of God, Celtic love of justice, Celtic valor, Celtic zeal, Celtic intelligence that made it the greatest country on earth.

He who has read American history has read it in vain, if he does not know that had it not been for the moral and physical aid given by not only the Irish colonists, but by the people of Ireland, American independence would not have been achieved. Washington, himself, acknowledged publicly the great indebtedness to Ireland.

The admirers of the prefix and hyphen in American history probably had in mind the attempts of that brilliant young Irish scientist, John Butler Burke, to produce life artificially. The preface to Burke’s book, “Origin of Life,” somewhat changed, is “Although it is not the object of this book to lend support to the doctrine of abiogenesis or the development at the present day of living from absolutely non-living (Scotch-Irish) matter, the more hopeful, though as it must be admitted less gratifying view to take is that we have arrived at a method of structural organic synthesis of artificial (Scotch-Irish) cells, which if it does not give us organic life such as we see around us, gives us, at least, something which, according to (Eliot, Lodge, Fisk and others) admits of being placed in the gap, or, as it might be preferably called, the borderland between living and dead matter.” Dr. Burke says: “The why and wherefore we may ask, but get no answer to; the how is our only consolation; and even in that do the most careful steering to avoid the pitfalls and precipices of error.”

The afore-mentioned “historians” did not share Dr. Burke’s doubt, but went ahead and created a new set of cellular tissue and called it the Scotch-Irish. With characteristic zeal and industry begotten of their love of justice and fair play, “that the world may know” a Murray, a Linehan, a Roache, a Gargan and hosts of others of beloved memory have shed lustre on Ireland not only as men of Irish blood but as disseminators of historical truths as to the priceless part taken by men of Irish blood from the earliest days of the country’s history until the present time for the permanency of American institutions and government. In no man’s heart do the Stars and Stripes awake a more sincere and ardent patriotism than the Irish-American.

Rev. Edward Everett Hale writes in the _Boston Daily Advertiser_, January, 1852, the following:

“PROPORTIONS OF ORIGINAL RACES IN AMERICA.

“In writing these letters to the _Boston Daily Advertiser_, I attempted to confine myself to the facts which directly affect legislation or charitable action. There is, however, a curious question as to the effect to be produced on national character by intermixture of blood and race, produced by such large emigration as we see. What I have said in my last letter has been carefully guarded, so as to refer everywhere to the absolutely unmixed Celtic race. Of its value intermixed I have spoken as highly as I could.

“An anxious question is asked, however, by men of the old American blood, whether there is not an over-preponderance of the Celtic element coming in upon us? I do not profess to answer the question, how far the origin of the native American blood is Celtic.

“In what proportions do the Celtic and Gothic or Germanic elements mingle in the Englishman of today (1852) and, of course, in the American of today? Dr. Kombst estimates in 1841 that there are of pure German blood in England 10,000,000. Of mixed blood where the Teutonic prevailed in England and the northeast of Ireland, 6,000,000. Of mixed blood, where the Celtic prevailed in England, Scotland and Ireland, 4,000,000. And of pure Celtic in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, 6,000,000.

“But Dr. Lantham, with more reason, I think, doubts the purity of any Germanic blood in England, saying that ‘a vast amount of Celticism, not found in our tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees.’ And in another place he says that in nine-tenths of the displacements of races made by conquest the female half ancestry of the present inhabitants must have belonged to the beaten race.

“I think the history of the Saxon invasions is such as to give color to this idea in the case of England. And I am not sure, but what it could be made out, that the American people, before the recent Irish invasion, showed in their proportion of black-haired men of dark complexion and other Celtic signs that as large a fraction as two-thirds of its blood ran in the dark ages of the past in Celtic veins. If this be so, if the proportion, two-thirds Celtic to one-third Gothic or Germanic, is the proportion which makes up that ‘perfect whole,’ the ‘true American,’ which considers itself so much finer than either of the ingredients, the recent emigrations furnish a happy co-incidence with the original law. For five past years the arrivals at New York, which are three fourths the whole, and represent it in kind exactly, have been 547,173 Irish; 278,458 Germanic; 153,969 English and Scotch; 71,359 others. Now keep these 71,359 ‘others’ for condiments in the mixture. There are Norwegians and French, Belgians and Spaniards, Swiss and Italians, balanced against each other (and a few Magyars).

“The English, of course, we need not count; but of pure Celts and pure Germans we have to fraction just two to one; and in that proportion are they to affect the blood of the American people.

“This computation which I had prepared before I read a courteous article in the _American Celt_ of January 24, 1852, will, perhaps, show to the writer of that paper, that we are not so far apart in our views as he supposed.”

