USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > History of the diocese of Hartford > Part 13
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"I am, dear sir, very respectfully yours,
"JARED SPARKS."
LOUISVILLE, August 14, 1835.
M. T. SPALDING.
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX IN CONNECTICUT.
1 N 1780, 1781 and 1782 the Marquis de Chastellux, a major-general in the French army under the Count de Rochambeau, made a number of tours through the New England and Middle Atlantic States, going as far as Wilmington, Delaware. He recorded in a familiar style his im- pressions of persons and places.1 His first tour through Connecticut occurred in November, 1780.
De Chastellux disembarked at Newport on July 11th, and was detained there by military duties until November Ist. "This was the moment," he writes, "when I found myself able to withdraw from the army, but I did not wish to show too much eagerness, and I wished to see established the disci- pline and the arrangements relative to the cantonments ; therefore I delayed starting on my long journey on the continent until the 11th." He was
accompanied by his aides, M. Montesquieu and M. Lynch, whose name indi- cates his Celtic origin. The Marquis had three servants, the aides one each. Their first stop in Connecticut was at Voluntown, which they reached on the 13th. Here he was the guest of a Mr. Dorrance, whose household he thus describes : " He is an old gentleman of seventy-three years of age, tall and still vigorous ; he is a native of Ireland, first settled in Massachusetts and afterwards in Connecticut. His wife, who is younger than him, is active, handy and obliging. But the family is charming. It consists of two young men, one twenty-eight and the other twenty-one years old, a child of twelve, and two girls from eighteen to twenty." The eldest son was a Greek and Latin scholar, and well versed in general literature. The travelers left Voluntown on the 15th at 8 A.M., stopping at Plainfield, "a small town, but a big place, for it has nearly thirty houses to support the meeting-house." The Marquis was deeply impressed with Plainfield as a military stronghold. "The situation of it is agreeable, but it offers also the very best possible mili- tary position, the first I have observed. One could camp here on the lesser heights, behind which the mountains rise like an amphitheatre, and thus present successive positions almost to the great woods, which would serve for the last retreat. The foot of the heights of Plainfield is fortified by pools of water, which can only be crossed by one causeway, and would force the enemy to defile in order to attack. . . . The left and the right are supported by escarpments. . . . This camp would be good for six, eight, or even ten thousand inen ; it would serve to defend Providence and the whole State of Massachusetts against troops which had passed the Connecticut River."
Leaving Plainfield, our tourists passed through Canterbury to Windham, which is described as "a pretty little town, or, rather, the germ of a pretty
1 " Voyages de M. Le Marquis de Chastellux dans L' Amerique, Septentrionale les annees- 1780, 1781 and 1782."
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town." At Windham De Chastellux dined with the Duke de Lauzun, who was encamped there with his Legion, awaiting the construction of his winter quarters at Lebanon. At "a little lonely tavern" six miles from Windham, the generous Marquis acted the part of the good Samaritan by defraying the expenses of a penniless Continental soldier, who was ill there, besides giving him a sum of money to continue his journey.
De Chastellux and his companions arrived at Hartford on the 16th, and, with the Duke de Lauzun, who had passed him on the road, lodged at the hospitable mansion of Colonel Wadsworth. M. Dumas, Lauzun's aide, Messrs. Lynch and Montesquieu secured lodgings in the neighborhood. Early on the 17th De Chastellux left Hartford and the Duke de Lauzun, "but it was after breakfast, for if there is one thing absolutely unheard of in Amer- ica, it is to depart without one's breakfast." -The next stop was at Farmning- ton, "a pretty little town, where they have a fine meeting-house and fifty houses standing close together, all neat and well built." Leaving Farming- ton at 8 A.M. on the 18th, the Marquis continued his journey through Har- winton until he reached Litchfield. His host here was a Mr. Philips, "an Irishmian transplanted to America, where he has already made a fortune; he appears to be a man skillful and adroit ; he speaks with caution to strangers, and fears to compromise himself: for the rest he is of a gayer mood than the Americans, even a little of a joker, a kind but little known in America."
