USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > History of the diocese of Hartford > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
1 Prendergast's " Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland."
2 Thebaud's " Irish Race."
37
DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
The piety of the above-named merchants, however, furnished a way out of the difficulty. Had they not ships engaged in trade with the American Colonies? Why not put them to the devout use of transporting these sur- plus wives and children, the enemies of the kingdomn, and distributing them among the English Colonies of the New World? Here was a solution of the problem, even though it entailed misery and wretchedness unspeakable. Accordingly "The Commissioners of Ireland, under Cromwell, gave them (the British merchants) orders upon the governers of garrisons to deliver them prisoners of war . . . upon masters of workhouses to hand over to them the destitute under their care 'who were of an age to labor,' or, if women, those 'who were inarriageable, and not past breeding ;' and gave directions to all in authority to seize those who had no visible means of livelihood, and deliver them to these agents of the Bristol merchants; in execution of which latter directions Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every part like the slave-hunts in Africa." 1
The following orders are extracted from the "Calendar of Colonial State Papers," 1571-1660, and 1661-1665. They reveal a depth of depravity that stains the escutcheon of no other nation :
" April Ist, 1653, Order of the Council of State. For a license to Sir John Clotworthy to transport to America 500 natural Irishmen."
" Order of the Council of State, Sept. 6th, 1653. Upon petition of David Sellick, of Boston, New England, merchant, for a license for the 'Good Fellow,' of Boston, Geo. Dalle, Master, and the ' Providence,' London, Thomas Swanlly, Master, to pass to New England and Virginia, where they intend to carry 400 Irish children, directing a warrant to be granted, provided security is given to pass to Ireland, and within two months to take in 400 Irish children and transport them to these plantations."
" Captain John Vernon was employed for the Commissioners for Ireland, and con- tracted in their behalf with David Sellick and Mr. Leader, under his hand bearing date 14th of Sept., 1653, to supply them with 250 women of the Irish nation above 12 years and under the age of 45 ; also 300 men above 12 years and under 50, to be found in the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, Waterford and Wexford, to transport them into New England." (" Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland," 1875, p. 90.)
Captain Vernon's five hundred and fifty unfortunates were Catholics, devoted disciples of the faith which St. Patrick taught the Irish people. How bitterly intense was England's hatred for the Catholic religion !
One shudders to think of the fate that awaited these poor and virtuous children among their stern New England task-niasters. But what inattered it; were they not but children of Irish parents, who had no rights their conquerors were bound to respect? Sentiment, begone !
In the same Collection of State Papers we find (1628) the proposal of Sir Pierce Crosby to transport for £5000 ten companies of a certain Irish regi- ment to a place in America not yet settled.
"June 19, 1655. Order of Council of State. Upon petition of Armiger Warner pray- ing indemnity against his bond of {800 entered into with John Jeffreys, Merchant, for transporting 100 Irish to Virginia, etc."
1 "Cromwellian Settlement."
38
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
" Oct. 3, 1655. Order of the Council of State. 1000 Irish girls and the like number of boys of 14 years or under, ordered to be sent to Jamaica. The allowance to each one not to exceed 20 shillings."
"May 22, 1656. Order of Council of State for the transportation of 1200 men from Knockfergus in Ireland and Port Patrick in Scotland to Jamaica."
The above "Orders" explain the presence in New England of such large numbers of Irish people a century before the Colonies threw off the English yoke. From April, 1653, to May, 1656, 4250 of Ireland's men and women were transported to the New World by Messrs. Sellick & Co. ; and it is asserted by the Rev. Aug. J. Thebaud, S. J., "that in four years those English firms of slave-dealers had shipped 6,400 Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the British Colonies of North America." 1
The number of young boys and girls alone transported to the West Indies was 6000, while the total number sent there has been estimated at 100,000. 2
"After the horrors of a civil war, horrors unparalleled, perhaps, in the annals of modern nations, the children and young people of both sexes are hunted down over an area of several Irish counties, dragged in crowds to the seaports, and there jamined in the holds of small, uncomfortable, slow-going vessels. What those children must have been may be easily imagined from the specimens of the race before us to-day. We do not speak of their beauty and comeliness of form, on which a Greek writer of the age of Pericles might have dilated, and found a subject worthy of his pen ; we speak of their moral beauty, their simplicity, purity, love of home, attachment to their family and God, even in their tenderest age. We meet them scattered over the broad surface of this coun- try-boys and girls of the same race, coming from the same countries-chiefly from sweet Wexford-the beautiful, calm, pious south of Ireland. Who but a monster could think of harming those pure and affectionate creatures, so modest, simple and ready to trust and confide in every one they meet ? ... They were to be violently torn from their parents and friends-from every one they knew and loved-to be condemned, after surviving the hor- rible ocean-passage of those days, the boys to work on sugar and tobacco plantations, the girls to lead a life of shame in the harems of Jamaica planters !
