now able managers of the J. J. Flynn Company, extensive manufacturers of
carbonated waters, syrups and extracts in Quincy.
To Joseph W. Stewart, son of the pioneer William Stewart, Sr., the State
of Oregon is indebted for the scientific development of its fruit
interests at Medford. It is said that every fruit tree in Oregon is a
monument to the memory of Joseph Stewart. His brother William is a
scientific fruit grower near Quincy and resides in the city.
The grandsons of these early pioneers are now forging their way to the
front in the professions and in business. In the forties, a poor widow,
by the name of Wall, came to Quincy, with two children, a boy and a
girl. After coming from Ireland, she and her husband located at
Baltimore, Maryland, where her children were born. There with her
brother, who was a Welch, her husband commenced contracting in the
building of railroads, moving west with the roads. They reached
Danville, Illinois, where her husband died and left her in very poor
circumstances financially. She came with her children to Quincy and
raised both to respectable positions in society. The boy, who was named
Edmond Wall, is now nearly seventy years of age and a bookkeeper for a
tobacco manufacturing company. He is the father of four sons; the oldest
is John E., a member of the law firm of Wilson & Wall. He is an eloquent
advocate and has the promise of a great political future. J. W. Wall, a
brother, is the active manager of the Gardner Governor Company, the
largest institution of its kind, perhaps, in the world, and he has two
younger brothers as assistants.
A grandson of an Irishman, C. B. McCrory, is judge of our County or
probate court, while Erde Beatty, also a grandson of an Irishman, is
clerk of our Circuit Court, and William Smith, another grandson, is an
assistant clerk in the County Court. Major George W. Green, of Chicago,
is the grandson of John McDade, a soldier of 1812. Major Green is the
head of a large lumber company in Chicago. He was major of the
Seventy-eighth Illinois Infantry during the civil war and was severely
wounded. He is a prominent member of the Loyal Legion. The grandsons of
Timothy Castle are successful managers of the Comstock Castle Stove
Company in Quincy, Keokuk and other cities.
Barney Corrigan, with his wife and ten children, came to Quincy in 1840
from Tyrone County, Ireland. In 1843 he settled on a farm southeast of
the city, purchased from a soldier of 1812 an Irishman by the name of
Constantine Clark. His children all married after coming to America, and
had large families, excepting Edward, who died a few years after his
arrival. The old homestead is still in the family, having passed from
Barney Corrigan to his son James, who raised a family of seven sons and
two daughters. James occupied the farm for fifty-three years, and at his
death it passed to his son Daniel, whose brother, James B. Corrigan, has
been Treasurer of Adams County for two terms of four years and deputy
treasurer for several terms.
Among the steamboats running from St. Louis on the upper Mississippi
between 1827 and 1836 which were owned or commanded by Irishmen were the
following: The Omega, by Captain Rafferty; the Shamrock, by Captain May;
the Emerald, the Gypsy and the O’Connell, by the Reynolds Brothers, and
the Josephine, by Captain Clark.
Our subject has run away with us and has taken us far beyond the limits
we designed when we commenced these notes. The field occupied by the
Irish-American pioneers of the upper Mississippi Valley, in even the
vicinity of Quincy, is not exhausted by these notes.
REV. FRANCIS MAKEMIE—THE PAUL OF SEAGIRT ACCOMAC, THE KNOX OF
CHESAPEAKE, AND FOUNDER OF ORGANIZED PRESBYTERIANISM IN AMERICA.
BY REV. HAVERGAL SHEPPARD, D. D., MINISTER OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
AT SCHENECTADY, N. Y.
Just fifty-five years after the accession of the House of Stuart to the
British Crown; years born of those awful times of the Reformation, when
men hated each other for their creed rather than for their conduct; in
the year in which Cromwell died, 1658, Francis Makemie was born in that
little out of the way village of the north of Ireland, Ramelton, County
Donegal.
That beautiful arm of the Atlantic, called by the natives Lough Swilly,
lay hard by his home and undoubtedly many were the times as a boy he
played on its shores or swam in its clear, cool waters.