Washington and New Milford are the last towns in Connecticut of which De Chastellux makes mention in this journey. Of this former he writes : "They gave it this respectable namne, of which the memory, no doubt, will last much longer than the town intended to perpetuate it.",
On his return journey De Chastellux passed through Canaan, Norfolk, New Hartford to Hartford, thence to Lebanon, to which place he returned after an absence of two months. During this visit at Lebanon he dined again at the quarters of the Duke de Lauzun, and on this occasion witnessed a scene familiar to Catholics the world over, and in which Governor Trumbull was the chief actor. "You have only to represent to yourself this little old man," writes De Chastellux, "in the antique dress of the first settlers in this colony, approaching a table surrounded by twenty Hussar officers, and without dis- concerting himself, or losing anything of his formal stiffness, pronouncing. in a loud voice, a long prayer in the form of a benedicite.1 Let it not be imag- ined that lie excites the laughter of his auditors ; they are too well trained ; you must, on the contrary, figure to yourself twenty Amens issuing at once from the midst of forty mustaches."
In October, 1782, a year after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown1, De Chastellux, commanding the first division of Rochambeau's army, marchied tlirongh Connecticut to Hartford. Wishing to visit northern Massaclinsetts and New Hampshire, the Marquis relinquished his command at Hartford, and on November 4th set out in company with Messieurs Lynch, Montes- quieu, Baron de Talleyrand, and M. Vaudreuil. On this tour they passed
1 i. e., grace before meals.
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
through Coventry, Ashford and Woodstock into Massachusetts. At Coventry the tourists fell in with a French Canadian laborer, "who had frequently changed habitations, and had seven children."
His third tour took place in December, 1782, when he followed the route taken two years before, that is, to Voluntown, through Hartford and Farmington, to Litchfield and Washington.
CHAPTER XX.
CONNECTICUT IRISHMEN IN THE REVOLUTION.
T HE French armies which co-operated with the American forces con- tained many thousands of Irishmen; and the second in command of the besieging force defeated at Savannah was no other than Count Arthur Dillon, who had brought with him his own Irish regiment which he had commanded in France." 1
We have seen that the land and naval forces of the king of France assisted the American Colonies to break the chains that bound them to Great Britain ; we are now to show that the brave and generous sons of Ireland contributed no less to the humiliation of their traditional enemy, the English government. What the English king said of Irish valor at Fontenoy, George III. might well have said of every battlefield from Lexington to Yorktown : "Cursed be the laws that deprive me of such subjects." The Irish emi- grants could not forget the accumulated wrongs of centuries. The memories of penal laws rankled within thein, and the hideous spectre of insensate cruelties was ever before them. They remembered the barbarities, by gov- ernment ordered, of which they were victiins, and when the opportunity was offered to strike their relentless foe they eagerly embraced it, and marched to battle with hearts throbbing with joy and pulses beating high, animated with the single purpose of driving a hated flag from the American Colonies. Urged on by the same invincible ardor that brought low in the dust the English standard at Fontenoy, and which makes the Irish soldier a splendid acquisi- tion to any army, they fought the battles of American Independence with a gallantry unsurpassed and with such intense devotion to the cause of liberty as to evoke the admiration of their commanders. The Irish emigrant knew not the blessings of liberty at home; he would fight for it in the young land of the West.
The achievements of Ireland's sons in the War of the Revolution have received but scant recognition from the pens of American historians. Where recognition has been made at all, it has been bestowed upon a myth, a figment and nothing more. Fulsome adulation has been given to what in fact has no concrete existence. Much eloquence has been ex- pended to exploit the deeds of the "Scotch-Irish" in the Revolution, and a maximum of energy has been dissipated in the endeavor to minimize the part taken by the genuine Irish-the Irish that need no prefix to attract
1 . The American Irish," p. 21.
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DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
attention; and this concerted attempt to defraud the true sons of Erin of the glory that is justly their meed, is all the more absurd from the fact that the individual, yclept "Scotch-Irishman," can trace no ancestry, has no local habitat, and exists only in the imaginations of a certain school of foreign and domestic apologists.
When Lord Mountjoy made his famous declaration that America was lost by the Irish emigrants, he had no thought of the being subsequently de- veloped, the "Scotch Irishman." He had in mind the hundreds of thousands of the Irish-Irish, who streamed into this country from 1629 to 1774. In retrospect he saw the crowds who fled from Cromwell's assassins and man- hunters in 1653, and he witnessed again the exodus to the colonies from 1700 to 1774. All these sturdy emigrants, compulsory and voluntary, regarded the British crown as a symbol of tyranny, and their sympathies went out freely to the colonists who were manfully, and patriotically, but against fearful odds, resisting the burdensome laws of the mother country.
