A remarkable influx of settlers from Ireland occurred between 1825
and 1830, to work in the _saladeros_, or salt mines, of the Irish
merchants, Brown, Dowdall, and Armstrong. Previous to this a few
Irish mechanics and others had come from the United States. In 1813
Bernard Kiernan came from New Brunswick. He seems to have devoted
himself to science, as the papers mention his discovery of a comet in
the Magellan clouds on March 19, 1830. His son, James Kiernan, became
editor of the government paper, _Gaceta Mercantil_, in 1823, and held
this post for twenty years; his death occurred in 1857. There is
reason to believe that the first Irishman who landed in Buenos Ayres
in the 19th century, exclusive of Beresford's soldiers, was James
Coyle, a native of Tyrone, who came in the _Agréable_ in 1807, and
died in 1876 at the age of 86.
In 1830 some survivors of an Irish colony of 300 persons in Brazil
made their way to Buenos Ayres. They had come out from Europe in the
barque _Reward_ in 1829.
The banker, Thomas Armstrong, who arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1817,
occupied the foremost place for half a century in the commerce of
that city. He was of the ancient family of Armstrong in the King's
county, one of whose members was General Sir John Armstrong, founder
of Woolwich arsenal. Having married into the wealthy family of
Villanueva he became intimately connected with all the leading
enterprises of the day, such as railways, banks, loans, etc. He took
no part in politics, but interested himself in charities of every
kind.
In 1865 another Irishman, James P. Cahill, introduced into Peru from
the United States the first complete machinery for sugar growing and
refining.
Still another Irishman, Peter Sheridan, was one of the chief founders
of the sheep farming industry in Argentina. His family claimed
descent from the same stock in Co. Cavan as Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, the great statesman and dramatist. Sheridan died at the age
of 52, in 1844, and was succeeded in the _estancia_ or sheep-farming
business by his nephew, James, whose brother Dr. Hugh Sheridan had
served under Admiral Brown.
The number and wealth of the Irish _estancieros_, or sheep-farmers,
in Argentina have never been exactly ascertained, but after the old
Spanish families they are the most important. It would be impossible
to give all the Irish names to be met with. Some of them own immense
tracts of land. Men whose fathers arrived in Argentina without a
shilling are today worth millions. Their _estancia_ houses display
all the comforts of an American or English home; their hospitality is
proverbial; and most of them have built on their land fine schools
and beautiful little chapels, in which the nearest Irish priest
officiates.
Many of the _partidos_ or districts of the various provinces of
Argentina may be compared to Irish counties, the railway stations
being called after the owners of the land on which they are situated.
Among the earliest families settled in Argentina in the farming
industries, we find Duggans, Torneys, Harringtons, O'Briens,
Dowlings, Gaynors, Murphys, Moores, Dillons, O'Rorkes, Kennys, Raths,
Caseys, Norrises, O'Farrells, Brownes, Hams, Duffys, Ballestys,
Gahans, and Garaghans. Dr. Santiago O'Farrell, son of one of the
earliest Irish pioneers, holds a foremost position among the
distinguished lawyers of the present day. An Irish engineer, Mr. John
Coghlan, gave Buenos Ayres its first waterworks. The British hospital
has at present for its leading surgeon a distinguished Irishman, Dr.
Luke O'Connor. A son of Peter Sheridan, educated in England, has left
the finest landscapes of South America by any artist born in America.
He died at Buenos Ayres in his 27th year, 1861. Among the public men
of Irish descent, fifty years ago, in Buenos Ayres, are to be
mentioned the distinguished lawyer and politician, Dalmacio Velez
Sarsfield, and John Dillon, commissioner of immigration. Dillon was
the first to start a brewery in Buenos Ayres, for which purpose he
brought out workmen and machinery from Europe. All of his sons
occupied distinguished positions. Richard O'Shee, president of the
Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Ayres, was born at Seville of an old
Irish family banished by William III. Among the many valuable
citizens of Buenos Ayres who perished during the cholera of 1868 was
Dr. Leslie, a native of Cavan, whose benevolence to the poor was
unceasing. Henry O'Gorman, for some years chief of police in Buenos
Ayres and afterwards governor of the penitentiary, was descended from
an Irish family which went to Buenos Ayres in the eighteenth century.
His brother, Canon O'Gorman, was one of the dignitaries of the
archdiocese, and director of the boys' reformatory. General Donovan,
son of an Irish Dr. Donovan of Buenos Ayres, had command of one of
the sections of the new Indian frontier.
