I have a further interest in the matter as a native American desiring that our federal and state historical records should be accurate and complete. Writers covering the part played by Irishmen in this country’s history generally confine themselves to services rendered during a revolutionary and post-revolutionary wars; and these the enemies of Ireland constantly depreciate, and the friends of Ireland sometimes exaggerate. Both sides lose sight of the fact that very much is due to Irish efforts in the colonization of the country and in its civil and social development. The society proposed will be able to show how much the Quaker Irish in Philadelphia and its vicinity, the Catholic Irish in Maryland, and bodies and individuals of them elsewhere on the seaboard did to develop our civilization and promote our progress. The society will have a rich and poorly worked mine of historical wealth in another quarter. The Appalachian and Alleghanian ranges and their immediate valleys found large numbers of Irish settlers among the pioneers, and from Londonderry in New Hampshire to Murphy and Coleraine in Georgia, there extends a long line of settlements where many customs, terms, phrases, and modes of thought and action attest the country of the founders. “The dark and bloody ground” of Kentucky has among its residents so many with Hibernian names, though the sept mark of O’ has been dropped in many cases, the Macs being more adherent, that in calling off the assessment rolls in some quarters it would seem to the hearer as though he had dropped in upon the meeting of some Irish society. With my best wishes for the thorough success of the proposed organization, I am yours truly, THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH. _From Gen. Francis A. Walker._ BOSTON, Nov. 25, 1896. MY DEAR SIR:—Your letter of the 18th inst., enclosing a cutting relating to the proposed new historical society, arrived during my absence from the city. As regards the desirability of thorough investigation into the early history of the Irish element of our American population, there can be no question whatever. The confusion that has arisen regarding the several constituents of the Irish immigration—as witnessed, for example, in the general use of the word Scotch-Irish, applied indifferently to persons of pure English, pure Scotch, and pure Irish blood—shows abundantly the need of careful dispassionate research; and all should rejoice to see the work undertaken in the most effective way.