"Such of them as were sent North were to be distributed among the 'saints' of New England, to be esteemed by the said 'saints' as 'idolaters,' 'vipers,' 'young reprobates,' just objects of 'the wrath of God ; ' or, if appearing to fall in with their new and hard task-masters, to be greeted with words of dubious praise, as 'brands snatched from the burning,' 'vessels of reprobation,' destined, perhaps, by a due imitation of the 'saints' to become some day ' vessels of election,' in the mean time to be unmercifully scourged by both master and mistress with the 'besom of righteousness,' probably, at the slightest fault or mistake." 3
The eloquent Jesuit has not overdrawn the picture. Among all the sad episodes in the history of Ireland, the expatriation of these unfortunate people has no equal. Their religion was their only crime. To eradicate from their tender hearts the precious seeds of faith implanted at their baptism, the merci- less agents of the British Government found "homes " for thousands of poor Irish children among men and women who would see to it that not a vestige of Catholic faith remained ; and in robbing them of their dearest treasure would think they were doing a service to God. It is of no consequence now
1 " The Irish Race in the Past and Present," p. 385.
" Sullivan's " Story of Ireland," p. 391.
3 Thebaud's " Irish Race," pp. 388-'89.
39
DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
to speculate as to which of the masters was the more cruel, the libertine tobacco planter of the West Indies or the rigorous, narrow-minded Puritan of New England. Both dealt harshly, mercilessly with the faith of their white slaves, and instilled into their hearts a spirit of animosity to the Catholic religion that is discernible even in the descendants of these hapless exiles to-day.
The year 1652 was a dark and dolorous one for unhappy Ireland. It wit- nessed the close of a fierce and terrible struggle against Cromwell, "when," says Mr. Prendergast, "there took place a scene not witnessed in Europe since the conquest of Spain by the Vandals." "Indeed," he continues, "it is in- justice to the Vandals to equal them with the English of 1652; for the Van- dals came as strangers and conquerors in an age of force and barbarism ; nor did they banish the people, though they seized and divided their lands by lot ; but the English of 1652 were of the same nation as half of the chief families in Ireland, and had at that time had the island under their sway for five hun- dred years." 1
To Spain were banished 40,000 of the stoutest arms and bravest hearts of the Irish soldiery. Orphan girls, as we have seen, were sent in shiploads to the West Indies, while upon the inhospitable shores of New England were landed thousands of both tender and inature age, who were destined to eke out an unhappy existence among a people "alien in race, in language and in religion."
The American poet, Longfellow, has, in the poem of "Evangeline," immortalized the story of Acadia. How many a heart has melted into pity, how many an eye has filled with tears, perusing his inetrical relation of the transplanting and dispersion of that one little community "on the shore of the basin of Minas !" But, alas ! how few recall or realize the fact, if, indeed, aware of it at all-that not one, but hundreds of such dispersions, infinitely more tragical and more romantic, were witnessed in Ireland in the year 1654, when in every hamlet throughout three provinces " the sentence of expulsion was sped from door to door." 2
The seventeenth century closed without witnessing any cessation from persecution and transportation. Expatriation, with all its horrors, continued. It seemed an impossible task to glut the hatred of the British government for the people of Ireland. What with the destruction of the Catholic faith, the Bristol and other rapacious merchants reaped a rich harvest from the continu- ation of the nefarious traffic ; so that underlying all ostensible reasons for dealing so barbarously with the Irish people were the motives of pecuniary profit and religious perversion. For a century longer English vessels were crowded with wretched human freight which they carried with all possible speed to distant shores. The history of Ireland during this long period is written in brutal penal enactments against the Church and in the banish- ment of her children.
