8 and
131. Thomas Guilshan in 1858 and years following was taxed upon nine
acres, the land upon which his widow still lives, at Site 93. John Brady
lived for years at Site 71, and in a house now removed except for traces
of a cellar, about fifty feet southeast of the Akin Free Library, lived
Charles Kiernan. Among the earliest Irish Catholics came James Cullom
and Margaret, his wife, who acquired land at Site 34. Other names of the
earlier Irish generations are Hugh Clark, who acquired land at Site 116,
James Rooney, Fergus Fahey, James Doyle, Kate Leary, James Hopper, who
settled in Pawling or Hurd's Corner, and David Burns, who became a
landowner at Site 117.

The Irish Catholics early differentiated into two classes, only one of
which, with their children, remains to the present day. There were the
"loose-footed fellows," who followed the railroad, worked for seasons on
the farms, drifted on with the renewal of demand for railroad laborers,
and disappeared from the Hill. Their places were taken, in the years
following 1880, by American laborers, and a very few other foreigners,
of whom I will speak below. The other class of Irish Catholics sought to
own land. The details given above indicate their promptness in acquiring
interest in the soil. From them has been recruited almost all the
present Catholic population of the Hill, which in 1905 amounted in all
to twenty-five households and one hundred persons.

Whereas the early immigration of Irish worked in all the dairies from
one end of the Hill to the other, the land owned by Irish-Americans now
is all in the central portion of the Hill, within a radius of one mile
from Mizzen-Top Hotel. Within this mile also all the Irish laborers
employed on the Hill are at work. They are employed about the Hotel, on
the places of the wealthier landowners of the Hill, and in such
independent trades as stone-mason, blacksmith or wheelwright. Only an
occasional Irish-American is found among the hired hands on the dairy
farms.

In contrast to the indifference of the original population of the town
to education, it is worthy of note that the grandson of an
Irish-American named above promises at this writing to be the first
youth born in the town to graduate from a higher institution of
learning, being in his last year at West Point.

The Irish population who have remained on the Hill are singularly
homogeneous, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place. In the
chapter on