Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. William James McNevin and William Sampson. The
lives, high professional attainments and success of the first two are
too well known to require more than a passing reference. They did
immeasurable good in instilling respect for Irish characteristics and
admiration for Irish genius. Emmet exercised a potent influence on the
early political history of the country. His location in this city,
instead of going to Ohio as he had intended, was due to the advice of
Governor George Clinton, and was followed by his election as
Attorney-General of the State within eight years after his reaching
these shores. The monument to his memory in St. Paul’s churchyard is a
fitting companion to the memorial to General Montgomery. He
collaborated with Doctor MacNevin in the production of ‘Pieces of
Irish History.’ Doctor MacNevin, in the midst of a busy and highly
lucrative practice, and while acting as a professor in a medical
college, found time to establish a bureau to obtain places for Irish
servant girls, and to publish “Directions or Advice to Irishmen
Arriving in America.” William Sampson, the third of the number, was
born in Londonderry, Ireland, January 17, 1764. He held a commission
in the Irish Volunteers, after studying at Dublin University and being
admitted as a barrister. His sympathy with the patriots and his
brilliant professional defense of members of the United Irishmen led
to his arrest after the uprising and his confinement in prison for
some time. After his release he was re-arrested in Portugal, whither
he had gone for safety, and was imprisoned on the complaint of the
British Government. Secretly taken to France, he finally came to New
York, arriving here July 4, 1806. He then practised stenography, as
well as his profession of the law, ranking second only to Thomas
Lloyd, the great reporter of Congress, as a shorthand writer. His
notes furnished the basis of many volumes of reports. But as a lawyer
he was especially successful and made a reputation for wit,
forcefulness, ability and integrity. His daughter married a son of
Theobold Wolf Tone. When Sampson removed to Washington in 1825, he was
presented with an address from the citizens of New York, among the
signers being James Kent and DeWitt Clinton.
“The years after the Revolution were fruitful of steady Irish
arrivals, without much of great note occurring. A careful study of the
statistics of the first third of the nineteenth century, so far as
they are available, would doubtless be productive of good results. By
1833 there were 40,000 Irish-born residents here, it was then
estimated. This growth had been gradual, but hardly remarked, and
certainly was not expected. This may well be realized when we know
that the graveyard in the rear of St. Peter’s Church answered all the
purposes of burial for the Irish Catholics at the outset, and, until
old St. Patrick’s site was bought from St. Peter’s Church in 1801, to
serve for a general Catholic burial ground. It is also worthy of note
that no move for a larger cemetery was made until 1826, when the site
of the present Cathedral was bought at a cost of $5,500 for that
purpose by the parishes of St. Peter’s, St. Patrick’s and St. Mary’s,
but was abandoned after a few years’ trial as being too far out in the
country. Of course, a tremendous tide of Irish immigration set in
after the famine years of 1846, 1847 and 1848. But before that time,
the period of the pioneers had ceased, and that of construction had
begun. It ended in New York with the arrival of Bishop John Hughes.
Under his masterful guidance the position of the Irish here completely
changed; from the dwarfed and apologetic attitude which many of his
people had theretofore assumed, they rose to man’s estate. He asserted
their rights and made them realize the justice of their appeal for
fair treatment and decent consideration. He courageously defended them
from unjust attack and took every possible occasion to announce the
splendor of their history and the value to American citizenship of
their racial characteristics. Impressing himself on the country, and
finally winning its confidence, he did more than any other one man has
ever done to make the Irish people an active, useful, aggressive force
in the community. He pointed out the way by which they have since
risen from poverty, misery and persecution—from an isolation worse
than the Ghetto—to a position so commanding as to seem almost
miraculous.
