The Irish in the United States

New Zealand Tablet, 1 December 1910, Page 1959

The Irish in the United States

That the Irish had already been settled in America at the time of the colonial settlement, and in considerable numbers, is told us in the very comprehensive article contributed to the latest number of the Catholic Encyclopedia. The various nations of Europe were alive to the possibilities of the New World, and there followed in the wake of. Columbus an immigratory invasion which sent its contingents from all parts of the Old World. Among the early English settlements, notably that of Jamestown in 1607, many a colonist bore an Irish patronymic and owned the nationality of the Emerald Isle; And as they professed for the greater part the faith of their fathers, they had from the very earliest to submit to persecution which took the form of ostracism from the colony in many a, case. .Among the missionaries of .the time one finds familiar names like Carroll, Murphy, Hayes, Quiu, O'Reilly, and Casey, as to the nationality of which there can be no question. The real Irish emigration towards America began, however, after the subjugation of Ireland by Cromwell in the middle of the seventeenth century. At this time when the adherents of the Faithat least five-sixths of the populationwere proscribed and outlawed, their bishops and priests barbarously murdered when apprehended in their priestly functions, it is hardly to be wondered at that the people thought of abandoning their prison-homes for a country where freedom gave a brighter promise. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the population of Ireland had decreased from five millions in the previous century to less than two millions. A steady flow to the New World began to declare itself about 1720, when Boston became the point towards which the Irish emigrant turned his thoughts. In 1718 we find five ships arriving with 200 immigrants from Ulster, and hardly a year passed without an infusion of Irish blood into the colony. The Irish soon became influential enough to form and conduct their own settlements, and Irish names in the baptism of New. England towns indicate to what extent the numbers of Irish settlers were growing. The official military records of New York show a large number of Irish in the soldiery and Thomas Do.ngan', the first colonial Governor, was both a Catholic and an Irishman. There were thousands of Irishmen serving in. the various brigades of the Continental army. Into the Delaware ports about 1730, the flow of Irish' immigration amounted to from ten thousand to twenty thousand monthly, according to records. The new-comers, it may. bo stated, -were attracted to Pennsylvania on account of "its reputation for religious . tolerance. The disastrous famine of 1740 increased the emigration to America, and in the succeeding years the outward tide began to flow at the rate of from twenty thousand to thirty thousand every year. Statistics show that from 1821 to 1900 nearly four millions of Irish went to America. The numbers from 1901. to 1908 alone amounted to nearly 260,000. ,As a result the population of Ireland has diminished from 1861 at a mean rate of oyer seven per cent. A forecast of the number of native Irish in the large centres of the United States, based on the general immigration returns, gives results as follow:New York, 320,000- Chicago, 120,000; St. Louis, 30,000; San Francisco, 40-000-Philadelphia, 130,000: Pittsburgh, 250,000.• . :..-.= * Nearly one-half of the Presidents of the United States have been of Celtic extraction. The list includes Monroe, Polk, Jackson, Buchanan, Grant, Arthur. Harrison, Johnson, and McKinley. The Rev. J. L. Spalding, in his work, The Mission of the Irish Bare, says:—'Were it not for Ireland, Catholicism would to-day bo feeble and nonprogressive in England, America, and Australia'. . ... No other people could have done for the Catholic Faith in the United States what the Irish have done. Their deep Catholic instincts _ . . .-•-■'; -■ have enabled them in spite of tho strong prejudices against their race which Americans have inherited from England, to accomplish what would not have beep accomplished by Italian, French, or German Catholics,' ' ' w '" l