The first Irish chaplain was Father Burke, a venerable friar
mentioned by Mr. Love in 1820 as over 70 years of age and much
esteemed. When Rivadavia suppressed the Orders in 1822, he allowed
Father Burke to remain in the convent of Santo Domingo. After his
death the Irish residents, in 1828, petitioned Archbishop Murray of
Dublin for a chaplain. Accordingly the Rev. Patrick Moran was
selected, and he arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1829. He died in the
following year, and was succeeded by the Rev. Patrick O'Gorman from
Dublin, who continued as chaplain during 16 years till his death in
1847.
The year 1843 is memorable for the arrival of Rev. Anthony Fahy, with
whose name the advancement of the Irish in Argentina will be forever
identified. This great patriarch was born at Loughrea, Co. Galway, in
1804, and made his ecclesiastical studies at St. Clement's convent of
Irish Dominicans at Rome. Being sent to the western states of
America, he passed ten years in Ohio and Kentucky, after which, on
the invitation of the Irish community of Buenos Ayres and by
permission of the superior of his Order, he came to the river Plate
at a time when the prospects of the country and of the Irish
residents were far from promising. The history of the Irish community
since that time is in some measure a recital of the labors of Father
Fahy. He it was who helped his countrymen to choose and buy their
lands which now are of such enormous value. Their increasing numbers
and prosperity in the camp districts obliged him to endow each of the
provincial _partidos_ was a resident chaplain. Most of these
clergymen were educated in Dublin, and soon showed their zeal not
merely in religious, but also in social spheres. Irish reading-rooms,
libraries, and schools sprang up and laid the foundation for the
refined Irish life of the present day in those districts. Among other
services, Father Fahy founded the Irish convent, bringing out some
Sisters of Mercy under Mrs. Mary Evangelist Fitzpatrick from Dublin,
to whom he gave it in charge. Father Fahy died in harness in 1871 of
yellow fever; he attended a poor Italian woman and on returning home
was at once taken ill. He lasted only three days and expired
peacefully, a martyr to his sacred calling. He died so poor that Mr.
Armstrong had to discharge for him some small debts, and five others
of his countrymen paid his funeral expenses. A fitting memorial of
the deceased priest, the Fahy College for Irish orphan boys in
Argentina, has been erected in Buenos Ayres, and a magnificent
monument of Irish marble, carved in Ireland, also perpetuates his
fame.
The priests, still living, who were co-workers with Father Fahy and
appointed by him to various _partidos_, are Monsignor Samuel
O'Reilly, deservedly beloved by his parishioners, and the Rev. Father
Flannery, whose appointment to San Pedro brought a great influx of
Irish farmers into that district. Among those who have gone to enjoy
their eternal reward are the brothers, Rev. Michael and Rev. John
Leahy, both of whom were indefatigable during the yellow fever in
Buenos Ayres. Rev. Father Mulleady, Rev. Patrick Lynch, Rev. James
Curran, and Monsignor Curley were also among the Irish priests of
that time.
The Fahy College is entrusted to the care of the Marist Brothers, who
are largely Irish. The community of Holy Cross of the Passionist
Fathers, who have as provincial the distinguished North American
scholar Father Fidelis Kent Stone, is almost entirely composed of
Irish and Irish-Americans. They have several establishments in
various provinces of Argentina. Irish priests are to be met with all
over the country. In Patagonia and the Chaco we also find a number of
Protestant missionaries sent out by the Irish branch of the South
American Missionary Society.
Archdeacon Dillon succeeded Father Fahy as Irish chaplain in Buenos
Ayres, and, although by birth and education an Irishman, he became
one of the principal dignitaries of the archdiocese. He was for some
time professor of theology in the ecclesiastical seminary of Buenos
Ayres, and accompanied Archbishop Escalada as theologian to the
Vatican Council in 1869. He was the founder of the _Southern Cross_
in 1874, the Irish weekly paper which is now so ably edited by the
gifted Irishman, Mr. Gerald Foley.
The first daily paper to appear in English in South America was the
_Standard_, founded in 1861 by Michael G. Mulhall, the distinguished
statistician, and it is still one of the leading papers in the
country. In conducting it Michael G. Mulhall was joined by his
brother, Edward T. Mulhall, in 1862, and for many years it was
continuously under their care. The _Standard_ still remains in the
Mulhall family, and has for its editor a cousin of the former
editor's, Mr. John Mulhall, who wisely directs its course. The
_Argentina_, an important paper in Spanish, was founded a few years
since by Edward T. Mulhall, Jr., a brilliant son of the late Edward
Mulhall of the _Standard_. The _Hyberno-Argentine Review_, a new
Irish weekly, is edited by another able Irishman, James B. Sheridan.
