The records of New Hampshire and Rhode Island are also a fruitful source of information on this subject, and the Provincial papers indicate an almost unbroken tide of Irish immigration to this section, beginning as early as the year 1640. One of the most noted of Exeter's pioneer settlers was an Irishman named Darby Field, who came to that place in 1631 and who has been credited by Governor Winthrop as "the first European who witnessed the White Mountains." He is also recorded as "an Irish soldier for discovery," and I find his name in the annals of Exeter as one of the grantees of an Indian deed dated April 3, 1638, as well as several other Irish names down to the year 1664. In examining the town registers, gazeteers, and genealogies, as well as the local histories of New Hampshire, in which are embodied copies of the original entries made by the Town Clerks, I find numerous references to the Irish pioneers, and in many instances they are written down, among others, as "the first settlers." Some are mentioned as selectmen, town clerks, representatives, or colonial soldiers, and it is indeed remarkable that there is not one of these authorities that I have examined, out of more than two hundred, that does not contain Irish names. From these Irish pioneers sprang many men who attained prominence in New Hampshire, in the legislature, the professions, the military, the arts and crafts, and in all departments of civil life, down to the present time. In the marriage registers of Portsmouth, Boscawen, New Boston, Antrim, Londonderry, and other New Hampshire towns, are recorded, in some cases as early as 1716, names of Irish persons, with the places of their nativity, indicating that they came from all parts of Ireland. At Hampton, I find Humphrey Sullivan teaching school in 1714, while the name of John Sullivan from Limerick, schoolmaster at Dover and at Berwick, Me., for upwards of fifty years, is one of the most honored in early New Hampshire history. This John Sullivan was surely one of the grandest characters in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the record of his descendants serves as an all-sufficient reply to the anti-Irish prejudices of some American historians. He was the father of a governor of New Hampshire and of a governor of Massachusetts; of an attorney-general of New Hampshire and of an attorney-general of Massachusetts; of New Hampshire's only major-general in the Continental army; of the first judge appointed by Washington in New Hampshire; and of four sons who were officers in the Continental army. He was grandfather of an attorney-general of New Hampshire, of a governor of Maine, and of a United States Senator from New Hampshire. He was great-grandfather of an attorney-general of New Hampshire, and great-great-grandfather of an officer in the Thirteenth New Hampshire regiment in the Civil War. * * * * *