The early settlers of this vicinity may be taken as typical of the men who settled other towns in southern New Hampshire. They were practically all Irish, many from the northern counties, with some from the middle and southern counties of Ireland. The towns settled by these Irishmen were, in most instances, named in honor of one of the settlers, or from towns in Ireland; some, however, submitted to a change from the names first adopted by them, in order to insure the obtaining of their charters; thus, when John Taggart and others from Peterborough in 1769 settled in what is now Stoddard, they named it Limerick and it was thus known up to the time of incorporation in 1774, when its present name was adopted; the name of the township of Boyle was changed to Gilsum when incorporated in 1763; other similar changes were made under English régime and through English influences. When, however, these Irish settlers themselves selected names for their towns, no English influence obtained, for it must be remembered that the present English and Scotch sentiments, we now hear so much about, did not possess that sturdy, loyal Irish people; the modernly invented name of “Scotch-Irish,” for instance—so far as we have any history, tradition or information—was unknown, unmentioned and unrecorded by any of them at any time, the originators and promoters of this strange and peculiar “Scotch-Irish” theory being strictly products of our own time and of our own country; there were, for example, no such names as London, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, given to towns where these settlers located, but the selection of names was from their own people, or from their own Ireland, which they loved so well, where they and their ancestors for many generations were born, where their kinsmen and their descendants remaining are found today resenting this modern “Scotch Irish” appellation, as these settlers would undoubtedly do themselves if living; it was in Ireland their sympathies centered and found expression in their selection of distinctly Irish names for the towns they settled, such as Dublin, Belfast, Coleraine, Boyle, Limerick, Derry, Kilkenny, Antrim and many other purely Irish names.