“There is an impression that Irish immigration is a matter of only
half a century. From this hasty sketch we have seen that it is a
matter of gradual growth, the earlier citizens being successful
merchants, adding to their capital, the later being the industrious,
if humble, whom necessity had driven abroad from a land which no other
force could have induced them to leave. Let us hope that the
inspiration of this Society may lead some one to undertake this
seemingly hopeless task of wresting from the past the record of those
who, today unknown, did the work whose fruits we are all enjoying. All
honor to the early exiles, whose very names are forgotten, and yet
who, hungry, exhausted from toil, hated and despised, with their very
heartstrings throbbing with the grief of a sensitive race justly proud
of its glorious traditions, then scorned and derided,—yet in silence
and resignation built deep and solid the foundations of the free
institutions of our country. Without these pioneers the history of
Irish genius and its accomplishments would have been the less
glorious, but without them there would have been as well a different
tale to write of this latest experiment in human freedom. New York
owes that race a particular debt of gratitude, which gave to the State
its first Governor, George Clinton, the son of a County Longford
emigrant, and his kinsman, DeWitt Clinton, the father of the Erie
Canal; which gave to the city its first mayor, James Duane, an
Irishman’s son; and which gave to the city fame as the scene of the
first successful attempt to conquer a way over the waters by the use
of steam, when the son of a Kilkenny man, Robert Fulton, saw the
fruition of his dreams as the _Clermont_ sailed the Hudson, August 11,
1807.
“Irishmen and their sons have always been fond of the city which to
them symbolized the freedom and opportunity of the West. New York has
been the haven of their hopes. Here their eyes, still dim with tears
at the thought of Erin, first saw the glimmerings of hope and
confidence. She has honored and enriched their sons, and they have not
been ungrateful nor unworthy. From tens of thousands of Irish hearts,
when the hour for the closing of their earthly pilgrimage was near at
hand, has gone up an aspiration for her continued prosperity who had
not forgotten the stranger within her gates. Many an Irishman has
voiced the wish which Diedrich Knickerbocker was represented as
uttering as the expression of the Dutchman’s love: ‘Haply this frail
compound of dust, which while alive may have given birth to nothing
but unprofitable weeds, may form a humble sod of the valley, whence
may spring many a sweet wild flower to adorn my beloved island of
Mannahata!’”
Judge Dowling’s address met with hearty applause and he received many
compliments upon the masterly manner with which he handled the difficult
subject assigned him.
PRESIDENT-GENERAL QUINLAN: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have much pleasure
in announcing to you that the next speaker of the evening, who comes
from the garden spot of the Middle West and who will respond to the
toast of ‘The Irish Pioneers of the West and Their Descendants,’ is the
Hon. Maurice T. Moloney, Ex-Attorney General of the State of Illinois.”
Hon. Maurice T. Moloney:
“_Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the American Irish Historical
Society_:
“The subject suggested for me to talk on, ‘The Pioneer Irish of the West
and Their Descendants,’ is one of great latitude, yet it is one that has
not been historically treated as it deserves. I hope, however, in the
short time I propose to devote to it, I will not fall into the same line
of thought as did one of Moore’s characters. In the Veiled Prophet of
Korassan, the great chamberlain, Fadladeen, when about to criticise the
young poet’s story, said: ‘In order to convey with clearness my opinion
of the story this young man has related, it is necessary to take a
review of all the stories that have ever’—and when at this point he was
interrupted by the good Princess, he became mortified at not being
allowed to show how much he knew about everything but the subject
immediately before him. Bearing in mind, then, Fadladeen’s misadventure,
still, we should not be unmindful of our migration hither, and some of
the causes that led to it.
“The successive misfortunes that have overtaken that unfortunate people
ever since Nicholas Brekespear gave a quit-claim deed of them to Henry
II constitute even in the blood-stained pages of English history some of
the greatest tragedies of ancient or modern times, and should lead some
at least of those good people who believe in future rewards and
punishments to consign that same Brekespear to a warm abode.
“It is needless, no doubt, to tell Irishmen or their descendants, or
those interested in Irish history, of the many migrations from that
country. During the latter part of the seventeenth and the first part of
the eighteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands of them filled the
continental armies and many other thousands, young and old, were
banished to the West Indies and the colonies, as helots, under the
direction of that brutal, canting knave, Cromwell, and others. I will
call your attention, however, for a few moments only, to some of the
migrations of the nineteenth century.
“I find on an examination of the Report of the Devon Commission to
Parliament in 1845, that in the decade from 1831 to 1841, 430,963
emigrants left Ireland. I further find from an examination of Irish
Immigration Statistics, that in the following decade from 1841 to 1851,
1,508,454 left the Island, and from 1851 to 1907, 4,130,015 persons
emigrated from that unfortunate country, making a total leaving the
Island in seventy odd years of 6,069,432. The present population of that
country is about four and a half millions—a little less. What a terrible
indictment of England and her seven centuries of oppression! No language
that I am capable of using could more eloquently depict her continued
infamies than that contained in these statistics.
“Of course, all of these people did not come to this country. Some went
to other countries, especially to the Antipodes, but the great bulk of
them came to the Great Republic, where many thousands of their kith and
kin had preceded them.
[Illustration:
HON. HUGH McCAFFREY.
Philadelphia, President McCaffrey File Co.
Vice-President of the Society for Pennsylvania.
]
“It would be interesting as well as instructive to follow up and trace
the careers and fortunes of those Irish exiles and their descendants who
thronged the shores and trod the soil of the Republic. It has never been
done so far as I know. McGee, in the fifties, and Maguire, in the
sixties, each wrote a small volume on the subject, and they are of some
value to the student of history. Of this great swarm, how many crossed
the Alleghanies and steered their course for the West? It is difficult
to say. We have not even approximately correct data on the subject.
“I think, however, I am safe in saying that half of those who came to
this country within the last named period did so. In the Middle West, in
the great states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa,—indeed,
in all the great western states—there is not a county, city or village
where they or their descendants are not to be found in goodly numbers.
Thank Heaven! race suicide has not as yet overtaken them.
“Maguire, in his work written in the sixties, advised his countrymen to
settle in the West, especially in the state of California. His advice,
no doubt, carried great weight and influenced many of them in seeking
Western homes.
“I remember, as a boy in Ireland, reading his lectures on the subject,
and subsequently, after graduating at the University of Virginia, I
determined to go to California, but straightened conditions intervening,
I was compelled to remain in Illinois. Hence, I am fairly familiar with
the people of that great State, and I think the history of the Irish
there would be fairly typical of them in other Western States.
“And now I think I hear you ask—what of them? What have they done, and
what are they doing, in what many of you Eastern gentlemen are pleased
to call the ‘wild and woolly West.’ To be frank, taking into
consideration their old home conditions, and the circumstances attending
their coming, they are doing and have done fairly well. They were mostly
of the tenant farming class and day laborers. Manufacturing in Ireland
long prior to this time ceased to be a factor, having been either
abolished, or prevented by successive English Parliaments. They were of
necessity very poor, they and their forebears for centuries having been
plundered by heartless tyrants. No people prefer indigence and want to
prosperity. It was artificially enforced poverty that compelled them to
emigrate.
“On arriving in the West, therefore, they were for the most part forced
to occupy the hard lot of the unskilled laborer, and I may say without
fear of contradiction, what they undertook to do they did well. They dug
our great canals, built our great lines of railroads, erected our
telegraph lines from Chicago to San Francisco and helped to operate
them. They engaged in farming and stock raising and have been successful
in both. There is not a public utility in the West whose physical
structure at least does not owe its existence in the main to Irish
hands; and let it not be forgotten, too, that gradually, as these men
were able to put by a little of their hard earnings, they tried to
elevate themselves and their children in the various walks of life. They
did not rest content with their lot. They knew their natural
capabilities and tried to and did improve them. Many of them, too, were
men of initiative. Of course, the rich and the learned, as a rule, were
not among them. People of that kind do not have to leave their country
to seek homes in other climes. Labor, however, manual or otherwise, is
no disgrace; rather is it a badge of respectability.
“‘Honor and shame from no condition rise,
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’
“Of course many of them,—alas, too many,—fell by the way.