The historian Marmion pronounces the emigration from Ireland to this country during 1771, 1772, 1773, to have been without a parallel. "During these three years eighty-eight vessels carried 25,000 Irishmen from three Irish ports to the United States." "They arrived," he continues, "at a critical moment, joined Washington's armies, and contributed by their numbers, courage and conduct, to separate that country from the British crown." To the same effect writes the historian Gordon. "Many thousands left Ireland and settled in America," he says, "and contributed powerfully by their zeal and valor to the separation of the American Colonies from England." "The services rendered by the Irish in America during the war of the Revolu- tion," says Bagenal, "were of almost equal importance in the history of that prolonged and bitter struggle as at Fontenoy, at Cremona, in the Peninsular War, or in the Crimea." 1
Indeed, testimony confirmatory of the predominance of the Irish element in the American Revolutionary forces is abundant and unimpeachable, as much of it is the evidence of men high in station and who could not be charged with pro-Irishi proclivities. In a speech in the Irish House of Com- inons on the 2d of April, 1784, Colonel Luke Gardiner 2 paid generous tribute to tlie assistance rendered by the Irish to the cause of American freedomn; and his testimony is the more valuable from the fact that he was a Loyalist and an Anglo-Irishman. He was a member of the Irish peerage and died at far- famed Vinegar Hill, fighting his patriotic countrymen under an English banner.
" America," said Colonel Gardiner, " was lost by Irisli emigrants. These emigrations are fresh in the recollection of every gentleman in this House, and when the unhappy differences took place, I am assured from the best authority that the major part of the American ariny was composed of Irish, and that the Irishi language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as Englishı. I am also informed it was their valor determined the contest, so
1 " The American Irish."
2 " Irish Debates," III., p. 130.
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
that England not only lost a principal protection of her woolen trade, but also had America detached from her by the force of Irish emigrants." It is no purpose of mine to depreciate the aid given to the colonies by the men from the Presbyterian North, but it is simple justice to state here that they spoke not the Irish, but the English language.
Major-general Robertson, who served in the British army in America, bore still more striking testimony to the numerous body of Irishmen who joined their fortunes with the Continental army. In an official inquiry, he was asked by Edmund Burke: "How are the. Provincial (i. e. American) Corps composed ? Are they mostly Americans, or emigrants from various nations of Europe?" He replied: "Some corps are mostly natives; the greater number such as can be got. . ... General Lee informed me that one-half of the rebel army were from Ireland." 1
Robertson's testimony was corroborated by Galloway before the same committee. '"What were the troops in the service chiefly composed of ?" he was asked. "I can answer with precision. There were scarcely one-fourth native Americans, about one-half were Irish and the other fourth English and Dutch." What says Plowden, the English historian? "It is a fact beyond question that most of the early successes of the patriots of America were owing to the vigorous exertions and power of the Irish emigrants who bore arms in that cause." And Lecky ? "Few classes were so largely represented in the American army as Irish emigrants." The words of Viscount Town- shend are a touching plea for the suffering Irish people :2 "My Lords, con-
1 The DETAIL AND CONDUCT of the AMERICAN WAR, under generals GAGE, HOWE, BURGOYNE, and Vice-Admiral Lord HOWE : with A very full and correct state of the whole of the EVIDENCE, as given before a
COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS : and the CELEBRATED FUGITIVE PIECES, Which are said to have given rise to that IMPORTANT ENQUIRY. The whole exhibiting a CIRCUMSTANTIAL, CONNECTED AND COMPLETE HISTORY of the Real Causes, Rise, Progress and Present State of the AMERICAN REBELLION.
MDCCLXXX. ? " Hansard's Parliamentary Debates." Vol. XIX., p. 860.
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sider, in God's name ; in time, consider what you owe to gallant and suffer- ing Ireland. Suffer not your humiliating proposal and offerings to be laid at the feet of the Congress in whose front of battle these poor Irish emigrants perforin the hardest service."
We shall supplement this testimony with evidence from American sources. The Father of his Country realized the nation's debt of gratitude to Ireland's sons and generously gave it public acknowledgment. When the British evacuated Boston on March 17, 1776-a day of sacred memories to Washington's Celtic soldiers-the countersign for the day was a graceful tribute to the race and creed of Ireland's glorious Apostle:
"SPECIAL ORDER OF THE DAY.