In Rio Janeiro the _Anglo-Brasilian Times_ was founded in 1864 by an
Irishman, Mr. Scully, who also wrote an important book on Brazil.
Ireland had also its representatives in South American diplomacy and
the making of treaties. As early as 1809 Colonel James Burke was sent
by Lord Strangford, British minister at Rio, on a confidential
mission to Buenos Ayres to negotiate the establishment of a separate
kingdom on the river Plate, with the Princess Charlotte as queen. In
1867 Mr. Gould, an Irishman, British chargé d'affaires, endeavored to
mediate between the allies, Brazil and Argentina, and President Lopez
of Paraguay, but without success. Stephen H. Sullivan, British chargé
d'affaires for Chile, signed the treaty of commerce and navigation
between England and Chile on the 10th of May, 1852. He was afterwards
appointed British minister at Lima, where he was murdered. The late
Chilian ministers to Buenos Ayres and London, William Blest Gana and
Albert Blest Gana, were the sons of an Irish Doctor Blest from Sligo,
who settled in Chile. In 1859 George Fagan signed a treaty with
General Guido for compensation of losses to British subjects during
the civil wars after the Independence.
The mining industry had among its pioneers brave sons of Erin. J. O.
French went to Buenos Ayres in 1826, and after an arduous mountain
journey arrived at the foot of the Cerro Morado, where he found
auriferous ores. Chevalier Edmond Temple, an Irish gentleman who had
served in Spain in a dragoon regiment, also landed in Buenos Ayres in
1826, and started across the Pampas, then almost uninhabited, until
he came to the mountainous country where the Potosi mines were
situated. In one of the defiles he lost his favorite horse, and in
his book he bids a touching farewell to the friendly steed which had
shared with him so many toils and dangers. Temple's successor in the
Argentine mining provinces was Major Rickard Seaver, a member of an
old Co. Dublin family.
Several books of travel in South America have been published by Irish
writers during the last fifty years. MacCann's _Travels in the
Argentine Provinces_, 1846-49, contains much that is valuable
concerning the history and manners of the country. Major Rickard
Seaver issued in 1863 an interesting narrative of his crossing the
Andes. Consul Hutchinson, an Irishman, published in 1864 his book
_Argentine Gleanings_, which was followed by another in 1869 called
_South American Recollections_. Robert Crawford, an Irish engineer,
led an expedition from Buenos Ayres in November, 1871, across the
Indian Pampas and over the pass of the Planchon in the Andes, to
survey an overland route to Chile, and subsequently published an
interesting account of his journey. The first book printed and
published in English, in South America, was the _Handbook of the
River Plate_, written by Michael G. Mulhall and published by the
_Standard_, in 1861. The same author also published the _Rural Code
of Buenos Ayres_ in 1867, and the _Handbook of Brazil_ in 1877. In
1871 he published an account of his travels among the German colonies
in Rio Grande do Sul. Twenty years ago the writer of this sketch
published _Between the Amazon and the Andes_ and the _Story of the
Jesuit Missions of Paraguay_. These books derive special interest
from the fact that she was the first foreign woman ever seen in
Cuyaba, the capital of Matto Grosso, whither she accompanied her
husband, 2500 miles from either the Atlantic or the Pacific seaboard.
They arrived as far as the Diamantina Mountains, beyond Cuyaba, and
saw the little rivers which form the sources of the mighty Amazon.
Casting a glance over South America, we see in every country and
province evidences of Irish genius employed not only in fighting but
in the development of natural resources. To quote Consul Cowper's
report to the Foreign Office in London: "The progress of Buenos Ayres
is mainly due to the industrious Irish sheep farmers." No other
nationality contributed so largely to the export trade of the
country. At one time it was shown by the tables of Mr. Duggan and
other wool exporters that the quantity of this staple industry yearly
sold by Irishmen in Buenos Ayres exceeded that sold by all other
nationalities. In later years the Irish sheep farmers in the province
of Buenos Ayres have turned their lands into wheat lands, and the
great industries of the country, sheep and cattle, have been moved to
the outside camps, especially to that wonderful grazing region in the
Andine valleys recently visited by Col. Roosevelt and his party. It
may be interesting to mention that at the first English races ever
held in South America, on November 6, 1826, the principal event, in
which ten horses ran, was easily won by an Irish horse with the
appropriate name of "Shamrock."