Mr. James Anthony Froude, in his history of Ireland, maligned the Irish people and did much to prejudice the world against them. Previous to his death he tried to undo the injustice he had done them. The following letter from Mr. Philbrick, superintendent of schools, explains itself:

_Donohue’s Magazine_, August, 1855, taken from _Boston Transcript_ letter by Mr. Philbrick, superintendent of schools in Boston.

“James Anthony Froude, in his recent rapid passage across the country on the homeward stretch of his round-the-whole trip, was interviewed in New York and among other things was asked for reminiscences of his visit to the United States.

“The reading of the notice of his interview revived the memory of an incident of that visit, which is perhaps worth relating.

“During this visit, Mr. Froude delivered lectures in the principal cities on the Irish question. The theory which he propounded and advocated was, that the troubles in Ireland were not the result of bad government at all, but of bad blood in the Irish race. But he was anxious to get more light on the subject, if possible, and so, when in Boston, he wanted to visit public schools which were frequented by children of the Irish race. Accordingly, I took him to some boys’ schools and some girls’, where the children were almost wholly of Irish parentage. At the last of these girls’ schools, of the grammar grade installed in a splendid new school house of large size, after passing through twelve or fourteen rooms, filled with bright, well-dressed girls full of animation in their recitation in the various branches of instruction, Mr. Froude asked: ‘Do you mean to says that these are the children of Irish immigrants?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I believe there is not a single pupil in this school of the Yankee race.’ ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I must confess I’m staggered.’ ‘Now,’ said I, ‘I will take you to a mixed school (boys and girls being in separate rooms and classes), which stands on a spot that two years ago was a mud hole in a marsh surrounded by poor dwellings, mostly occupied by Irish immigrants.’

“After passing through most of the rooms in the fine building, in which were neatly-dressed pupils in the most perfect order, earnestly engaged in their work, we came to a boys’ room where a recitation in history was in progress. Here he took a seat and proceeded to question the class, from which he got very prompt and appropriate answers. At length, he singled out a little tan-headed boy of the Irish nationality and plied him with a lot of pretty hard questions, but every one was answered with admirable promptness and accuracy. Mr. Froude stopped, remained silent for a short time with his eyes cast down as though in a profound study. He then addressed the boys again and said: ‘My boys, where did you learn this?’ ‘Out of a book, sir,’ was the ready reply. ‘And where did you get the book?’ ‘Out of the public library,’ was the answer.

“Mr. Froude then arose to leave and I said: ‘Now, Mr. Froude, I will take you to the Girls’ High School, where you will find representatives of the Irish nationality in a higher grade of instruction.’ ‘Well,’ replied Mr. Froude, ‘you may take me where you please; it makes no difference; I’m full; I can’t hold any more.’”

Spencer says: “The Irish had the use of letters long before the English, and that Oswald, a Saxon king, applied to Ireland for learned men to instruct his people.”

Camden says: “Ireland abounded with men of genius and erudition when learning was trampled on in every other quarter of the globe.”

Plutarch calls Ireland, “Ogygia,” _i.e._, the most ancient isle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: “The sources from which tradition derives their stock are mainly three. And, first, they are of the oldest blood in the world, the Celtic. Some people are deciduous or transitory.

“Where are the Greeks? Where the Etrurians? Where the Romans?

“But the Celts or Sidonides are an old family, of whose beginning there is no memory and their end is likely to be still more remote in the future; for they have endurance and productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the seas and mountains names which are poems and imitate the pure voice of nature.

“They are favorably remembered in the oldest records of Europe. They had no violent feudal tenure, but the husbandman owned the land. They had an alphabet, astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed and precarious genius. They made the best popular literature of the middle ages in the songs of Merlin and the tender and delicious mythology of Arthur.”

The most ancient manuscripts in the world are in the Irish language and the oldest Latin manuscripts were written by an Irishman.

The Irish language is as old as Hebrew and more ancient than Greek or Latin.

Matthew Arnold made the statement: “If Celticism had not moulded England she would not have produced a Shakespeare.”

There were a few Irishmen evidently in business in Boston before 1847–8. The Columbian Centennial of May 12 and March 17, 1812, gives James Magee, owner of Coffee Exchange House; William Barry, Dealer in Hats and Furs; William Sullivan, Corn Hill Square, Sale of farms; J. L. Sullivan, Manager of Merrimac Boating Co.; William Sullivan’s orations for sale; James Barry, Fish, Pork and Lard Dealer; Walter Welsh, Real Estate.

THE IRISH IN RHODE ISLAND, TO AND INCLUDING THE REVOLUTION.

BY JOHN J. COSGROVE, PROVIDENCE, R. I.