A Celtic Chronology

1692 The Treaty of Limerick was repudiated by the English. Jacobite lands were confiscated and granted to Williamites.

Andrew Meade of Kerry was a Burgess of Virginia, later a Judge, and a Colonel in the militia. He was the antecedent of General George Meade.
Massacre at Glencoe, Scotland of more than 30 MacDonald’s for being slow in taking the oath of allegiance to William and Mary who ruled England and Scotland jointly.

Daniel Sullivan of Cork was also a member of the House of Burgess in Virginia. His descendants spelled the name Sullivant and settled in Ohio.
Daniel McCarthy was another Burgess (in 1705). He was Speaker of the House in Virginia from 1715 until 1720. His son, Dennis, married Sarah Ball, a first cousin of George Washington’s mother. Washington was close to his McCarthy cousins, who were also neighbors.

William O’Brien of County Clare arrived in North Carolina, he was the ancestor of William Jennings Bryan that brought the family to America.
Meanwhile in Ireland penal legislation goes unabated and the rights of the Irish become minimal. The Penal Laws are passed.

The Treaty of limerick is “ratified”? by the Irish Parliament.

South Carolina passes legislation discouraging Catholic immigration.

1694 Joseph Murray of County Laois founded Kings College, later known as Columbia University.

1695 The law denying educational facilities to the Irish was strongly enforced, resulting in a large emigration of Irish school teachers and School Masters to the United States, and is the reason so many of the teachers in early America were Irish. These Irish went on to found an academia that resulted in the following schools being established: Notre Dame, Holy Cross, Columbia, Princeton, Fordham, Brown University, Pennsylvania College, M.I.T., Georgetown University and many of the public school systems of the states; examples are in Texas, Maryland, and New York.

1698 The first Darien expedition of Scots to Panama.

1699 Restrictions are imposed on the export of Irish woolens, and Irish industry in general, except to certain Protestant merchants.

James Logan of Armagh, Secretary to William Penn arrives in Pennsylvania. He later becomes a member of the provincial council, Mayor of Philadelphia, Acting Governor, and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania.

1700 James Moore was Governor of South Carolina through 1703. He was Governor again in 1719, and served until 1721.

Calvin Baptists emigrate to Delaware from Wales.

Orkney Islanders, Orcadians, emigrate in large numbers to Canada.

1703 Daniel Dulany, born in Ireland, arrived in Maryland as an indentured servant. After he gains his freedom he won admission to the Maryland Bar (1710). He became a judge and then Attorney General of Maryland, a member of the legislature, and was on the Governor’s Council (1742-1753).

1704 The Test act imposed restrictions on Protestant dissenters mostly Presbyterians in Ireland.

The Gavelkind Act

Laws discouraging Catholics immigrating to Maryland were passed by the legislature.

1705 James Moore was Governor of North Carolina.

1706 Francis Mackemie founded the first Presbytery in the United States, in Philadelphia. He is regarded as the founder of Presbyterianism in America.

1707 The union of the English and Scottish parliaments.

1708 An attempted French invasion of Scotland.

1709 Palatine immigrants from the Palatine in Germany (a territory on the left and right banks of the middle Rhine area) begin to settle in Ireland.

1710 Breckenridges, McDowells, McDuffies, and McGruder families settle in the Blue Ridge area of Virginia.They found and settle the towns of McGaheyville, Healys, Kennedys, McFarlands, Lynchburg and Kinsale.

The Irish begin to leave Ulster in large numbers for America as rents and abuse increase.

1711 Breton Rene Duguay-Trouin with a fleet of privateers from Saint Maol, Brittany, held the port city of Rio de Janeiro in Spanish South America for ransom during the War of Spanish Succession.

1715 Daniel McCarty was Speaker of the House of Burgess in Virginia.

A Jacobite uprising in Scotland.

Battle of Sheriffmuir in Scotland.

1716 James Francis Stuart led an English invasion of Scotland.

1718 About 100 families, the earliest known organized band of emigrants to leave Ireland together, sailed from Donegal and settled in New Hampshire to found the town of Londonderry. They later founded or helped found the towns of: Antrim, Windham, Chester, Litchfield, Manchester, Bedford, Goffstown, New Boston, and Peterborough in New Hampshire, and Barnet, Vermont.

1719 James Moore, son of James Moore mentioned in 1685, became Governor of South Carolina, and served until 1721.

Declatory Act in Ireland reasserting British Parliament authority to legislate law in Ireland.

Another act allowed limited access to Presbyterians to certain clergy positions, this was later expanded to include low level positions in the military and government.

A west Highlands uprising in Scotland with Spanish help went nowhere.