Like many of the world’s great preachers, he became hopefully pious at
the age of fifteen, according to his own testimony in his answer to
Keith’s “Libel Against a Catechism,” published by Francis Makemie, in
Boston, 1694, he says:
“’Ere I received the imposition of hands in that Scriptural and orderly
separation with my holy and ministerial calling, that I gave requiring
satisfaction to Godly, learned and judicious, discerning men, of a work
of grace and conversion, wrought in my heart at fifteen years of age, by
and from the pains of a Godly schoolmaster; who used no small diligence
in gaining tender souls to God’s service and fear.”
At seventeen he was enrolled in the University of Glasgow in the third
class, with the ministry in view. Next we see him, January 28th, 1860,
appearing before the Presbytery of Laggan at St. Johnstown, Ireland,
with a recommendation from his Pastor, Mr. Thomas Drummond, and so began
his theological training and examination; from time to time he presents
himself before the Presbytery and is examined by a competent committee.
Mr. William Liston reports: “September 29th, 1680, that Mr. Francis
Makemy desires some more time and that he is diligent.” Again, March
9th, 1681: “Upon the good report we get of Messrs. Francis Makemy and
Mr. Alexander Marshall, the meeting think fit to put them upon trials in
order to their being licentiates to preach and they name I. Timothy 1:5
to Mr. Makemy.”
Again, April 20th, 1681, Francis Makemy delivered his homily upon I.
Timothy 1:5 and was approved. Matt. 11:28 was appointed to him for the
next meeting.
May 25th, 1681, Mr. Francis Makemy delivered his private homily on Matt.
11:28 and was approved.
The last entry in the minute book of the presbytery of Laggan, previous
to December 30th, 1690, was on July 31st, 1681. “The meeting see fit to
lay aside their ordinary business at this extraordinary meeting, only,
if time will permit, we will hear the exegeses of the two young men who
are upon their trials.”
It is more than likely, as Dr. Briggs says in the appendix to American
Presbyterianism: “That Mr. Makemy was probably licensed in the autumn of
1681 and after several appropriate trials and having preached for Mr.
Hempton at Burt, April 2d, 1682, he was ordained to go out to America.”
Two years previous, or 1680, Colonel William Stevens laid before the
Presbytery of Laggan by letter the desire of the Presbyterian families
in the lower counties of Maryland on the eastern shore, for a minister
to labor in that part of the country.
The clergy of the established church in Virginia and Maryland were not
those who would appeal to earnest and pious nonconformists; Hammond in
“Leah and Rachel or Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Maryland”
(London, 1656) used strong language in speaking of the supply of clergy
from the old land, “Yet many came, such as wore Black coats, and could
babble in a Pulpit, roar in a Tavern, exact from their Parishioners and
rather by their dissoluteness destroy, than feed their Flocks;” to this
may be added the testimony of Bishop Meade of Virginia (1829–1862)
“Immense were the difficulties in getting a full supply of ministers of
any character, and of those who came, how few were faithful and duly
qualified for the station.”
It is a well established fact that some who were discarded from the
English Church obtained livings in Virginia, there was not only
defective preaching but most evil living among them. One of them was for
years president of a Jockey Club and another fought a duel in sight of
the very church in which he had performed the solemn offices of
religion.
Governor Berkeley’s testimony in the matter has been frequently quoted,
“As to religious teaching—we have forty-eight parishes and our ministers
are well paid and by my consent should be better if they would pray
oftener and preach less, but as of all other commodities, so of this,
the worst are sent to us, and we have few that we could boast of since
the persecution in Cromwell’s tyranny drove divers worthy men hither.”
