The number of distinctive Irish names met in looking over the early records of North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, and Kentucky is simply wonderful. When are added to them the names more distinctively Scotch, but fully as Gaelic in origin as the Irish, one is justified in believing what Ramsay wrote in 1789, that: “The colonies which now form the United States may be considered as Europe transplanted. Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, and Italy furnished the original stock of the present population and have been supposed to contribute to it in the order enumerated. For the last seventy or eighty years no nation has contributed so much to the population of America as Ireland.”[23] Dr. Hart and William Coomes were the first Catholic settlers in Kentucky, locating in Harrodsburgh in 1775. The doctor was the first medical practitioner in the state, as Mrs. Coomes was the first teacher. This credit is given them in Collins’ History of Kentucky. Among the fortified stations or forts built for protection from the Indians by the early settlers, not a few bore names familiar to Irish ears, denoting the presence of many of the old race. Among them may be mentioned Bryan’s Station, Dougherty’s Station, Drennan’s Lick, Feagan’s Station, Finn’s Station, Fleming’s Station, Hart’s Station, Higgins’ Block House, Irish Station, Lynch’s Station, Logan’s Fort, McAfee’s Station, McFadden’s Station, McGee’s Station, Sullivan’s Old Station, Sullivan’s New Station, Sullivan’s Station, Daniel Sullivan’s Station, McGuire’s Station, McCormack’s Station, McKeenan’s Station, McConnell’s Station, Kennedy’s Station, Givin’s Station, McKinley’s Station, McMillan’s Station, Owen’s Station, Kilgore Station, Hoy Station, Kinchelloe’s Station and Gilmore’s Station. Ten Kentucky counties bear Irish names: Adair, Butler, Logan, Hart, Montgomery, McCracken, Boyle, Carroll, Rowan, and Casey. John Carty, the most successful merchant in Lexington, was the son of John Carty, a native of Ireland who went early to Kentucky from New Jersey; and General James Morrison, for many years one of the leading men of the state, was the son of another Irish emigrant. As late as 1840, among the surviving veterans of the Revolutionary War residing in Kentucky were the following: