No section of the Union presents a wider or more diversified field for
historical inquiry than the Carolinas and Virginia.
All the territory from the Delaware River south to Cape Fear was named
“Virginia” by the English, and it is generally supposed that it was in
the present state of Virginia the earliest colonists landed. It was,
however, the Indians of North Carolina who were the first to set eyes on
the white men who came to America with the famous navigator, Sir Walter
Raleigh, in the year 1584.
Among these first-comers to the Carolinas Irishmen are found, and in the
resistance to the authority and encroachments of the British organized
in that section many years later, the sons of Erin and their descendants
are recorded as having played an honorable and prominent part.
In Hakluyt’s _Voyages, Navigations, Traffiques and Discouveries of the
English Nation_ are found some interesting facts relating to the first
voyages of the English, under Raleigh and his lieutenants, to the
western world. Richard Hakluyt was one of those who accompanied Raleigh
on his first voyage of discovery in 1584. His _Voyages and
Discouveries_, now a work of extreme rarity (it was published in London
over 300 years ago), is by all odds the most celebrated book ever
written on the subject, and forms the basis of all true history of the
colonization of the Carolinas and Virginia. It is printed in the old
English text of the sixteenth century, which renders its examination a
task as laborious as it is interesting. The writer has examined the copy
of this famous work in the Astor Library, and we are sure our readers
will be interested in learning something of its contents at this stage.
The second voyage was undertaken by Sir Richard Greenville in the year
1585. The company comprised 107 persons. Hakluyt’s great work (page 254,
volume 3) contains “an account of the particulars of the employments of
the Englishmen left in Virginia by Sir Richard Greenville under the
charge of Master Ralph Lane, general of the same, from August 17, 1585,
to June 18, 1586.”
It will be observed that Greenville refers to “the Englishmen left in
Virginia.” This would lead the ordinary reader to the conclusion that
the expedition was comprised of Englishmen only, but such an assumption
would be erroneous. In those days Ireland had a merchant marine of her
own, and the ships which sailed from Irish ports, and indeed not a few
of those whose home ports were in England, were manned by Irish seamen.
(See Marmion’s _Maritime Ports of Ireland_.) What more natural,
therefore, than to expect that Irish names should be found among the
lists of these “Englishmen?” All of the early histories of the southern
colonies refer to the first settlers as English. No suggestion is ever
made, as far as the writer can find, that these first-comers may not all
have been English, or that any Irish people were amongst them. Yet it is
a fact that Irishmen came too in search of adventure, and no better
testimony in support of that assertion can be adduced than the lists of
the names of the persons who came on these colonizing expeditions.
Here are some of the names from Greenvilles’ list, as they were written
down at the time: Edward Kelley, R. Courtney, Hugh Rogers, Thomas Fox,
Darby “Glande,” Edward Nugent, John “Costigo” (Costigan), James Lafie,
Francis Norris, Richard Moore, Richard Ireland, Matthew Lyne, Dennis
Barnes, “Denice” Carroll, Robert Young, Thomas Hesket, Richard Humphrey
and R. Griffin. Many of these, undoubtedly, were natives of Ireland.
This is said to have been the first English colony that settled in
America, the previous expedition having returned with its entire
company.
They entered Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic by what is now known as New
Inlet, and then landed at Roanoke Island, thence crossed over to the
mainland to the eastern portion of North Carolina, just south of
Norfolk, Va. They followed the course of the Chowan River for a short
distance, and soon came in contact with the Indians. Hakluyt’s work
contains an interesting narrative of the voyage and of the explorations
of the party in Virginia, written by Ralph Lane, in which long accounts
are given of their encounters with the savage Indians. In his account of
one fight, on the first of June, 1586, he refers to the bravery of “one
of my Irish boys,” who shot Pemisapan, the king of the Indians, “athwart
the buttocks with my petronell.” The Irish boy’s shot did not, however,
bring down the Indian king, and the wily redskin, with a number of his
warriors, managed to escape into the dense forest.
