The early records, with hardly an exception, contain Irish names, showing that the “Exiles from Erin” came to the Province of New York in considerable numbers during the eighteenth century.  The baptismal and marriage records of the Dutch Reformed and Protestant churches of New York City; of the Dutch churches at Kingston, Albany, Schenectady, and other towns; the muster rolls of the troops enrolled for the French, Indian, and Revolutionary wars; the Land Grants and other provincial records at Albany; the newspapers; the Town, County, and family histories, and other early chronicles, supplemented by authoritative publications such as those of the New York Historical and Genealogical and Biographical Societies—­these are the depositories of the evidence that thousands of Irish people settled in the Province of New York and constituted no inconsiderable proportion of the total population.

The majority of the Irish residents of New York whose marriages are recorded in the Dutch Reformed church were, doubtless, of the Catholic faith, but, as it was necessary to comply with the established law, and also so that their offspring might be legitimate, they could be bound in wedlock only by a recognized Minister of the Gospel.  As there was no Catholic church in New York prior to 1786, the ceremony had to be performed in the Dutch Reformed or Protestant church.  Many of these Catholics were refugees from Ireland on account of the religious persecutions.  Like the people of Ireland in all ages, they were devoted to their religion, and while, no doubt, they eschewed for a while association with the established churches, yet, as time went on, they and their children were gradually drawn into religious intercourse with the other sects, until eventually they became regular communicants of those churches.  The variations which from time to time were wrought in their names brought them further and further away from what they had been; in their new surroundings, both social and religious, they themselves changed, so that their children, who in many cases married into the neighboring Dutch and French families, became as wholly un-Irish in manner and sentiment as if they had sprung from an entirely different race.  That fact, however, does not admit of their being now included in the category “Anglo-Saxon.”

In a work entitled “Names of Persons for whom Marriage Licenses were issued by the Secretary of the Province of New York, previous to 1784,” compiled by Gideon J. Tucker (when Secretary of State), and taken from the early records of the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, we find ample corroboration of the church records.  Page after page of this book looks more like some record of the Province of Munster than of the Province of New York.  It is a quarto volume printed in small type in double columns, and there are eleven pages wholly devoted to persons whose names commence with “Mac” and three to the “O’s.”  Nearly every name common to Ireland is here represented.