And Connecticut became the scene of the labors of many of these white
1 Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland.
2 Sullivan's "Story of Ireland," pp. 389-90.
40
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
slaves. "The purest native Celtic blood of Ireland was to be infused into the primal stock of the American people," for, though many were placed on a footing with the slaves from Africa, others became the wives of their Puritan masters ; and some of those who now proudly boast of their Puritan lineage might be averse to admit that through their veins courses the blood of some fair, virtuous and healthy young Irish woman, whoin British ship-owners transported for a monetary consideration.
Irish people were sold as slaves in Connecticut, as in other colonies of New England. In testimony whereof the following is submitted : On Janu- ary 5, 1764, this advertisement appeared in the Connecticut Gazette :
"Just Imported from Dublin in the Brig Darby, A Parcel of Irish Servants, both men and women, and to be sold cheap by Israel Boardman, at Stamford."
Not only were the humble, religious homes of Ireland robbed of their inmates to satisfy the avarice of British agents ; the very prisons were scoured for victims and emptied. These also were scattered along the Atlantic coast, some of whom were disposed of in Connecticut.
"The brig 'Nancy,' Captain Robert Winthrop, of New London, Conn., sailed from Dublin in June, 1788, having the convicts indentured in New Prison, and took out 201. The vessel arrived in the middle of the month at New London. He disposed of some there by sale as indentured servants, and sent the remainder to market in the ports to the southward." Truly, a godly business for pions, God-fearing Puritans.
Another vessel, the "Despatch," sought to land 183 Irish exiles at Shel- bourne, Nova Scotia, but the loyalists having prevented the disembarkation, the captain headed his ship for a remote and unsettled part of the Bay of Machias, where he cast adrift his wretched passengers. Those who survived the hard- ships of that experience begged their way through the New England and Southern States, telling a woeful story of starvation and unchristian treatment.
Ainong the unfortunate people sold at New London was Matthew Lyon, a native of the Green Isle. He was a "Redemptioner," or one who was sold into service by the captain of the vessel in order to obtain compensation for his passage. He was destined to rise to eminence in the land that first gave him a slave's home. His native genius, his indomitable pluck and energy, so characteristic of his race, soon broke the fetters of slavery and he became a free man in what was to be a free country. On his arrival at New London he was bound out to service to Jabez Bacon, of Woodbury, Conn. Having remained here for some time lie was transferred to Hugh Hannah, of Litch- field, the consideration being a pair of bulls, whose value was estimated at sixty dollars. This was the origin of his famous expression of later years: "By the bulls that redeemed me !" From servitude he advanced steadily over the rugged pathway of trials and hardships to positions of renown and influence. He became the first member of Congress from Vermont, and sub- sequently represented Kentucky in the National House of Representatives. He was arrested under the " Alien and Sedition " law, and fined, but Congress remitted the fine.
41
DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
Not all the Irish who reached our shores in the eighteenth century were hunted down by man-catchers and sold by British agents as indentured slaves. At various periods of this century there came to America thousands of Irish men and women, voluntary exiles, who were heartsick with the intolerable existence they were compelled to undergo "at home." They were driven from the Green Isle not by the lash of the man-hunter, but by the force of circumstances which flowed naturally from the iniquitous laws and barbarous treatment of former years. Insensibly, but none the less steadily, did this exodus begin and continue. The first faint traces of it are discernible il1 1728. At first the emigration was confined to the Protestants of the North. Not willingly and with cheerful hearts buoyed up with the prospects of a prosperous future did they turn their faces towards the young land in the West. Reluctantly they bade farewell to the old land. They, as well as their Catholic fellow-countrymen, were gathering the bitter fruits of a century's baleful legislation. Matthew O'Connor, in "Irish Catholics," says:
.
" The summer of 1728 was fatal. The heart of the politician was steeled against the miseries of the Catholics ; their number excited his jealousy. Their decrease by the silent waste of famine must have been a source of secret joy ; but the Protestant interest was declining in a proportionate degree by the ravages of starvation. . . . Thousands of Protestants took shipping in Belfast for the West Indies. ... The policy that would starve the Catholics at home would not deny them the privilege of flight. Nine years later multitudes of laborers and husbandmen in Ireland, unable to procure a comfortable subsistence for their families in their native land, embarked for America."