But then, another Irishman, who was not afraid to face the Indian band
singlehanded, was there to finish the work of the youthful adventurer
from Erin, “for,” writes Lane, “in the end an Irishman serving me, one
Nugent, and the deputy provost undertook him”—that is to say,
volunteered to capture or kill the Indian king—“and I, in some doubt
lest we had lost both the king and my man, by our own negligence to have
been intercepted by the savages, we met him returning out of the woods
with Pemisapan’s head in his hands.”
The place where the bold Irishman, Edward Nugent, and the nameless youth
thus earned such prominent mention in early American history has been
located as in Chowan County, near the present town of Edenton, N. C.
It seems that in all of the early voyages of the English to the American
continent the adventurous Irishman was present. On Raleigh’s first
voyage the largest ship was commanded by a Captain Butler, and Captain
Edward Hayes commanded a vessel in the expedition of Sir H. Gilbert to
Newfoundland in 1583. Sixteen years earlier, 1567, Robert Barrett and
John Garrett commanded ships in the expedition to Mexico under Sir John
Hawkins. There is nothing to show that these captains were of the Irish
nation, but their names have been for centuries so common in Ireland
that we venture to include them in this category.
In 1568, when Hawkins arrived in the Gulf of Mexico, he put ashore a
company comprising 68 men under Miles Philips, a little north of Panuco.
From the curiously-worded narrative of Miles Philips, entitled “The
voyages from Panuco, thence to Mexico, and afterwards to sundry other
places, having remained in the counterey 15 or 16 yeeres together, and
noted many things most worthy of observation,” which is contained in
Hakluyt’s third volume, we glean some interesting information.
The whole company was captured by a band of Indians and Spaniards, and
immediately haled before the governor, who “visited them with the
terrors of the Inquisition.” John Gray, John and Thomas Browne, John
Mooney, James Collier and John Rider were sentenced to receive 200
lashes on horseback and to serve eight years in the galleys; others of
the company received various terms of servitude, while others were
condemned to serve as servants or slaves in the monasteries. Three were
condemned to be burned to ashes, and the inhuman sentence was carried
out in the market place of the City of Mexico on the day preceding Good
Friday in the year 1575.
The three unfortunates were George Riuely (Reilly), Peter Momfrie and
“Cornelius.” Philips was unacquainted with the full name of the latter,
but in order to distinguish him from another of the party who bore the
same Christian name, he refers to him as “Cornelius the Irishman.” In
relating the circumstances of his subsequent escape, Philips stated that
several of the adventurers, after the expiration of their terms of
servitude, remained in Mexico, married native women, and some prospered
in the new country.
The same volume of Hakluyt (page 286) contains the story of “The Fourth
Voyage, made to Virginia in 1587, wherein was transported the Second
Colony,” written by the commander, Captain John White. The narrative
runs in part:
“On the first day of July (1587) we weighed anchor at Musketo’s Bay,
upon the fourth side of St. John’s Island, where were left behind two
Irishmen of our company, Darbie Glaven and Dennis Carrell, thence
bearing along the coast of St. John’s till evening.” The vessels
anchored in the bay for the purpose of securing a supply of salt, which
Simon Fernando, who was with Raleigh on the first expedition, had
informed White could be procured on the island. The two hardy Irishmen,
Glaven and Carrell, were selected to go ashore and procure the necessary
supply. They proceeded inland, but, during their absence, Fernando, for
some reason that does not appear, persuaded the commander to weigh
anchor, and before the two unfortunates had returned to the shore, the
vessels were far on their way. It would be interesting if we could
follow the fortunes of the two Irish castaways among the Indians of the
Danish West Indies, but history contains no further account of them.
In the following September, when one of the vessels of the expedition
was on its return to England, she encountered a great storm. The crew
and passengers were in sore straits on account of the lack of food and
water, expecting to perish by famine at sea. On October 16, however,
when they had almost given up in despair, they sighted land, which
proved to be the coast of Kerry. By the aid of “a hulke of Dublin” they
entered Smerwick Bay, where the inhabitants at once succored them. White
relates that the whole company was brought ashore at “Dingen a Cos,”
where the sick sailors and passengers were taken care of by the local
doctor.
[Illustration: