which emancipated the people of this land
from the same tyranny under which she herself has groaned. And yet,
what a cruel travesty on history it reads like now, when we scan the
official records of the New England colonies and find that the Irish
were often called "convicts", and it was thought that measures should
be taken to prevent their landing on the soil where they and their
sons afterwards shed their blood in the cause of their fellow
colonists! In the minutes of the provincial Assemblies and in the
reports rendered to the General Court, as well as in other official
documents of the period, are found expressions of the sentiment which
prevailed against the natives of the "Island of Sorrows." Only twenty
years before the outbreak of King Philip's war, the government of
England was asked to provide a law "to prevent the importation of
Irish Papists and convicts that are yearly pow'rd upon us and to make
provision against the growth of this pernicious evil." And the
colonial Courts themselves, on account of what they called "the cruel
and malignant spirit that has from time to time been manifest in the
Irish nation against the English nation," prohibited "the bringing
over of any Irish men, women, or children into this jurisdiction on
the penalty of fifty pounds sterling to each inhabitant who shall buy
of any merchant, shipmaster, or other agent any such person or
persons so transported by them." This order was promulgated by the
General Court of Massachusetts in October, 1654, and is given in full
in the American Historical Review for October, 1896.

With the "convicts" and the "redemptioners" came the Irish
schoolmaster, the man then most needed in America. And the fighting
man, he too was to the fore, for when the colonies in after years
called for volunteers to resist the tyranny of the British, the
descendants of the Irish "convicts" were among the first and the most
eager to answer the call.

* * * * *

Although it does not appear that Irish immigrants settled in the
Province of New York in such large numbers as in other sections, yet,
as far back as the third quarter of the seventeenth century, Irish
names are found on the records of the Colony. O'Callaghan, the
eminent archivist and historian, refers to "Dr. William Hayes,
formerly of Barry's Court, Ireland," as one of New York's physicians
in the year 1647, and from the same authority we learn that there
were "settlers