Part 8

Passing through Bridgeport, Conn., by train recently, we recalled the Rev. Robert Ross of that place. He was a son of Irish parents, and was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1753. His biographer states that he was a remarkable man, six feet in height and well proportioned. His presence was imposing, and his ruffled shirt, wig and cocked hat seemed peculiarly in keeping with it. But he most strongly impressed himself upon the community through the warmth of his patriotism, and the decisiveness of his political convictions. He became a man of influence on the patriotic side and proportionally obnoxious to the royalists. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he preached on the text, “For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.” A company of soldiers, raised to join the invasion of Canada in the fall of 1775, mustered in his door-yard and was commended to God in a fervent prayer by him before starting on their expedition.

The dangers encountered by Irish immigrants who came over in the old days of sailing vessels is well illustrated by the following incident: The ship _Lime_ with 123 passengers sailed from Portrush, Ireland, July 26, 1738, bound for Boston. Three days after leaving Portrush she was leaking badly, so she put into Killybegs where twelve days were spent making repairs. She again sailed, but had to put into Galway to be again repaired. While at Galway, John Cate, the master, died of smallpox, and Matthias Haines, the only mate, was afflicted with the same disease. While at Killybegs and Galway 25 of the passengers deserted the ship, and but little blame could attach to them for so doing. With the captain dead and the mate sick, the contractors hired Gabriel Black as master of the vessel. She finally sailed from Galway on Sept. 19, and reached Boston harbor Nov. 16, 1738. Mention of the incident may be found in the _N. E. Historic, Genealogical Register_, Oct., 1897.

In 1630, Governor John Winthrop and others of the Massachusetts Bay Colony “hired and dispatched away Mr. William Pearse, with his ship of about two hundred tons, for Ireland to buy more” provisions. As he did not return as soon as expected, “many were the fears of people that Mr. Pearce who was sent to Ireland to fetch provisions, was cast away or taken by pirates.” In February, 1631, however, he arrived at Boston, Mass., bringing the following supplies: “34 hogsheads of wheat meal, 15 hogsheads of peas, 4 hogsheads of oatmeal, 4 hogsheads of beef and pork, 15 cwt. of cheese, butter-suet, etc. These supplies were in good condition, and a day of thanksgiving was ordered by the governor.” (Frothingham’s _Charlestown_ and Drake’s _Boston_.) A second ship appears to have arrived about this time, for the colonists near by “lifted up their eyes and saw two ships coming in, and presently the newes came to their eares, says one among them, that they were come from Ireland full of victualls.”

In Stackpole’s _History of Durham, Me._, is an interesting reference to Martin Rourk, at one time town clerk of that place. Rourk was born in Ireland about 1760, and came to America about 1773. He spent two years in his uncle’s store at St. John’s, and went to Boston, Mass., in 1775. He became clerk in the company of Capt. Lawrence of the Patriot army, and subsequently married his widow. In May, 1775, Martin Rourk is mentioned as in a picket guard, having enlisted in April of that year. He reënlisted several times, was at Ticonderoga in 1776, and is mentioned as a sergeant after 1777. He settled in Durham, Me., about 1784, and in 1796 bought a twenty-acre lot of Thomas Mitchell, was town clerk in 1790–1807, and is spoken of as an excellent penman. He was also “the foremost school teacher” of Durham. He died in 1807. His children were Jane, John, Hannah, William, David, Samuel, Silence, Cyrus, and Jacob H. Some of these had the name changed to Roak before 1820. John, one of the sons, wedded Joanna Larrabee and had seven children.

IRISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1790.[4]

BY EDWARD O’MEAGHER CONDON, NEW ORLEANS, LA.

Some recent writers on immigration to the United States from Ireland have very materially underestimated the numbers of the Irish who came here even since 1790, and it seems proper now to call attention to some important facts which throw light on the matter, and endeavor to correct the erroneous impressions produced by misleading statements.

It will not be difficult to show that the Irish have come to this country since 1790 in much greater numbers than available records, statistics, or estimates show, and that their descendants are much more numerous than many suppose them to be. The same might be said of the Irish who arrived here before the period just referred to, and particularly before the Revolution—a fact to which I briefly called attention in a little work written several years ago. In this paper, however, consideration will be confined to the Irish who arrived here since 1790 and their descendants.

Until September, 1819, there was no supervision of immigration by the national government, and no records were kept by federal officers of the arrival of immigrants. For the numbers, therefore, of those who came here from 1790 to 1820 we are practically left without official or positive information, and the statements or conjectures of the writers who have dealt with this subject not only betray their imperfect knowledge, but show that they failed to take into consideration some weighty facts essential to the formation of correct estimates.