1720 The General Court of Massachusetts, noting some 2,600 Irishmen had arrived in Boston in the past three years, warned immigrants to leave the English colony within seven months.

Timothy O’Sullivan a Colonel of the French Irish Brigade and his unit were in Canada.

1722 James Logan was Mayor of Philadelphia. When he died his private book collection served as the basis for the Philadelphia Public Library.

1723 Belfast, Maine settled by Irish from Belfast area of Ireland. On the voyage over a man named Sullivan fell in love with an Irish girl on board and they were married when they got to America. From that union came two governors of different states, and an important general in the American Revolution.

1724 Jonathan Swift in his Drapier’s Letters attacked English policy in Ireland.

1725 A group of Irishmen build Fort Penacook on the Merrimack River in New Hampshire. The town of Concord emerged on the opposite bank.

1727 The Penal Code was completed when Irishmen were disenfranchised the right to vote. The Test Act covered any loopholes in any rights that might possibly be left.

1729 Charles Clinton, of County Longford, landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He and his Irish wife had a family that produced a general, two governors, and a vice president for America.

The Carroll family of Ireland donate the site of Baltimore to the Maryland Colony.

George Berkeley of Kilkenny, Ireland was an early benefactor to Yale, Harvard, and Columbia universities. His library which he bequeathed to Yale was the nucleus of that university’s great library.

Thomas Griffiths of Cork was Mayor of Philadelphia.

A listing of arrivals at the port of Philadelphia shows the following arrivals by country of origin; England and Wales – 267, Scotland – 43, German Palatinates – 343, Irish – 5,655.

1730 John Young of Derry died in Worcester, Massachusetts at the age of 107.

Abraham Emmett founded Emmettsburg, Maryland; James McSherry founded McSherrytown, and Gettysburg was founded by a Major Getty. All these men were Irish.

Townships in New York were organized with Irish names: Derry, Donegal, Tyrone and Coleraine.

1733 Two Irishmen are prominent in New York, William Cosby is Governor, and Peter Warren, of County Meath, owned most of Manhattan.

1735 Scotch settlers arrive in Inverness, Georgia.

Methodism finds converts in Wales.

1736 James Patton of Londonderry received a grant to settle Irish families west of the blue ridge mountains in Virginia. That area is now Augusta County.

Charles Edward Stuart better known as the “Bonnie Prince Charlie” married a Polish princess.

The Porteous Mob in Scotland.

1737 The Charitable Irish Society was founded on Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston by 26 former Irish immigrants to help Irish immigrants adjust and advance in the United States.

Irish born Jeremiah Smith opened the first paper factory in North America in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

There is an Irish settlement in the Waxhaw District of South Carolina. The families there are the Rutledges, Calhouns, and Jacksons.

Samuel Gelson was sent to Virginia as a missionary from the Presbytery of Donegal.

1738 William Johnson (the family name was originally MacShane) from County Meath, settled in the Mohawk Valley in New York. He became an Indian trader, a Mohawk Chief, a diplomat to the Iroquois Confederacy, and he was a militia commander in the French and Indian War. He helped crush the insurrection led by Chief Pontiac. He was later made Superintendent of Indian Affairs (1755). He was succeeded in this position by his son, Guy Johnson, who held it until 1788. Another son, Sir John Johnson formed a Loyalist regiment during the American Revolution known as the “Johnson Greens.”

William Cosby, the Irishman, was still Governor of New York.

1739 Edward and William Patterson set up the first tinware manufacturing operation in the United States at Berlin and New Britain, Connecticut. The brothers were originally from Dungannon in County Tyrone.

1740 A potato blight brings famine to Ireland. The continued plotting of the one crop in the small tenant plots of the farmers depleted the soil. As many as 200,000 Irish died. George Bernard Shaw wrote:

“…the famine? No!, the starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no famine.”

Shaw’s point being the Irish were being starved off their own island unable to feed themselves from the little plot they kept by their thatched home, while the English land lords continued to ship food from their large Irish farms to market for profit. The Great Hunger, as it is sometimes called, claimed more than a million Irish lives.

The absentee land lords were not immediately aware of the problem, when they did become aware, because their Irish tenants were stealing part of the crop to feed their families, they evicted the tenants.

One of the worst practitioners of eviction was George Charles Bingham, Lord Lucan. The Irish gave him the name of “The Exterminator.” It was because of his ruthlessness, and disregard for sentiment, Lord Lucan was selected for a Command in the Crimean War where he subsequently ordered the charge of the Light Brigade.

These Irish, at first without food, were now without a home as well, and those who had not yet left Ireland search of food, left in search of a home.