Again, according to Meade, “It is not wonderful that disaffection should
take place and dissent begin.” It was under these conditions and after
Lord Howard of Effingham succeeded Culpepper in Virginia, having
received royal instructions “to allow no person to use a printing press,
on any occasion whatsoever,” that there came into Virginia the man whose
influence in the cause of religious liberty in the colonies must be
reckoned as second to that of but few others—this was Francis Makemie,
the Irish founder of organized Presbyterianism in America. He came by
the way of the Barbadoes and settled at Rehoboth by the river and
founded the Presbyterian Church at Snow Hill, Maryland, 1683. He was
earnest, fearless and indefatigable in his labors for the spiritual
uplift of the people with whom his lot was cast, and it is worth noting
that in those days of the intolerance of the established church, that
the Presbyterian denomination began its existence in a colony founded by
a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Baltimore. Having raised the blue banner
in Maryland, he traveled by land as far as Norfolk and proceeded to
Carolina, where it seems he labored among the people until the spring of
the following year, as he was in North Carolina in May.
In a letter to Increase Mather, written July 22d, 1684, from Elizabeth
River, Virginia, he speaks of a voyage engaged to South Carolina, but he
met with contrary winds and was driven as far north as Delaware Bay and
eventually had to put into Virginia, where he was persuaded by Colonel
Anthony Lawson and other inhabitants of the Parish of Linhaven in lower
Norfolk County to stay that season. Their pastor, formerly from Ireland,
died the August before and left them without a leader.
Makemie seems to have remained at Elizabeth River for a considerable
time. He writes again from there to Increase Mather, Boston, N. England,
under date of July 28, 1685, in which he acknowledges the receipt of a
letter and three books and refers to a Mr. Thomas Barret, a minister
living in South Carolina and from whom he had received a letter from
Ashley River, stating that he was about to take shipping for New England
and for whom Makemie enclosed a letter. Just how long after this he
remained with this people is not known, only that in the following year
he made an extended preaching tour southward to Carolina, ministering to
the spiritual necessaries of the people in neglected communities and
performing the other duties devolving upon a true minister of the
Gospel. It was no easy task that confronted him, while nearly three
fourths of the population were dissenters from the established church.
“It is safe to say,” says Cobbs, “that no small proportion of the people
were without any definite religion.” This was especially true of North
Carolina.
As late as 1729 Colonel William Byrd wrote of Edenton, then capital of
North Carolina: “I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian
or Mohammedan world where there is neither church, chapel, mosque,
synagogue, or any other place of worship of any sect or religion
whatever.
“They pay no tribute either to God or to Cæsar.”
With a knowledge of such conditions before him he put himself forward in
1686, with that fearlessness characteristic of his race, to preach the
Gospel to the regions beyond.
How long he labored here is impossible to tell, but he returned and took
up his residence on the eastern shore at Matchatauk, Virginia. His name
appeared for the first time on the court records of Accomac County,
Virginia, in 1690, and John Galbraith’s will, made August 12th, 1691,
refers to Makemie as Minister of the Gospel at Rehoboth town. In that
year he made a visit to England and returned either that autumn or the
following spring, after an earnest endeavor to inspire interest in the
religious life of the new colony. It was during the year 1692 that
Makemie visited Philadelphia and planted the seed of Presbyterianism by
preaching the first sermon in the Barbadoes store, northwest corner of
Second and Chestnut streets, after which, in the autumn of this year, he
sailed for the Barbadoes, where he remained several years, combining the
life of a minister and a merchant, as shown by letters dated December
28th, 1696; January 17th, 1697, and, February 12th, 1697, which are
still preserved.
It was either during the year 1697 or the early part of the succeeding,
1698, that he returned to his old home on the eastern shore and married
Naomi Anderson, according to Dr. Hill’s “Rise of American
Presbyterianism.”
In a will signed by William Anderson, July 23d, 1698, and recorded
October 10th, he refers to Mr. Francis Makemie and Naomi, his wife, my
eldest daughter. Again, the will says, “If my daughter Naomi have no
issue,” showing that no children were born at that time.
In Virginia he suffered much annoyance from the authorities, but was the
first dissenting minister to obtain a certificate under the toleration
act, 1689, of William and Mary, having previously a certificate of his
qualifications at Barbadoes, yet it was not until ten years later, 1699,
that the Virginia legislature grudgingly granted this with licenses for
two houses in Accomac, as places of dissenting worship, to which another
was added in 1704.
