With the "convicts" and the "redemptioners" came the Irish
schoolmaster, the man then most needed in America. And the fighting
man, he too was to the fore, for when the colonies in after years
called for volunteers to resist the tyranny of the British, the
descendants of the Irish "convicts" were among the first and the most
eager to answer the call.
* * * * *
Although it does not appear that Irish immigrants settled in the
Province of New York in such large numbers as in other sections, yet,
as far back as the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Irish
names are found on the records of the Colony. O'Callaghan, the
eminent archivist and historian, refers to "Dr. William Hayes,
formerly of Barry's Court, Ireland," as one of New York's physicians
in the year 1647, and from the same authority we learn that there
were "settlers and Indian fighters in New Netherland" named Barrett,
Fitzgerald, Dowdall, Collins, and Quinn in 1657. In records relating
to the war with the Esopus Indians (1663), and in fact as early as
1658, frequent references are made to "Thomas the Irishman", whose
name was Thomas Lewis, a refugee from Ireland to Holland after the
Cromwellian war. Lewis is on record in 1683 as one of the wealthiest
merchants of New York and a large owner of real estate in the present
downtown portion of the city. Such names as Patrick Hayes, John Daly,
John Quigly, and Dennis McKarty appear among its business men between
1666 and 1672, and in a "Census of the City of New York of the year
1703" we find people named Flynn, Walsh, Dooley, Gillen, Carroll,
Kenne, Gurney, Hart, Mooney, Moran, Lynch, Kearney, and others, all
"Freemen of the City of New York." In the "Poll List" of the city
from 1741 to 1761, more than one hundred such names appear, while
among the advertisers in the New York newspapers all through the
eighteenth century I find a large number of characteristic Irish
names.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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