provincial records at Albany; the newspapers; the Town, County,
and family histories, and other early chronicles, supplemented by
authoritative publications such as those of the New York Historical
and Genealogical and Biographical Societies--these are the
depositories of the evidence that thousands of Irish people settled
in the Province of New York and constituted no inconsiderable
proportion of the total population.

The majority of the Irish residents of New York whose marriages are
recorded in the Dutch Reformed church were, doubtless, of the
Catholic faith, but, as it was necessary to comply with the
established law, and also so that their offspring might be
legitimate, they could be bound in wedlock only by a recognized
Minister of the Gospel. As there was no Catholic church in New York
prior to 1786, the ceremony had to be performed in the Dutch Reformed
or Protestant church. Many of these Catholics were refugees from
Ireland on account of the religious persecutions. Like the people of
Ireland in all ages, they were devoted to their religion, and while,
no doubt, they eschewed for a while association with the established
churches, yet, as time went on, they and their children were
gradually drawn into religious intercourse with the other sects,
until eventually they became regular communicants of those churches.
The variations which from time to time were wrought in their names
brought them further and further away from what they had been; in
their new surroundings, both social and religious, they themselves
changed, so that their children, who in many cases married into the
neighboring Dutch and French families, became as wholly un-Irish in
manner and sentiment as if they had sprung from an entirely different
race. That fact, however, does not admit of their being now included
in the category "Anglo-Saxon."

In a work entitled "Names of Persons for whom Marriage Licenses were
issued by the Secretary of the Province of New York, previous to
1784," compiled by Gideon J. Tucker (when Secretary of State), and
taken from the early records of the office of the Secretary of State
at Albany, we find ample corroboration of the church records. Page
after page of this book looks more like some record of the Province
of Munster than of the Province of New York. It is a quarto volume
printed in small type in double columns, and there are eleven pages
wholly devoted to persons whose names commence with "Mac" and three
to