In addition to this, in the case of some of those Irish immigrants whose family names were not changed in Ireland, their descendants appear in a much disguised form in the colonial records.  Through the mistakes of clergymen, court clerks, registrars, and others who had difficulty in pronouncing Gaelic names, letters became inserted or dropped and the names were written down phonetically.  In the mutations of time, even these names became still further changed, and we find that the descendants of the Irish themselves, after the lapse of a generation or two, deliberately changed their names, usually by suppressing the Milesian prefixes, “Mac” and “O”.  Thus we have the Laflin and Claflin families, who are descended from a McLaughlin, an Irish settler in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century; the Bryans from William O’Brian, a captain in Sarsfield’s army, who, after the fall of Limerick in 1691, settled in Pasquetank County, N.C., and one of whose descendants is William Jennings Bryan, now Secretary of State; the Dunnels of Maine, from an O’Donnell who located in the Saco Valley; and at the Land Office at Annapolis I have found the descendants of Roger O’Dewe, who came to Maryland about 1665, recorded under the surnames of “Roger”, “Dew”, and “Dewey”.  I find Dennis O’Deeve or O’Deere written down on the Talbot County (Md.) records of the year 1667 with his name reversed, and today his descendants are known as “Dennis”.  Many such instances appear in the early records, and when we find a New England family rejoicing in the name of “Navillus” we know that the limit has been reached, and while we cannot admire the attempt to disguise an ancient and honorable name, we are amused at the obvious transposition of “Sullivan”.

Thus we see, that, numerous though the old Irish names are on American records, they do not by any means indicate the extent of the Celtic element which established itself in the colonies, so that there is really no means of determining exactly what Ireland has contributed to the American Commonwealth.  We only know that a steady stream of Irish immigrants has crossed the seas to the American continent, beginning with the middle of the seventeenth century, and that many of those “Exiles from Erin”, or their sons, became prominent as leaders in every station in life in the new country.

Nor is the “First Census of the United States” any criterion in this regard, for the obvious reason that the enumerators made no returns of unmarried persons.  This fact is important when we consider that the Irish exodus of the eighteenth century was largely comprised of the youth of the country.  Although the First Census was made in 1790, the first regular record of immigration was not begun until thirty years later, and it is only from the records kept after that time that we can depend upon actual official figures.  During the decade following 1820, Ireland contributed more than forty per cent, of the entire immigration to America from all European countries,