"HEADQUARTERS, March 17, 1776. " Parole -' Boston.'
"Countersign-' St. Patrick.'
" The regiments under marching orders to march to-morrow morning.
" Brigadier of the Day, " GENERAL SULLIVAN."
In his letter accepting the honor of an election to membership in the "Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," December 17, 1781, he re- ferred to the organization as "a society distinguished for the firm adherence of its members to the glorious cause in which we are embarked." And when in March, 1790, he replied to an address from the Roman Catholics of the United States, which bore the Celtic names of Carroll, Lynch and Fitz- simmons, he wrote thus : "And I presume your fellow-citizens will not for- get the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revo- lution and the establishment of their government."
We shall close this testimony with the eloquent words of Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis: "Of the operations of the war-I mean the soldiers-up to the coming of the French, Ireland has fur- nished in the ratio of one hundred for one of any other nation whatever. Then honored be the good services of the sons of Erin in the War of Inde- pendence. Let the shamrock be entwined with the laurels of the Revolu- tion, and the truth and justice guiding the pen of history inscribe on the tablets of America's remembrance eternal gratitude to Irishmen."
The Irish people at home and in the Colonies were staunch friends of America in the darkest hour of hier history'. When valiantly struggling to throw off the heavy yoke her oppressors sought to fasten upon her, they brouglit to her feet their money, their brains, and their good, loyal, stout arıns. "Ireland was with America to a inan," said William Pitt, Earl of Chatham1.1 An observant traveler felicitously wrote in 1787: "An Irish- mian, the instant he sets foot on American ground, becomes ipso facto, an American ; this was uniformly the case during the whole of the late war. Whilst Englishmen and Scotchmen were regarded with jealousy and dis- trust, even with the best recommendations of zeal and attachment to their
1 " Life of Pitt."-Thackeray.
II-7
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
cause, a native of Ireland stood in need of no other certificate than his dialect; his sincerity was never called in question ; he was supposed to have a sympathy of suffering, and every voice decided, as it were intuitively, in his favor. Indeed their conduct in the late revolution amply justified this favorable opinion; for whilst the Irish emigrant was fighting the battles of America by sea and land, the Irish merchants, particularly at Charlestown, Baltimore and Philadelphia, labored with indefatigable zeal, and, at all hazards, to promote the spirit of enterprise, to increase the wealth and main- tain the credit of the country; their purses were always open and their persons devoted to the common cause. On more than one imminent occa- sion Congress owed their existence, and America probably her preservation, to the fidelity and firmness of the Irish." 1
A search through the war records of Connecticut will disclose a pro- fusion of names of distinctively Irish origin, names that indicate beyond doubt, that their owners first saw the light in Ireland or were the descendants of those who were born there. The State has preserved in her archives the names of more than one thousand men through whose veins coursed the warm, generous blood of the Emerald Isle. The statement may appear startling, but in substantiation thereof we submit herewith a list of 800 names whose origin seems to be beyond cavil. Two hundred and more names were not copied, as their claims to Celtic origin might possibly be challenged, though they are still borne by many who are proud to claim the green isle beyond the sea as the land of their birth or of their ancestors. But do I claim for them membership in the Catholic church? There are no records to enable one to speak with certainty; nevertheless, inferentially, I believe a large majority of these names originally represented adherents of the ancient faith, and this inference is not unreasonable in view of the facts, that it was against the Catholics of Ireland the most stringent enactments were directed; that they in far greater numbers than others were the victims of England's policy of expatriation, and that, when arrived on our shores they scattered throughout the New England Colonies, where they settled in large numbers. However, should the temptation arise in the mind of any reader to call in question the Catholicity of the names here given, let him, without denominational bias, consult the baptismal, marriage, burial, pew rent or collection records of any thickly populated Catholic parish, or make a personal canvass of names, and he will recognize that the inference here drawn rests upon a solid foundation.
Many of their descendants, and possibly some of themselves, may have lost the precious gift of faith, as the prevailing conditions made it well nigh impossible to keep alive the sacred flame. Occasionally a solitary priest passed through the State in quest of the lost sheep; but after all, what was one laborer in so vast a field ? He could accomplish but little. The seed of the divine Word could be but sparsely sowed; the ground became fallow. Writing in 1834, Bishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, said : "There are places in
' The translator of Dr. Chastellux's " Travels in North America," an English gentle- man residing in America at that period, 1780-1782.
