derry, and other New Hampshire towns, are
recorded, in some cases as early as 1716, names of Irish persons,
with the places of their nativity, indicating that they came from all
parts of Ireland. At Hampton, I find Humphrey Sullivan teaching
school in 1714, while the name of John Sullivan from Limerick,
schoolmaster at Dover and at Berwick, Me., for upwards of fifty
years, is one of the most honored in early New Hampshire history.

This John Sullivan was surely one of the grandest characters in the
Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the record of his descendants serves
as an all-sufficient reply to the anti-Irish prejudices of some
American historians. He was the father of a governor of New Hampshire
and of a governor of Massachusetts; of an attorney-general of New
Hampshire and of an attorney-general of Massachusetts; of New
Hampshire's only major-general in the Continental army; of the first
judge appointed by Washington in New Hampshire; and of four sons who
were officers in the Continental army. He was grandfather of an
attorney-general of New Hampshire, of a governor of Maine, and of a
United States Senator from New Hampshire. He was great-grandfather of
an attorney-general of New Hampshire, and great-great-grandfather of
an officer in the Thirteenth New Hampshire regiment in the Civil War.

* * * * *

In Rhode Island, Irish people are on record as far back as 1640, and
for many years after that date they continued to come. Edward Larkin
was an esteemed citizen of Newport in 1655. Charles McCarthy was one
of the founders of the town of East Greenwich in 1677, while in this
vicinity as early as 1680 are found such names as Casey, Higgins,
Magennis, Kelley, Murphy, Reylie, Maloney, Healy, Delaney, Walsh, and
others of Irish origin. On the rosters of the Colonial militia who
fought in King Philip's war (1675) are found the names of 110
soldiers of Irish birth or descent, some of whom, for their services
at the battle of Narragansett, received grants of land in New
Hampshire and Massachusetts. The New England Historical and
Genealogical Register for 1848 contains some remarkable testimony of
the sympathy of the people of Ireland for the sufferers in this cruel
war, and the "Irish Donation," sent out from Dublin in the year 1676,
will always stand in history to Ireland's credit and as an instance
of her intimate familiarity with American affairs, one hundred years
prior to that Revolution