Joseph Doniphan taught school in Booneboro in 1779, and the children of Daniel Boone were his pupils. Nothing is known of his early history, but it has been asserted that his proper name was Donavon, and was corrupted into Doniphan or Doniphant. A writer with the leisure and means could strike a rich field in looking up the names of the Irish connected with the early settlement of the state, and it is no exaggeration to say that seventy-five per cent. were of that nationality. [Illustration: REV. RICHARD HENEBRY, Ph. D., Professor of Keltic Languages and Literature, Catholic University, WASHINGTON, D.C. ] [Illustration: HON. EDWIN D. McGUINNESS, Ex-Secretary of State, Rhode Island; ex-Mayor of PROVIDENCE. ] [Illustration: COL. JAMES ARMSTRONG, CHARLESTON, S. C. ] [Illustration: COL. WILLIAM H. DONOVAN, LAWRENCE, MASS. ] FOUR MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY. THE IRISH PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS OF PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE.[6] BY JAMES F. BRENNAN, OF PETERBOROUGH. MR. TOASTMASTER, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: My memory leads me back over a comparatively brief part of the time covered by the recollections of the gray haired men and women who are here present. I was born in this beautiful village; my first hallowed recollections cluster here; its territory is familiar to me; I know its people and something of its history, and wherever I go my mind reverts with pride to this good old town. It is with great pleasure that I accept the honor of responding to this toast, and in what I have to say shall not refer to the comparatively modern generation of Irishmen—Murphy, Brennan, Hamill, Noone, and scores of others—and their descendants, who have helped to build up this town, and whose history should be left for a résumé of fifty years hence, but to those early settlers who came across the ocean, and their descendants; men who risked all, even life itself, to make this spot a fit place for the abode of man. They were composed in a very small part of Scotchmen, Englishmen and other nationalities, but the essential part of the pioneers of our town, in fact nearly all of them, were Irishmen, for I assume that where men were born in Ireland, as they were, where many of their fathers, perhaps, also, some of their grandfathers were born, they were men who can unqualifiedly be called Irishmen. Adopt any other standard and a large part of the inhabitants of Ireland at the time they emigrated would not be considered Irishmen, and probably few persons in this town to-day would be considered Americans.