Of the Irish emigration before the Revolution and up to 1820, the presence in New York of numbers of Irish high in standing as well as stalwart in activity is easily proven. One of the leading merchants in 1655 bore the historic name of Hugh O’Neale. New York City received its first charter from the hands of Sir Thomas Dougan, an Irishman, in 1684. Many old Irish names appear in the census of the City of New York for 1703. New York’s first mayor after the Revolution, James Duane, was the son of a Galway man. The first governor of the State of New York, and afterwards vice-president of the United States, George Clinton, was also an Irishman’s son. His kinsman, DeWitt Clinton, was a mayor of New York, United States senator and governor of the State, and is known to history as “the father of the Erie Canal.” Christopher Colles, from County Cork, Ireland, was the originator of our system of rail and waterways. His grave is in St. Paul’s. Thomas Addis Emmet, a resident of New York, was attorney general of the State. Daniel O’Brien established the first ferry to Perth Amboy. Dominick Lynch first introduced Italian opera to our city. He was also the founder of the Town of Rome, N. Y. Resounding names of men of Irish blood are, indeed, plentiful, but they are only in this paper to be taken as symptomatic of the Irish-born and descended population, gradually growing in the city to a commanding influence. Peter McCartee was an alderman in 1815, and John McManus marshal of police in the same year. Irish names grew to prominence not only in the police and fire departments, but in the ranks of the teachers in the public schools. Of this eminence in three branches of the public service perhaps the greatest stress should be laid on the last. As school teachers, women and men, the Irish and Irish-descended have held the front place, in brains as well as numbers, for a hundred years in New York, holding it still, from William H. Maxwell, the great superintendent of the past twenty years, down to the latest teachers in the primary grades.