Thomas Cooper, an Englishman who visited this country in 1794, tells us that “emigration of all kinds from Europe to the United States amounted at that time to about 10,000 a year.” Samuel Blodgett, Jr., however, writing in 1810, assumed that the number of immigrants did not average more than 4,000 a year for the previous ten years, but he gave a table of the population, in one column of which the number of “freemen and slaves” who entered the United States in 1804 was put down at 9,500. Blodgett says that he relies on “the best records and estimates at present attainable,” but he fails to tell us where those records were to be found, or by whom they were kept. A. Seybert, an ex-member of congress, who wrote in 1818, says that the statements in Blodgett’s work “are deficient in details; they consist chiefly of general results and the estimates of the author. Though many of his tables are ingeniously constructed, they do not furnish sufficient data for legislators.” Seybert, while admitting the correctness of Cooper’s estimate of 10,000 arrivals during the year 1794, differs from him with regard to the immigration for the following years up to 1817, and assumes that 6,000 persons only, on the average, arrived here annually from 1790 to 1810. He, however, furnishes us with a statement of the number of passengers who arrived at ten of the principal ports of the United States in 1817, which shows the entrance in that year of 22,240 immigrants, of whom 11,977 came from Britain and Ireland; 4,169 from Germany; 1,245 from France, and 2,901 from British America.

Professor Tucker, another ex-congressman, in a work published in 1843, says, commenting on Seybert’s estimate, “Since an account has been taken of the foreign immigrants who arrive in our seaports as well as from the intrinsic evidence afforded by the enumerations themselves, we must regard his estimate as much too low.” Tucker admits that “our estimates of the whites who migrated hither before 1819 are purely conjectural,” but yet he adopts Seybert’s estimate of 6,000 a year from 1790 to 1810—a total of 120,000—and assumes that from the last named year until 1820, 114,000 immigrants arrived, thus making the total number who came here between 1790 and 1820, 234,000.

He, however, remarks in a note that he could not go beyond this estimate “on account of his respect for Dr. Seybert’s opinion,” but he “could not give a less number because of his regard for the progressive increase of immigration before and after the three years of the war of 1812–1815.” J. D. B. DeBow, superintendent of the census of 1850, in one of his volumes published in 1854, relies on Prof. Tucker’s estimates for the number of those who arrived here during the thirty years preceding 1820, while W. J. Bromwell of the state department, writing in 1856, raises the number to 250,000.

It will be observed that these “estimates” are in fact merely conjectures, and that in the only year (1817) during the entire period from 1790 to 1820 for which actual figures are given, the returns from only ten ports show the arrival of more than twice the average annual number of immigrants estimated by the writers above referred to. It seems, then, evident that the immigrants from 1790 to 1820, and particularly those of Irish birth or blood, were much more numerous than the writers quoted seem willing to admit, and we are amply justified in coming to this conclusion by several substantial reasons.

Professor Tucker, who estimates the number of immigrants between 1790 and 1820 at 234,000, “calculated after a very laborious analysis the number of foreigners and their descendants to be above 1,000,000 in 1840.” Now, according to his own tables, the total number of immigrants who came here between 1790 and 1840 amounted to 949,346, and yet of all these people—over seventy-five per cent. of whom were adults—and their descendants, he would have us believe that there could only be found alive in 1840 the number just given. The total population had increased, within the period named, from 3,929,827 to 17,069,453—more than four hundred per cent.—while the descendants of the immigrants increased, according to him, only five per cent.

We shall see later that, even after the passage of the act of Congress of 1819—which directed the collectors of customs at the seaports of the United States to forward quarter-yearly lists of all the passengers arriving at their respective ports to the state department at Washington—the number of immigrants reported was for many years very considerably less than that of those who actually came here. One careful and reliable writer, Dr. Chickering, estimates the number of those not accounted for at fifty per cent. of those reported. Bearing this in mind it will seem almost certain that, before the time when returns of immigrants were required by law, their numbers were underestimated in a far greater proportion.

Large numbers of people left Ireland for America between 1790 and the beginning of the War of 1812. During the century preceding the year first named half a million of Irishmen—more than the number of Huguenots who left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes—went to that country and joined her armies to escape the English penal laws and avenge the violation of the Treaty of Limerick. This fact is attested by the French military records. But after the outbreak of the Revolution in France the flight of the “Wild Geese” was checked, and comparatively few entered the Revolutionary or Imperial armies.

