1904. August. Hon. John W. Corcoran, of Boston, Mass., a member of the Society, passes away. He was a lawyer by profession, had been a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and held other positions of trust and honor. PAPERS BY MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY. EARLY IRISH SETTLERS IN VIRGINIA. BY HON. JOHN C. LINEHAN,[1] CONCORD, N. H. Virginia was first settled by white men in 1607. On the authority of a work published recently, Francis Maguire, an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, visited the colony a year later. “He wrote an account of his voyage to Virginia and submitted it to the privy council of Spain.” From this it is evident that he was not in the interest of England and did not remain in the colony. Virginia, even in its early days, was not friendly to those of the faith of Maguire. In 1625 the same writer mentioned that “Symon Tuchin master of the _Due Return_ having been banished out of Ireland was reported as strongly affected to popery, and the Governor and Council of Virginia sent him as a prisoner, in January, 1625, to the Company in England.” This ended the career of Symon in the Old Dominion, and no further mention is made of him. Who the first actual settlers in Virginia from Ireland were, and the period of their arrival, can be determined only from the names printed in the early colonial records and in the calendar of state papers following. The population of the colony from 1609 to 1624, as given in the work mentioned, namely, _The First Republic in America_, was as follows: In 1609 one authority gives it as being, in July, not over one hundred and nine persons. In 1611 it is estimated at about two hundred and eighty persons. In 1616 it increased to about four hundred. In 1618 it had increased to six hundred. In 1619 it had dropped to about four hundred. The census of 1620 gives it as eight hundred and eighty-seven. In 1621 it fell to eight hundred and forty-three. In 1622 it had increased to one thousand two hundred and forty, and in 1624 it was reduced to eleven hundred. An idea can here be formed of the struggles of the first settlers of the Old Dominion against disease, famine, and the attacks of the Indians. In 1621 or 1622, the year is in dispute, there was a terrible massacre of the settlers by the Indians, the number of killed being given as “three hundred and forty-seven men, women and children.” If names are any indication of the nativity of the bearers, the first Irish settlers arrived in Virginia during this troublesome period. Their condition in the colony could not be much worse than it was in their native land, for about that time the long struggle for the possession of the land, beginning with the Reformation, had taken root, not to end until the war between William and James.