“As to the work done by our people in the West, take as an illustration
the Illinois & Michigan Canal, which begins at Chicago on the southern
bend of Lake Michigan and enters the Illinois River at La Salle, a
distance of a hundred miles. From its inception to its close the work
was mainly done by Irish emigrants. It has been to Illinois and the West
a great benefit. Not only was this great work done by the labor of
Irishmen, but its successful accomplishment in a financial way was due
to the exertions of one of them. In 1842 work on the canal had to be
abandoned because of the financial condition of the State Treasury. At
that time the counties of La Salle, Grundy and De Kalb constituted a
Senatorial District, and a young Irishman twenty-six years of age, one
Michael Ryan, was elected State Senator from there. He was, even at that
early age, easily the peer of any man in the West. So thoroughly did he
master the subject both as to the necessities of the canal and its
resources that he introduced and carried through the State Legislature,
not without opposition, however, a bill enabling the State to borrow one
million, six hundred thousand dollars, to complete the work. The
Governor at the time, recognizing his great ability, appointed him and a
Mr. Oakley agents for the State to proceed to London and borrow that
sum—no small amount for those days. They succeeded in doing so. It is
said of him (and there are those still living in my home town who knew
him well and speak of him with affection) that he was a brilliant man,
kind and courteous, an honest man. To him did the State of Illinois
mainly owe its success in raising the means to complete that great
undertaking.
“Another leading Irishman in Illinois in those days was one William
Reddick, a State Senator for many years, a leading temperance advocate,
and a man of whom any people might be proud. He left a large fortune to
the city of Ottawa for library purposes. Many of the younger emigrants
learned trades and became skilled workmen. Many of them engaged in the
mercantile business, at the beginning in a small way, but eventually
became prosperous. So, too, did they engage in manufacturing. Many of
them owned coal mines and of course many, very many, were miners. The
Kilgubbin coal shaft, as it was called, a valuable property in the
county I reside in, was owned and operated by one Nicholas Duncan, a
Cork man.
“Of course, of the hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who have lived and
still live with their descendants in the great city of Chicago, it is
not possible for me to give more than a passing glance, and say that
they are among the leading business men, lawyers, doctors and financiers
of that great metropolis. Volumes might be written about them.
“There were not many professional men among those early emigrants. There
was one, however, who deserves special mention. His name was E. G. Ryan.
He was born in Dublin and came to Illinois in the thirties. He practised
law in that State and was recognized at once as being among the leaders
of the bar. He afterwards moved to Wisconsin and there became Chief
Justice of the Court of Last Resort of that State. He was a profound
lawyer, a regular encyclopædia of learning. He was probably the greatest
jurist of the West, and there are those who say that he would bear
favorable comparison with the great John Marshall. He has been dead for
some few years.
“Very many of the descendants of those pioneers entered the different
professions. In law and medicine they easily hold their own in the West.
The ablest, all-around lawyer I ever met was Thomas A. Moran of Chicago,
for a time Judge of the Circuit and Appellate Courts in that State. He,
too, has passed out into the Great Beyond.
“Another who made history might also be mentioned.
“In early days, as we say out West, one John H. Mulkey, then about
twenty years old, came to the southern part of the State of Illinois
from the State of Tennessee, as an itinerant Methodist preacher. Being a
man of good sense, he soon abandoned the ministry and took up the study
and afterwards the practice of the law. He met with great success. He
had a splendid career. He was elected to the Supreme Court and served as
an honored member of that body for a number of years. In 1896, while I
represented the State, he came to my office (he was then practising law)
and sought a continuance of a case in the Supreme Court. I readily
consented, and he dictated to my stenographer the agreement for a
continuance. While he was doing so it occurred to me that he had a very
peculiar name indeed, and when he got through I said rather abruptly, I
confess: ‘Judge, where in the world did you get that name? I can’t think
to what nation your ancestors could have belonged.’ He looked at me,
laughed, and said, ‘I am as Irish as you are, but an ancestor changed
the good old Irish name of Mulcahey to Mulkey, and’ he added, ‘he didn’t
improve it.’
“Mulkey had a high sense of honor. He had a solicitous regard for the
reputation of his profession. He was a scholarly man, a conscientious
jurist. He detested a dishonest man and especially a dishonest lawyer.
Apropos of this, it may not be uninteresting if I relate a few of the
circumstances attending a dissenting opinion which he wrote while on the
Bench. It seems that two men, one named Hughes and the other Appleton,
were neighbors and both practised law in Chicago. Hughes conveyed the
title to a piece of property worth eight to ten thousand dollars to
Appleton, without consideration. The latter was merely a trustee.
