evil.”  And the colonial Courts themselves, on account of what they called “the cruel and malignant spirit that has from time to time been manifest in the Irish nation against the English nation,” prohibited “the bringing over of any Irish men, women, or children into this jurisdiction on the penalty of fifty pounds sterling to each inhabitant who shall buy of any merchant, shipmaster, or other agent any such person or persons so transported by them.”  This order was promulgated by the General Court of Massachusetts in October, 1654, and is given in full in the American Historical Review for October, 1896.

With the “convicts” and the “redemptioners” came the Irish schoolmaster, the man then most needed in America.  And the fighting man, he too was to the fore, for when the colonies in after years called for volunteers to resist the tyranny of the British, the descendants of the Irish “convicts” were among the first and the most eager to answer the call.

* * * * *

Although it does not appear that Irish immigrants settled in the Province of New York in such large numbers as in other sections, yet, as far back as the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Irish names are found on the records of the Colony.  O’Callaghan, the eminent archivist and historian, refers to “Dr. William Hayes, formerly of Barry’s Court, Ireland,” as one of New York’s physicians in the year 1647, and from the same authority we learn that there were “settlers and Indian fighters in New Netherland” named Barrett, Fitzgerald, Dowdall, Collins, and Quinn in 1657.  In records relating to the war with the Esopus Indians (1663), and in fact as early as 1658, frequent references are made to “Thomas the Irishman”, whose name was Thomas Lewis, a refugee from Ireland to Holland after the Cromwellian war.  Lewis is on record in 1683 as one of the wealthiest merchants of New York and a large owner of real estate in the present downtown portion of the city.  Such names as Patrick Hayes, John Daly, John Quigly, and Dennis McKarty appear among its business men between 1666 and 1672, and in a “Census of the City of New York of the year 1703” we find people named Flynn, Walsh, Dooley, Gillen, Carroll, Kenne, Gurney, Hart, Mooney, Moran, Lynch, Kearney, and others, all “Freemen of the City of New York.”  In the “Poll List” of the city from 1741 to 1761, more than one hundred such names appear, while among the advertisers in the New York newspapers all through the eighteenth century I find a large number of characteristic Irish names.

One would scarcely expect to find an Irishman in the old Dutch settlement of Beverwyck as early as 1645.  Yet such is the case, for “Jan Andriessen, de Iersman van Dublingh”—­(John Anderson, the Irishman from Dublin)—­is mentioned as the owner of considerable landed property in the neighborhood of Albany and Catskill, and in every mention of this ancient pioneer he is referred to as “the Irishman.”  At Albany, between