The period of independence found a small number of Irish residents in Buenos Ayres, mostly patrician families, such as Dillon, MacMurrough, Murphy, French, O’Gorman, Orr, Butler, O’Shee, who had been exiled or had fled from Ireland and obtained the king of Spain’s permission to settle in Spanish America.  The descendants of these families are now so intermarried in the country that they have mostly forgotten the language and traditions of their ancestors; but they occupy high positions in political, legal, and commercial circles.

III.—­THE PERIOD AFTER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

A remarkable influx of settlers from Ireland occurred between 1825 and 1830, to work in the saladeros, or salt mines, of the Irish merchants, Brown, Dowdall, and Armstrong.  Previous to this a few Irish mechanics and others had come from the United States.  In 1813 Bernard Kiernan came from New Brunswick.  He seems to have devoted himself to science, as the papers mention his discovery of a comet in the Magellan clouds on March 19, 1830.  His son, James Kiernan, became editor of the government paper, Gaceta Mercantil, in 1823, and held this post for twenty years; his death occurred in 1857.  There is reason to believe that the first Irishman who landed in Buenos Ayres in the 19th century, exclusive of Beresford’s soldiers, was James Coyle, a native of Tyrone, who came in the Agreable in 1807, and died in 1876 at the age of 86.

In 1830 some survivors of an Irish colony of 300 persons in Brazil made their way to Buenos Ayres.  They had come out from Europe in the barque Reward in 1829.

The banker, Thomas Armstrong, who arrived in Buenos Ayres in 1817, occupied the foremost place for half a century in the commerce of that city.  He was of the ancient family of Armstrong in the King’s county, one of whose members was General Sir John Armstrong, founder of Woolwich arsenal.  Having married into the wealthy family of Villanueva he became intimately connected with all the leading enterprises of the day, such as railways, banks, loans, etc.  He took no part in politics, but interested himself in charities of every kind.

In 1865 another Irishman, James P. Cahill, introduced into Peru from the United States the first complete machinery for sugar growing and refining.

Still another Irishman, Peter Sheridan, was one of the chief founders of the sheep farming industry in Argentina.  His family claimed descent from the same stock in Co.  Cavan as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the great statesman and dramatist.  Sheridan died at the age of 52, in 1844, and was succeeded in the estancia or sheep-farming business by his nephew, James, whose brother Dr. Hugh Sheridan had served under Admiral Brown.