New York Secretary of State.
A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY.
]
The writer of the narrative pays a well-merited tribute to the
inhabitants of Smerwick and Dingle for their timely and spontaneous aid.
They stayed at Smerwick for over two weeks; there White distributed some
potato plants among the people, “the first ever seen in Europe.” It is
generally supposed that it was Raleigh who first brought the potato
plant to Europe, but according to White’s account, it was he who
introduced it, and that it was the inhabitants of the County of Kerry
who were the first Europeans to taste the esculent tuber.
Could John White, who wrote the official account of, and commanded this
expedition, have been an Irishman? His story of the fifth voyage is
dated “from my house at Newtown, in Kilmore, the fourth of February,
1593.” There is no such place as Kilmore in England, but there are
several such places in Ireland, and the name is distinctively Irish. The
town of Dingle, County Kerry, has always been and even is still known to
the inhabitants as “Dingen a Cos.” It will be observed that White
referred to the town by its Irish, not by its Anglicized appellation,
which, to some, may be suggestive that a knowledge of the Gaelic
language, which, happily, most Irishmen spoke in those days, was one of
the accomplishments of the historian mariner.
And is it not highly probable that White and his officers, who came to
form such friendly intercourse with the fisher-folk of the Kerry coast,
may have informed them of “the great land beyond the sea,” with the
result that, on his subsequent voyages to Virginia, he was accompanied
by not a few of the hardy natives of the Kingdom of Kerry?
After the forfeiture of the immense estates of the Desmonds in Munster
in 1584, Raleigh came into possession of 12,000 acres in Cork, Waterford
and Tipperary. He built and made his home in the castle of Lismore, and
soon after established at the neighboring ports of Waterford and Youghal
a large trade in lumber and barrel staves with France and Spain. His
ships were largely manned by Irish sailors, and it is entirely within
the bounds of probability that Raleigh impressed into his transatlantic
crews some of the sailors and fishermen of the Munster coast.
In the charter which Raleigh received from the English crown on March
27, 1585, empowering him to hold the lands which he had colonized in
America and apportion them among the colonists, reference is made to
“persons from England and Ireland,” thus showing that Irishmen were
among the first white settlers of the western world.
Among those who landed in North Carolina from White’s fourth expedition,
and “remayned to inhabite there,” were Thomas Coleman, Edward and
Winifred Powell, James Hyndes, William and Henry Browne, Thomas Ellis,
Michael Millet, James Lafie, Maurice Allen, Richard Berry, Dennis and
Margery Harvie, William Waters, Martin Sutton, Hugh Patterson, Thomas
Humphrey and John and Brian “Wyles.” Most of these names are common to
Britain as well as to Ireland, but, without doubt, some of them were
natives of Ireland.
These colonists all either perished from famine or were slain by the
savage enemy. Some are supposed to have sought asylum among the Hatteras
Indians at Croatoan, who were friendly to the whites. Lawson, one of the
historians of North Carolina, writing in 1714 of the natives of
Croatoan, relates how the Indians told him that some of their ancestors
were white people and “could talk in a book as we do,” and that many of
the Hatteras Indians had gray eyes, which are known only among whites.
In his account of the fifth voyage, White tells of their arrival at the
mouth of the Roanoke on August 17, 1590. A great storm raged; the ship’s
boats were tossed about at the mercy of the waves, and eleven of the
company drowned, among them Edward Kelly, Edward Kilborne and Robert
Coleman. These three are mentioned as “among 7 of the chiefest men of
the expedition.”
Hawk, one of the historians of North Carolina, says that “in 1666 the
Lords Proprietors had agents employed in seeking emigrants on the
continent of Europe, and in Ireland, Scotland and the West Indies,” and
the same author in referring to the divers religious beliefs professed
by the people of North Carolina (about 1700), refers to “the Irish
Romanists.” It is to be regretted that we have no means of tracing the
names or careers of any of those “Irish Romanists.”
Hewatt’s _Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of
South Carolina and Georgia_ (published at London in the year 1776), is
referred to by historians as an authoritative work. In this book many
references are made to the early Irish settlers of the Carolinas. The
author describes the dreadful extremities to which the poor settlers in
the vicinity of Charlestown (now Charleston), S. C., were reduced in the
year 1667.
During the government of Sir John Yeamans a civil disturbance broke out
among the colonists, which threatened the ruin of the settlement. “The
Proprietors,” says Hewatt, “were unable to furnish the colony with
regular supplies, and the spots of sandy and barren land poorly rewarded
their toil. Many of them were unskilled, and the European grain which
they were accustomed to sow soon proved suitable to neither soil nor
climate. The settlers began to murmur against the Proprietors and to
curse the day they left their native land to starve in a wilderness.
While they gathered oysters for subsistence with one hand, they were
obliged to carry the musket in the other for defence against the
Indians.”
In this emergency, a true son of Ireland is seen to have been in the
forefront of the battles waged by the afflicted colonists. Florence
O’Sullivan was one of the leading men among the settlers of Charlestown,
some of whom were his countrymen, and to whom they looked for guidance
and counsel. O’Sullivan is said to have come to South Carolina with
Governor Sayle. He was surveyor-general of the province until he was
succeeded by John Culpeper in 1671. He is thought to have been of the
famous family of that name whose paternal home was on the borders of
Cork and Kerry, and which gave to America schoolmasters, governors, a
celebrated general of the Revolutionary army, and in later days men who
distinguished themselves in every sphere of activity in the new country.
To add to the troubles between the colonists and the Indians, it is
related that about this time there was great fear among the Carolinians
of an invasion by the Spaniards from the South. Militia companies were
formed in and around Charlestown to resist invasion, and O’Sullivan had
been placed in command of a body of men on an island in the harbor—now
known as Sullivan’s Island. Their situation was one of great danger and
they were instructed to warn the inhabitants on the first approach of
the enemy, and then return to shore. “The great gun”—evidently the only
one available—was in the immediate charge of O’Sullivan.
The Spaniards did not put in an appearance; the scanty supplies of the
party soon gave out, but they stuck to their post until starvation
stared them in the face. They remained until all hope had fled that
their supplies would be replenished, and when they were not forthcoming,
O’Sullivan and his men, deciding that to perish from hunger would be an
inglorious end, deserted the island without consulting the governor and
joined the discontented party in the town.
Thereupon, we are told, the people became ungovernable and threatened to
compel the authorities to relinquish the settlement. O’Sullivan was
arrested by the town marshal and “compelled to find security for his
good behavior.” Vessels were despatched to Virginia and to Barbadoes for
provisions, but, before they returned, a ship arrived from Europe with
supplies and a number of new settlers. “The newcomers revived the
drooping spirits of the people and encouraged them to engage in more
vigorous efforts. The governor, sensible of the hardships the people had
suffered, readily forgave them,” and O’Sullivan and his friends were
released from further restraint.
The Spanish authorities at St. Augustine, “on learning the belated news
of the discontented and miserable condition of the Carolina colonists,”
advanced with an armed party as far as St. Helena Island, about 50 miles
south of Charlestown, to dislodge or destroy the settlers. Brian
Fitzpatrick, a well-known “character” of the settlement, is said to have
deserted his friends at this juncture and to have gone over to the
Spaniards. What his purpose was in doing so does not appear. However,
reinforcements arrived to aid the Carolinians, upon which the Spaniards
evacuated St. Helena and retreated to Augustine.
After the death of Governor Yeamans in 1674, the inhabitants called a
meeting at Charlestown, when they elected representatives for the
purpose of making laws for the government of the colony. Thomas Gray,
Henry Hughes, Maurice Mathews and Christopher Portman were the four
deputies chosen by the people.
In 1680 Richard Kirle, who is described as “an Irish gentleman,”
succeeded to the governorship, but he died six months after taking the
reins of office.
Elsewhere we have referred to the wholesale exportation of the Irish by
Cromwell, mainly to the Island of Barbadoes, during the first half of
the seventeenth century. In time, those who survived the tropical
climate became freemen, and eventually even some became landowners,
planters and the business men of the island. Numbers of them, on gaining
their freedom, sailed for the American coast with their families. They
had been apprised of the opportunities open for them in the South, as
the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas had their agents in the West
Indies inducing them to settle on the mainland. In John Camden Hotten’s
famous work, there is a list of those who departed from Barbadoes in the
year 1678, which is described in this quaint language:
“List of what Ticqtts. have been granted out of the Secretary’s office
of the Island of Barbadoes for departure off this island of the several
psones hereafter menconed, beginning in January, 1678, and ending in
December following.”
These are seen to have sailed for Virginia and the Carolinas and other
American colonies:
John Blake
Teague Bowhane
Michael Bradley
Martin Brearly
John Brett
Francis Browne
Hugh Browne
William Browne
Dennis Burne
Elinor Butler
John Butler
Walter Butler
Thomas Callay
Dennis Canting
Richard Carey
John Collins
William Corbett
William Courtney
Francis Cox
John Daniell
Jane Densy
Bridgett Douse
Dennis Dowell
John Downing
Cornelius Dunnohoe
Jeffory Dunnohoe
Teag Dunnohoe
John Earley
Andrew Fanning
Hugh Farrell
Roger Farrell
Thomas Feaghery
Teage Finn
Edward Fitzjames
Christopher Flavell
Edmond Fleming
Francis Ford
William Gogin
Dennis Griffin
Dennis Haley
Elizabeth Harley
William Healy
Daniel Hendley
Elizabeth Hendley
Katherine Hetherington
Andrew Hughes
Dennis Hunt
John Fitz Jarrell
Michael Jennings
William Jennings
William Jordan
Elinor Kennedy
Jno. Kennedy
Alice Lynch
Morgan Lynch
Nicholas Lynch
Charles Maccmash
John Maccinree
Owen Macclahan
Patrick MacDaniell
Owen Magwaine
John Mahane
James Mahone
Daniel Mahony
Andrew Mannen
Cornelius Marrow
Katherine Marrow
Timothy Melony
James Melloly
Daniel Murphy
Martin Neagle
Ann Oneal
Mary Poor
Miles Poor
John Quirk
Luke Rainey
Katherine Reddin
James Rice
John Rice
Teigue Skahane
Walter Stapleton
John Sutton
John Teague
Edmond Welch
On one ship, the _True Friendship_, commanded by Capt. Charles Kallahan,
these sailed from Barbadoes:
Jeoffrey Burke
Thomas Clovan
Richard Lynch
Patrick Maddin
Thomas Swiney
Samuel Wall
Those who left Barbadoes for America in the year 1678 are the only ones
recorded by Hotten, but for many years there was a constant stream of
wanderers leaving the West Indies for the American coast. We are as yet
unable to procure any records but those of the year 1678.
Thus we see what a great infusion of Irish blood Virginia and the
Carolinas received in the year 1678 alone. Some of these were servants,
but among them also were men of family, who either settled down on the
plantations or received grants of uncultivated lands themselves, which,
in course of time, they converted into fruitful estates. It has been
well said that “the fighting races don’t die out,” and surely the blood
of these early Gaels must have been a potent factor in moulding the
Americans of later generations in the South.
Irish families are invariably large, and as the same homely virtue is
usually practised by their descendants, it will not be deemed an
exaggeration when we say that thousands of the present natives of the
South are descended directly or indirectly from the Irish colonizers
from Barbadoes of the last half of the seventeenth century. There is no
system of calculation by which we could arrive at any adequate idea of
the probable number of American descendants of those early settlers,
but, if we adopt the simple method of taking the number of generations
that have elapsed since their coming, and then apportion, say an average
of five persons to each family for each succeeding generation, we can
safely conclude that when American historians refer to the pioneers of
the South as wholly “of Anglo-Saxon origin,” they are playing fast and
loose with their imaginations.
The provincial authorities were anxious to attract immigrants to open up
the virgin forest and extend the bounds of their domain, so we find them
in communication with the government agents in England and Ireland,
offering the most flattering inducements to all who desired to settle in
the new country.
Farmers, artisans and agricultural laborers were particularly needed,
while they objected to the importation of convicts and other undesirable
persons. Irish political refugees were sometimes classed as “convicts,”
and while the provincial history, supported by other testimony of an
indubitable character, indicates that great numbers of Irish “convicts”
settled in Virginia, it is seen that once they had landed on the soil,
they were, in a manner, “tolerated” and permitted to stay, and
accordingly were parcelled out among the planters and others who needed
the services of able-bodied men.
The privations suffered by those imported Irish “convicts” under the
vassalage of their colonial masters are, in some cases, beyond
description, and would shake the credulity of the most sympathetic. Many
of them occupied even lower positions than the Southern slaves of a
later day. Not only were they the tillers of the soil, the woodsmen of
the forest, and the builders of the highways, but they occupied “the
firing line” in the resistance of the planters to the attacks of the
savage redskins. Here where the ravages of the Indians were so terrible,
these Irishmen and boys, so rudely torn from their own country,
inflicted on savagery many a mortal blow and opened the way for the
civilization whose fruits we now enjoy.
The continued cry for settlers attracted the avarice of many of the
Cromwellian adventurers in Ireland, who thus became most efficient aids
in carrying on the barbarous work of the English commissioners, who were
appointed by government to exterminate the Irish.
As Prendergast relates in his _Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland_, they
had agents actively engaged throughout Ireland, “who were authorized by
Parliament to seize women, orphans and the destitute to be transported
to Barbadoes and the plantations of Virginia.” Among the destitute were
those whose ancient properties had been confiscated by the crown and
many of whom had become wanderers over the stricken island, or had
become inmates of the workhouses. “The commissioners for Ireland,” says
Prendergast, “issued orders to the governors of garrisons to deliver all
prisoners of war; to the jail-keepers for all offenders in their
custody; to the masters of workhouses for the destitute in their care,
and gave directions to all in authority to seize those who had no
visible means of livelihood and deliver them to the British agents.” All
unfortunates who were thus caught were quickly conducted to the
waterside and there herded like so many cattle until such time as a
sufficient number had been gathered in to embark them on board some ship
bound for the West Indies or the coast of Virginia.
Some of the English adventurers in Ireland also engaged in the business
of man-hunting on their own account, and we find from the records of
Virginia that on April 12, 1621, Sir William Newce, an English officer
who resided in the County of Cork, wrote to the governor “offering to
transport two thousand persons to Virginia.” The same records indicate
that Daniel Gookin, an Irish Quaker merchant of Cork City, was in the
business of transporting cattle from Ireland to Virginia. On one
occasion, he came in person to the colony, and, seeing the probable
advantages of a permanent settlement in the country, he sailed from Cork
in the _Flying Harte_ with a large number of his countrymen, who, we are
told, “were exceedingly well furnished with all sorts of provisions and
cattle,” and landed at Newport News in November, 1621.
Notwithstanding that the records of Virginia say that this large colony
came from Ireland, they are referred to by historians, who at all make
reference to them, as “English.” The fact that they were so “well
furnished” would also indicate that Ireland sent forth other colonizers
to America in those early days besides the “convicts” and the
“destitute.”
In the “Records of the London Company” (the Proprietors of Virginia),
Daniel Gookin is mentioned as having undertaken “to transport great
multitudes of people and cattle to Virginia,” and as having “received
patents for 300 people.” The records do not state from where this large
colony came, but, from the fact that their leader had formerly been a
merchant in the city of Cork, from where his first contingent sailed, it
is entirely within the bounds of probability that the second colony was
largely, if not entirely, composed of Munstermen.
In 1622 many of the colonists were massacred by Indians, after which the
remainder were ordered to abandon the outlying plantations and to
concentrate their forces about the stronger ones. Gookin’s Irish
settlement, which had been located near the mouth of the James River,
back of Newport News, was one of those ordered to be abandoned, but he
refused to obey the order, and, “gathering together his dependants, who
by that time numbered only 35, he remained at his post, to his great
credit and the content of his adventurers.” (Stith’s _History of
Virginia_.)
In 1637 Gookin received a grant of 2,500 acres of land in Upper Norfolk,
now Nansemond County, and in 1642 he was appointed commander of the
county. The court records show, under date of May 24, 1642, that “Daniel
Gookin, late of Ireland,” was still a resident of Upper Norfolk County.
His son, Daniel, left Virginia for Massachusetts, where he became
superintendent of Indian Affairs, with the title of major-general. He
was also the author of a history of the Indians. It is said that his
descendants are now very numerous in the United States.
Neill, in his _History of the English Colonization of America_, a most
authoritative work, gives in full a sermon preached at Bowe Street
Church in London in 1622, by a famous clergyman named Rev. Patrick
Copland, who had been employed by the East India Company in Barbadoes.
In this sermon he referred to “a fleete of nine sayle of ships that not
one person out of 800 who had been transported out of England and
Ireland for the plantations of Virginia, had met with any mishap by the
way.”
In a footnote to the remarks of the preacher, the historian in referring
to the great exodus from Ireland to the American colonies, remarks that
“Ireland has always been a hive from which America has derived sturdy
hewers of wood to subdue the forests.” In 1622, Rev. Patrick Copland was
appointed first president of the College of Virginia and general manager
of all its properties. The college was founded by King James in 1622 and
was established at Henrico City, fifteen miles below Richmond. (See _Old
Churches and Families of Virginia_, by Bishop William Meade.)
At this period there must have been a goodly number of Irish in
Virginia, if we are to judge from the contents of a little book,
“suitable for a projected school in Virginia,” prepared in 1621 by an
English Puritan minister named John Brinsley. The book was intended as
“a plea for learning and the school master.” The author stated that “the
incivility among manie of the Irish, the Virginians, and all other
barbarous nations” grew “from their exceeding ignorance of our Holy God
and of all true and good learning.” On another page the author said it
was his unfeigned desire to adapt the book “for all functions and
places, and more particularly to every ruder place, and more especially
to that poor Irish nation with our loving countrymen in Virginia.”
How very solicitous he was for the “uncivil” Irish! To him, of course,
they appeared rude and uncivil because they did not in those days speak
in the English tongue, but in their own undefiled and mellifluous
Gaelic. The book was presented by Brinsley “at a court held for Virginia
on December 19, 1621,” on which occasion a committee was appointed to
determine whether the book was suitable for distribution among the
school children. This circumstance is related by the historian Neill.
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