Meanwhile the situation in Ireland was almost as gloomy as before. Though as a consequence of the American and French revolutions the penal laws had been somewhat relaxed, and in 1793 Catholics had been allowed to vote at parliamentary elections, they were still persecuted and harassed in almost every conceivable manner by the Loyalist faction. In Armagh county murders, house burnings, and still more abominable crimes were of constant occurrence, and many thousands of the people were driven from their homes, some taking refuge in the South, some flying to Scotland, and a large number coming to America. An idea of the condition of things at that time in some parts of Ireland may be formed from reading the declaration of Lord Gosford, governor of Armagh county, and thirty magistrates, issued on Dec. 28, 1795.

“It is,” they said, “no secret that a persecution accompanied with all the circumstances of ferocious cruelty, which have in all ages distinguished that calamity, is now raging in this county. Neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence is sufficient to excite mercy or afford protection. The only crime which the unfortunate objects of this persecution are charged with is a crime of easy proof, indeed, it is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic faith.” The Presbyterians, who had for a long time been excluded from power and position by the “Sacramental Test Act,” and many of whom had, during the eighteenth century, emigrated to America, were also much dissatisfied with their condition and that of the mass of their countrymen.

“The journals of those days,” we are assured by a careful writer on this subject, “show that the Northern Presbyterians were not sharers in the disgrace or afraid to denounce the dominant faction. Neither must we forget that Presbyterianism was socially, though not religiously, outlawed almost to the extent of Catholicism.”

But the English government, which had absolute control of the so-called Irish Parliament, turned a deaf ear to all demands for justice and encouraged the Loyalists to continue their atrocious deeds. Under these circumstances, a number of prominent and patriotic men of all denominations, who had formed the United Irish Society a few years before, for the purpose of bringing about a union of Irishmen of all religious persuasions with the object of effecting a reform in the Parliament, now becoming convinced of the hopelessness of attaining their purpose by peaceful methods, resolved to imitate the example of the American Revolutionists and make an effort to achieve the independence of their country. The movement was unsuccessful, though its suppression in 1798 cost the English government the lives of over 20,000 of the latter’s mercenaries.

Multitudes of the patriots who had taken part in the insurrection escaped to America, a considerable proportion of these going in fishing schooners to Newfoundland, where their descendants are to be found in great numbers to-day, notwithstanding the large emigration from that island to the United States. The failure of Robert Emmet’s effort in 1803 for the freedom of his native land also led to renewed proscription and the flight of thousands across the Atlantic. No records of the numbers of Irish who came here during the period referred to are available, or could in fact under the circumstances be compiled. The notices, however, in the newspapers of the time of the arrivals of immigrants and the accounts of events then occurring in those parts of North America still held by the English, as well as in the United States, throw considerable light upon the subject.

Between 1652 and 1658, over 60,000 Irish—almost all adults—were by order of the Cromwellian government transported to the West Indies and the English colonies—a larger number than the total population of these dependencies at that time. Many thousand of those sent to the West Indies gradually found their way to this country through the Atlantic and Gulf ports, but the fact that proscriptive laws against Catholics, modeled after the English penal laws, were enforced in most of the colonies, prevented many others from coming here before the Revolution. It may be remarked in passing that to the feeling excited among the French colonists on the St. Lawrence by these enactments and by later mischievous displays of religious intolerance, is due the fact that Canada still remains subject to Britain, and that the Starry Flag does not wave over all the territory between the Gulf and the Pole.

After the Revolution, however, and when it became evident that religious liberty would be allowed by law to all the people of this Republic, the descendants of the expatriated Irish in the West Indies came to the United States in considerable numbers to escape the insalubrious climate, the almost constant turmoil caused by the conflicts waged there between European powers, the troubles and dangers arising from the frequent plots and uprisings of the colored population, and especially to be rid of English rule.

To show the difficulties and dangers to which those living in the West Indian islands were exposed, an incident which occurred on the island of Montserrat in 1768 may be briefly mentioned. The negroes of that island formed a plot to massacre the whites, and decided to carry out their project on St. Patrick’s day, “which,” we are informed, “the inhabitants generally assembled together to commemorate”—a fact which proves their origin. It was arranged that “the negroes allowed within the building (where the festivities were to be held) were to secure the swords of the gentlemen participating and those without were to fire into the hall and put every man to death. They were then to cast lots for the ladies, whom they intended to carry to Puerto Rico in the vessels that lay in the harbor.” The plot happily failed, through a warning given by a faithful servant to one of the intended victims, and several negroes were executed for complicity in it. The Irish in the West Indies sympathized warmly with the American Revolutionists, and this made them objects of distrust and hatred to the English. We are told that “from many letters found in American prize ships, it was discovered that a traitorous correspondence had been carried on between British subjects and the revolted colonies in North America.” The merchandise and stores of those suspected of sympathy with the Americans were confiscated by the English.

The vindictive animosity displayed by Admiral Lord Nelson while in the West Indies against the Americans and their sympathizers excited the bitterest indignation among the people there. Nelson—whose feeling toward the Americans, trading with these islands, may be judged from an expression in one of his letters, “I hate them all,” and his declaration in another, “I, for one, am determined not to suffer the Yankees to come where my ship is”—did his utmost to ruin American commerce in that quarter, and even went so far as to complain to the English government of his superior officers because they failed to encourage and abet his malignant efforts. His bitterness against the Irish may be easily inferred from one of his letters written from the island of St. Kitts, on March 18, 1785, in which he says: “Yesterday being St. Patrick’s Day, Irish colors with thirteen stripes on them were hoisted all over town. I was engaged to dine with the president, but sent an excuse, as he suffered those colors to fly.” It is not to be wondered at that numbers of the West Indian Irish sought a home under the flag with the “thirteen stripes,” to which they had so patriotically shown their attachment.

It may be remarked here that Seaman, referring to the period just before 1790, says that “the proportionately rapid increase of the population of the Southern states proved that they had received considerable accessions of immigrants from the West Indies.” The great majority of these were no doubt descendants of the transported victims of Cromwell’s despotism. The able historian of South Carolina, Dr. Ramsay, tells us that in 1791 a number of Catholics, “chiefly natives of Ireland, associated themselves together for public worship, and put themselves under the care of Bishop Carroll,” and adds that “The troubles in France and the West Indian islands soon brought a large accession to their numbers.”

A considerable number of Irish immigrants arrived here between 1800 and 1815 from the remnant of North American territory still subject to England, and especially from Newfoundland. From a very early period, Irish fishermen had been accustomed to visit the shores of that island, and not seldom did they bring with them proscribed and persecuted priests, who sought shelter there from the fanatical “priest hunters” employed in enforcing the English penal laws in Ireland. But even there were they harassed and hounded and the exercise of their faith prohibited, and it was not until after the achievement of American Independence that Catholics were permitted to openly profess the principles and practice the duties of their religion. In 1784, the then governor, Vice-Admiral Campbell, issued an order allowing “All persons inhabiting the island to have full liberty of conscience and free exercise of all such modes of religious worship as are not prohibited by law.”

It seems probable that this official acknowledgment of the right of liberty of conscience was hastened, not only by the triumph of the American “rebels,” but also by the fact that in 1776 an attempt was made by the Irish in Newfoundland to aid the Americans by sympathetic movements, which clearly indicated their disposition to make common cause with Washington and his compatriots.

The large numbers of Wexford and other insurgents, who had escaped to Newfoundland after the failure of the insurrection of ’98, and who, though defeated, had not lost heart or hatred of their oppressors, became so numerous in 1799 that they formed a plan to expel the English from the island, resolving in case of failure to “set off for the United States.” They succeeded in extending the United Irish organization, not only among a very considerable number of the people, but also among a large proportion of the soldiers composing the Royal Newfoundland regiment, then stationed in St. John’s, the capital.

The movement was unsuccessful, owing to the timidity or treachery of some among the military. Five soldiers were hanged, seven sent to Halifax to be shot, many others carried to the same place “to be there dealt with,” and the regiment was removed from St. John’s and replaced by another. Ogden, the governor, in a letter written in July, 1800, says, “We do not know, nor was it possible to ascertain how far this defection and the United (Irish) Oath extended through the regiment.” He admits that “the defection was very extensive, not only through the regiment, but through the inhabitants of this and all the out-harbors, particularly to the southward, where the people almost to a man had taken the United (Irish) Oath, which is ‘to be true to the old cause, and to follow their heads of whatsoever denomination.’” He supposes that the plans “are not given up, but only waiting a proper opportunity to break through,” and adds that, according to statements made by a United Irishman, who was only a “novice,” the movement had been undertaken “in consequence of letters received from Ireland.” He further demands a reinforcement of troops—1,500 men—which will be needed “while Ireland is in such a state of ferment as it has been, and is likely to continue, until the business of the Union is settled, for the events of Ireland have heretofore, and will henceforth, in a great measure, govern the sentiments and actions of the far greater majority of the people in this country.”

The unsatisfactory outcome of this movement caused numbers of the United Irishmen of Newfoundland to seek shelter in the United States. “American traders came disguised, sold and bartered their goods in the outports and stole away the men as usual,” about this time, just as during the closing years of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th, the French smugglers carried over to France the “Wild Geese.” It is, of course, impossible to ascertain the number of those who came here at the period and under the conditions above referred to, but it is evident that there were many thousands of them.