1700s Ireland
Sailing from Ireland in the 1700s
The English government during the eighteenth century knowingly allowed no vessel to sail from Ireland directly, but it was necessary by law to visit an English port before clearance papers could be obtained for the voyage. A record was also kept to collect a head tax on every individual leaving an English port for the colonies.
Where the Irish Settled in America
Virginia was undoubtedly first settled by the English, but at an early period, the Irish began to come in, bound to serve a stated term in payment for their passage money. Eventually, these people became free men, settling down on the frontier, and their descendants in the next generation, as indicated by their names appearing in the records, began to take part in the affairs of the colony.
Irish Catholics primarily settled in Maryland, and Calvert received his title of Lord Baltimore from a place in the southwest of Ireland.
William Penn spent a portion of his life in Ireland before he received his grant in America. A number of his followers were Irish, and the most prominent person next to Penn himself was James Logan, an Irishman who acted as governor of the province for several years. He was most tolerant of the Irish Catholics, who were allowed free exercise of their religion, and they received protection in this colony from the first settlement.
Many who first settled in New Jersey were from Ireland, and there were undoubtedly some Irish in New Amsterdam. In the Jesuit Relations, it is shown that Father Jogues, who afterward suffered the death of a martyr among the Indians of Central New York, came about 1642 from Canada to administer to some of his faith, than lived among the Dutch and in New Jersey.
In 1634, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay granted lands on the Merrimac River for an Irish settlement, and there were 64 Irishmen who served in King Philip’s Indian War, whose names are still preserved in the colonial records. I have a record of the fact but neglected to note the authority of a reference to a contemporaneous account of a fearful storm that occurred in the winter of 1634–1635 off the north coast of Ireland.] One of the incidents mentioned is the shipwreck of a vessel filled with Irish emigrants on the second day of their voyage to join, as was stated, the Merrimac River settlement in New England.
Prendergast, in “The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” states the following: “As one instance out of many: Captain Vernon was employed by the commissioners for Ireland into [from] England, and contracted in their behalf with Mr. David Selleck and Mr. Leader, under his hand, bearing date of 14th of September, 1653, to supply them with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish nation, above twelve years and under the age of forty-five, also three hundred men above twelve years of age and under fifty, to be found in the country within twenty miles of Cork ... to transplant them into New England.” These men and women were seized and sold in New England for the profit of the English commissioners. Prendergast further states in this connection: “How many girls of gentle birth must have been caught and hurried to the private prisons of these men-catchers none can tell.” “But at last the evil became too shocking and notorious, particularly when these dealers in Irish flesh began to seize the daughters and children of the English themselves, and to force them on board their slave ships; then, indeed, the orders, at the end of four years, were revoked.”
If we take into consideration the total number of “Puritan Fathers” in New England at this time, it would seem not improbable that these two hundred and fifty young Irish women, with many others sent over from Ireland about the same time, must have all eventually been transformed at least into Irish Puritans. If so, their progeny must, in time, have given quite a Hibernian tint to the blue blood of the descendants from the Mayflower. I have not found that the New England writers have noted these facts, but probably they failed to do so on evidence that they were not “Scotch-Irish” women.
From the time William of Orange possessed himself of the British crown until the beginning of our Revolution, a steady stream of emigrants passed out of Ireland to this country.
After the departure of many of these people from Ulster, the country gradually settled up again from England. It was populated by Catholic, Presbyterian, and Protestant Irish from different parts of Ireland who were not Scotch.
A few years later, a large proportion of the Irish Presbyterians, with a limited number of Catholics in Ulster, became engaged in commerce and various manufacturing interests. But all these people were ultimately ruined by England’s policy that Ireland should not prosper, and they were gradually forced to leave the country to better their condition by emigration to the American colonies.
The Presbyterians who settled in the north of Ireland after the early part of the eighteenth century had come chiefly from the central portion of England and, as a rule, represented the better element among the new settlers. They, like Cromwell, hated the Scotch and would never have accepted the term “Scot-Irish” for themselves. After “the Restoration,” these people, in common with the Catholics, were only tolerated as non-conformists and were not allowed by the Protestant authorities to take any part in public affairs.
Maine, New Hampshire, the more significant part of Vermont and west Massachusetts, west Pennsylvania, a large portion of Maryland, the western part of Virginia, between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany mountains, into North Carolina, along the French Broad River, to the upper part of South Carolina, and into the territory now forming Tennessee and Kentucky, with a part of the northwest territory, to the north of the Ohio river, and which then belonged to Virginia, was essentially, and in some sections was entirely, settled by Irish, who did not change their names before or after leaving Ireland. From the latter circumstance, the course of settlement can be traced by the surnames of the first settlers, and the indications are rendered all the stronger by the names of so many settlements, which indicate the localities in Ireland whence these people came.
In 1771, 1772, and 1773, over twenty-five thousand emigrants left Belfast and other ports in that immediate neighborhood for the American colonies because they had been evicted from one of the estates of the Marquis of Donegal in Antrim.
Marmion states, “The emigrants were chiefly farmers and manufacturers who, it was calculated, by converting their property into specie, which they took with them abroad, deprived Ulster of one-fourth of its circulating medium, which then consisted altogether of specie; and also a portion equal thereto to the most valuable part of its population.”