How much he did for the cause he espoused through the years following
cannot be computed, as he went in and out among the people, many of them
Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland, bringing the faith of their
fathers with them, but in this new colony, in an environment opposed to
religious feeling, they drifted into many sins and habits that fared
well to spoil their early impressions of piety.
It is worthy of note that all this time he supported himself by business
pursuits; realizing the responsibility of the growing work, he executed
a power of attorney to his wife May 30th, 1704, reciting that he was
about to depart for Europe, which he did, arriving in London that
summer, he then appealed to the nonconformists ministers for men and
funds to sustain them. The London ministers responded by agreeing to
furnish support for two missionaries, for two years, and Makemie at once
secured two young men, John Hampton, a fellow countryman, and George
McNish, a Scotchman (?).
It was while he sojourned in London that he published his “Plain and
Friendly Persuasive to the Inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland for
promoting Towns and Cohabitations, by a well wisher to both
Governments,” returning in 1705 with the foregoing young men. We find
that there were five church edifices and as many organized Presbyterian
congregations in Somerset County as a result of his previous labor.
In 1706 he had the new church building at Rehoboth erected on his own
land. Indeed this was an eventful year for the Presbyterian Church, as
on March 22d the first Classical Assembly organized under the name
“Presbytery,” presumably in the building of the First Presbyterian
Church erected 1705 at Market and Banks Streets, Philadelphia.
Makemie seems to have been elected the first Moderator, as his name is
the first to appear on the oldest records extant. This body was composed
of three pastors and four missionaries, and was a happy union of men
from different parts of the British possessions—Makemie and Hampton from
Ireland, McNish from Scotland (?), Andrews, Wilson, Taylor and Davis
from New England. A marked absentee was Josias Makie, the Irish pastor
at Elizabeth River.
It claimed no authority, but it was a broad, generous, tolerant spirit
which effected this union, and it seems to have taken the Presbytery of
Dublin as a model. The record of this first meeting is lost, but,
according to Briggs, “American Presbyterianism,” after the adjournment
of the Presbytery in October, Francis Makemie took John Hampton with him
and set out on a journey to Boston, on arrival in New York he was
invited by the Dutch minister, Rev. Gualtherus du Bois to preach in the
Reformed Church, but Lord Cornbury forbade the service. The preacher,
not insisting on the use of the church, held service and preached in the
house of William Jackson “with open doors.”
[Illustration:
HONORABLE EDWARD E. McCALL.
Justice of the Supreme Court of New York.
A Life Member of the Society.
]
Hampton preaching also on the same Sunday, January 20th, 1707, at
Newtown, L. I. So bold a defiance aroused the wrath of the Governor,
who, on the 24th of the month issued a warrant for the arrest of both
men, “who have taken upon them to preach in a private house without
having obtained any license for so doing, as they have gone into Long
Island with intent there to spread their pernicious doctrines and
principles to the disturbance of the church by law, established and of
the government of this province.” The warrant was executed and the
culprits were brought for examination before the Governor when Makemie
defended his liberty on the toleration act of England—this act Cornbury
declared to be without any force in his government, and required the
prisoners to give bonds for good behaviour and to promise not to preach
in New York or New Jersey. Makemie was willing to give bonds, but
refused the promise, and both men were put in jail, where they remained
six weeks and four days, during the absence of Chief Justice Momperson.
On the return of the Judge they were brought before him on a writ of
“habeas corpus.” Hampton was discharged without trial as a “man of less
interest,” while Makemie was liberated under bonds to appear for trial
at the next session of the court, the Grand Jury having found a true
bill against him, “that he did take upon himself to preach in a
conventicle and meeting not permitted or allowed by law, under color or
excuse of religion in other manner than according to our Liturgy and
practice of the Church of England.”
On his release he immediately returned to Philadelphia with Hampton for
the meeting of Presbytery March 22d, 1707. From thence he writes to
Benjamin Colman of Boston: “Since our imprisonment we have commenced a
correspondence with our Reverend Breth of the ministry at Boston, which
we hope according to our intention has been communicated to you all,
whose sympathizing concurrence I cannot doubt of, in an expensive
struggle for asserting our liberty against the powerful invasion of Lord
Cornbury, which is not yet over.
“I need not tell you of a picked jury and the penal laws are invading
our American sanctuary without the least regard to the toleration, which
should justly alarm us all.”
At the trial, in the following June, the prosecution relied on the royal
instruction to Cornbury, rather than on the ministry act, as though
conscious that said act, while establishing a church, yet inflicted no
penalties for non-conformity.
Makemie defended himself, producing licenses from the Governors of
Virginia and Maryland, contending that there was nothing in the English
common or statute law to hold him, and nothing in the laws of New York
against the liberty he had exercised.
As to the Governor’s ecclesiastical authority, he argued that it could
not exist without the due promulgation of law.
The plea of Makemie was so forceful that a jury “Packed to convict” was
won over to his cause and unanimously acquitted him. The court, however,
would not release him until he had paid all the costs, which, together
with his expenses, amounted to £83, as sufficiently heavy burden, for
which he must yet have had great compensation in the consciousness that
he had fought a great fight and won a great victory in the cause of
human liberty. Never again did a New York Governor attempt to silence
any orderly preaching of the Gospel.
To Cornbury the issue of the case brought a bitter mortification, and he
seems to have been seriously alarmed for the consequence to himself from
the reports of the trial made by Mr. Makemie and his friends in England
and the Colonies.
Writing to the lords of trade in October, 1707, he denied that Makemie
had applied to him for a license, and said: “I entreat your Lordship’s
protection against that malicious man, who is well known in Virginia and
Maryland to be a disturber of the peace and quiet of all places he comes
into; he is a Doctor of Physic, a Merchant, and attorney or counsellor
at law, and, which is worse of all, a disturber of governments.”
It does not appear that Makemie ever took any action against Cornbury,
nor was it needed to the damage of his Lordship’s reputation, which his
course had so deeply stained.
The trial being over, Makemie seems to have continued on his journey to
New England, as he addressed a letter to Lord Cornbury from Boston in
July, 1707, and, according to a bequest in his will made soon after,
“Mr. Jedediah Andrews, Minister at Philadelphia, is given my new cane,
bought and fixed in Boston.” This will was signed April 27th, 1708, in
which he refers to his wife and two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne
Makemie.
Some time between this and August 4th, when the will was ordered to be
recorded, Makemie died, with a solemn declaration of attachment to his
mother church and so ended the career, at the age of fifty, of one of
the greatest men who ever came to our shores in the interest of the
protestant religion and it is safe to say had he lived in the times of
the Revolution, he would have been one of the many of his fellow
countrymen who went forth to fight for the flag of this new nation and
raised their voices in behalf of human liberty.
[Illustration:
JAMES L. O’NEILL, ESQ.,
Of Elizabeth, N. J.
Member of the Executive Council.
]
May 14th, 1908, a handsome monument was dedicated to his memory on the
banks of Holden’s Creek, Accomac County, Virginia.
HOLLIDAYSBURG—THE HOLLIDAY FAMILY—DEATH OF LIEUTENANT HOLLIDAY AT THE
BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE—MASSACRE OF A PORTION OF WILLIAM HOLLIDAY’S
FAMILY—JOHN HOLLIDAY, AUGHWICK—GEORGE CROGAN.
BY JAMES L. O’NEILL, ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY, MEMBER OF THE EXECUTIVE
COUNCIL.
William and Adam Holliday, cousins, emigrated from the north of Ireland
about 1750, and settled in the neighborhood of the Manor, in Lancaster
County, Penn. The feuds which existed between the Irish and German
emigrants, as well as the unceasing efforts of the proprietary agents to
keep emigrants from settling upon their lands, induced the Hollidays to
seek a location farther west. Conococheague suggested itself to them as
a suitable place, because it was so far removed from Philadelphia that
the proprietors could not well dispossess them; and, the line never
having been established, it was altogether uncertain whether the
settlement was in Pennsylvania or Maryland. Besides, it possessed the
advantage of being tolerably well populated. Accordingly, they settled
on the banks of the Conococheague and cleared land, which they purchased
and paid for soon after the survey.