Appleton disposed of the property and converted the proceeds to his own
use. The Attorney-General of Illinois filed an information in the
Supreme Court setting up these facts and asking for the disbarment of
Appleton. On a final hearing that Court denied the application on the
ground that the relation of attorney and client did not exist between
them. Mulkey not being able to agree with the majority of the Court
wrote a unique dissenting opinion, in which among other things, he said:
‘This defense so forcibly reminds me of the old story of the profane
bishop who had the good fortune to be a duke also, I cannot refrain from
telling it. An acquaintance who happened to overhear him using profane
language asked him how it was that he, being a bishop, could be guilty
of swearing. “Ah, my friend,” replied his reverence, “I swear as a duke
and not as a bishop.” “But,” retorted the other, “when the devil comes
to get the duke, what will become of the bishop?” So, in this case, when
his Satanic Majesty calls for Appleton the trustee, I should like to
know what will become of Appleton the attorney.’ I might add that some
years after his admission to the bar, he became a Catholic, and died in
that faith.
“I wonder how many Irish names have been mutilated like that of the good
judge. I fear too many.
“In the management of railroads, our people have excelled in the West.
The children of two Irishmen, brothers, named Egan, born within about
thirty miles of where I reside, have been important, if not chief
factors in the management of many railroads. They have been connected
with the Grand Trunk, the Illinois Central and other roads. I remember
well, in 1894, when the great strike, almost an incipient insurrection,
occurred in Chicago, that one of these Egans was selected by the
officers and directors of all the railroads centering in that great
city, to take entire control of their properties and manage them during
the strike. This was quite a tribute to the son of a poor Irishman.
Another, still comparatively young, might be mentioned. He was born in
the town I live in. I remember him as a poor boy, a brakeman on a branch
line running through our city. His name is Patrick Houlihan. A brochure
has been written on his career and is entitled, I believe, ‘From Water
Carrier to General Manager.’ He has on different lines, successively
occupied the positions between that of water boy and superintendent, and
is now general manager of the Toledo, St. Louis & Western and the
Chicago & Alton Railroad Companies, with headquarters at Chicago. He is
bright and brainy, with years of usefulness before him. He is a credit
to our race.
“In literature, we have fairly well held our own. I do not mean to say
that we have written as many novels, good bad and indifferent, as
others, but the Rileys, the Finnertys, the Sullivans, the Clearys and
Dunns, and men and women of such names have left their impress upon our
literature. Many of you no doubt have met and all must have with
pleasure, read that Western product, the discoverer of Mr. Dooley and
Archie Avenue road, that droll, inimitable writer of ‘dialect’ a
philosopher in his way—Finley Peter Dunn, who like other good men, has
recently gone wrong, in having against the advice of Greeley and all the
sages of the republic, migrated backwards as it were until now Gotham
claims him for her own.
“And now a few words as to the tillers of the soil.
“Many of those emigrants settled upon the lands of the West, though
under disadvantageous circumstances. There are many townships in my
county, and in adjoining counties, and indeed scattered all over the
West, that have been settled almost exclusively by them. Those lands are
now worth on an average $150 per acre. Measurably, this is true of the
Middle West. It is literally true of Illinois.
“Nebraska settlement, as it was called, embracing all that territory
from Kansas to Canada, and from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, was
thrown open for settlement in 1854. A large number of Irish were among
the early settlers. In 1857 a convention was held in Buffalo to perfect
plans for establishing Irish colonies in the West. Delegates assembled
from all over the country. Three large colonies started as a result of
this convention—one led by Father Trecy founded St. Patrick’s Colony in
Nebraska, now Jackson. Another, under Father Powers, of Pennsylvania,
went to Missouri, and a third went to Minnesota. In the latter state,
additional Irish colonies have been established. They endured almost
untold trials and hardships in a new and wild country. Father Trecy’s
colony celebrated its Golden Jubilee in July, 1907, a dozen of the
original settlers being present. Greeley County, Nebraska, is
practically an Irish county, being settled almost exclusively by
Irishmen, especially is this true of the towns of Greeley Center,
O’Connor, Spalding and O’Neill.