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DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
which there are Catholics of twenty years of age who have not yet had an opportunity of performing one single public act of their religion. How many fall sick and die without the sacraments! How many children are brought up in ignorance and vice ! How many persons marry out of the church, and thus weaken the bonds that hold them to it." 1
Similar conditions existed here. What with the passing years with no sight of priest, the intermarriages with Protestants, and the social disabilities under which Catholics labored, they ceased to practice the duties of their religion. And this may account for the fact that in 1835 Bishop Fenwick found only 720 Catholics in Connecticut, notwithstanding the influx of pre- sumably Catholic emigrants during the preceding century.
The names that constitute this Roll of Honor are drawn from the "Record of Service of Connecticut men in the War of the Revolution," com- piled by order of the General Assembly.
The Revolutionary record of Connecticut opens with her response to the historic .Lexington aların of April 19, 1775, and closes eight and a half years later with the disbandment of her last regiment after peace, November, 1783.
There is no doubt that many, who have hitherto given little or no atten- tion to the subject, will be astonished to know that over 1000 inen from Con- necticut, bearing distinctively Irish names, patriotically contributed their services, and many of them their lives, to the cause of independence. And with so many of unequivocally Irish distinction, there were undoubtedly many hundreds of Irish soldiers whose names do not as clearly indicate their Irish origin.
During the famous skirmishes of Lexington and Concord, Wednesday, April 19, 1775, which precipitated the Revolutionary War, an "aların " was immediately spread in every direction, and reached Windham county by Thursday 10011, the 20th, and through Connecticut to Stamford by Friday night, the 21st. About 4000 men started froin Connecticut to Boston in response to the alarm, and among them we readily distinguish the following Irish names, and yet several of the lists are not complete :
IRISHMEN IN THE "LEXINGTON ALARM LIST" FROM CONNECTICUT, APRIL 19, 1775.
Joseph Gleason, East Haddam ; Jas. McKenney, East Windsor; Andrew Kennedy, East Windsor ; James Green, Enfield ; Daniel Prior, Enfield ; Thomas Murphy, East Haddam ; Win. McKenney, East Windsor; Daniel Green, East Windsor ; Peter Reynolds, Enfield ; Daniel Terry, Enfield ; James Maden, Glastonbury ; Win. Griffin, Hartford ; Robert McKee, Hartford ; Stephen Killborn, Hartford; Thomas McCartee, Hartford ; Stephen Cummins, Mansfield ; Ross. Griffin, New Haven ; John McKall, captain, Nor- wich ; Josepli Griffin, Norwich ; Jolin Carey, sergeant, Preston ; Jolin Gordon, Voltin- town ; Thos. Gordon, Voluntown ; David Kennedy, Voluntown; George Gordon, Jr., Voluntown ; Daniel McMullen, fifer, Wallingford ; Daniel Bailey, Wallingford; Thos. Russell, Wethersfield; Timothy Killborn, Wethersfield; Thos. Fitzgerald, Windham ; Levi Carey,2 Windham; John Carey, 3d, Windham ; Nath'l Carey,2 Windham ; Win. Martin, Windham ; John Flyn; John Reynolds, Hartford; Joseph McKec, sergeant,
1 " Annals of the Propagation of Faith." Vol. VIII.
2 Baptismal names like thicse indicate, probably, the issue of mixed marriages, as such names are very rare when both parents are Irish or Catholics.
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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
Hartford ; Joseph Keeny, Jr., Hartford; Peter Philips, Hartford; Benj. Collins, Mansfield; Nath'1 Collins, New Hartford; Jeffrey Murray, Norfolk; John Martin, Norwich ; John Welch, Plainfield ; Jas. Gordon, Voluntown ; Joseph Kennedy, Voluntown ; John Gordon, 3d, Voluntown ; Samuel Collins, Wallingford ; Simon Griffin, Wethersfield : John Jack- son, Wethersfield ; Ackley Riley, Wethersfield; Dan Manning, Windham; James Carey, corporal, Windham ; Wmn. Carey, Windham; Stephen Cummings, Windham; Michael Jackson, Woodstock ; Jolın Green, Thomas Barret.
FIRST REGIMENT. GENERAL WOOSTER'S. 1775.
Second Company .- Augustus Collins, ensign; James M. Griffin, private; Wm. Murray, private.
Third Company .- James Ganer (Gaynor), private; Martin Clark, private; Amos Collins, private.
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