The emigration of Irish Catholics in any considerable numbers began to set in in 1762. "No resource remained (at this time) to the peasantry but emigration. The few who had means sought an asylum in the American plantations."1 New England received a goodly share of this output. The Protestant Irish poured into the Southern and Middle States chiefly, while the Catholics settled principally in New England, though inany found a refuge in Maryland. As the dominant religion in all the colonies, save Mary- land for a time, was Protestant, the strangers from the North of Ireland received a cordial welcome. They felt as much at home in the cheerless meeting-houses of the colonies as in their churches beyond the sea. Religion was the bond that united the British colonists and the Irish Presbyterians.
Not the same fared the Catholic Irish. They, too, had strong hands and clear brains. They were willing to labor in order to wrest from the soil its hidden treasures. They were honest and feared God as well as their Puritan neighbors ; but a brand was upon them, a cloud over-shadowed them. The antipathy that burned in the hearts of the Puritan and Covenanter in the old world against Catholics, had preceded them to their new homes, and they found themselves the same objects of contempt and derision as when on their native hillsides. Love of their neiglibors, much less love of their enemies, was not a prominent trait in the Puritan character, and tlougli religion was ostensibly the greatest force in his life, it produced but little fruit in charity. He contemplated the Catholic Irishman as a
' O'Connor's " Irish Catholics."
42
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
creature of inferior clay, a being to be religiously contemned. He lived in an atmosphere of intolerance of even the ordinary natural rights of Catholics. The English colonists of other States had no finer regard for personal rights and liberty than their brethren of New England. In New Jersey "liberty of conscience was granted to all but Papists," 1 says Bancroft. In 1708 the mild-mannered Penn forbade Mass to be said in Pennsylvania. Rhode Island at first granted full freedom of conscience, but after 1688 "in- terpolated into the statute books the exclusion of Papists from the established equality." Religious Massachusetts generously permitted "every form of Christianity except the Roman Catholic." In the Southern colonies a State religion, the Angelican, prevailed. Bancroft says of Maryland: "The Ro- man Catholics alone were left without an ally, exposed to English bigotry and colonial injustice. They alone were disfranchised on the soil which, long before Locke pleaded for toleration, or Penn for religious freedom, they had chosen, not as their own asylum only, but, with Catholic liberality, as the asylum for every persecuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened for Protestants, the Catholic was the sole victim of Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Papist would but become an apostate the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. . .. Such were the methods adopted to prevent the growth of Popery."
And what of Connecticut? Was she inore liberal than her sister colo- nies ? Hardly. When William of Orange ascended the throne his loyal subjects in Connecticut forwarded him an address, a part of which read as follows: " Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions from Popery and slavery." The Puritan's predilection for scriptural allusions did not preclude the use of offensive combinations. Popery and slavery ! Evils of great heinousness in the eyes of the godly Puritan.
Such was the condition of affairs that confronted the Irish Catholic emigrant as he stepped upon the soil of America. Whithersoever he turned he was met by adherents of a hostile creed, and refused the privileges of citizenship unless he renounced his faith and affiliated with the church by law established. But, notwithstanding this isolation of the Catholic Irish in the Colonies, the stream of emigration continued to flow steadily westward. In 1771 and 1772, 17,350 landed on our shores from Ireland. In August, 1773, 3,500 emigrants arrived at Philadelphia. How many of these 20,850 emigrants found homes in New England, but especially in Connecticut, it is impossible at the present time to say. It is probable they scattered over all the Colonies. That a large percentage of them were Catholics we infer from the fact that notwithstanding their numbers, their arrival "had no tendency to diminish or counteract the hostile sentiments towards Britain which were daily gathering force in America."
1 " History of the U. S."
43
DIOCESE OF HARTFORD.
CHAPTER IX.
NAMES THAT SPEAK.
ROM what has been adduced it must be patent to the reader that the Irish were in Connecticut in respectable numbers very early in our history. Additional evidence is found in the many names that have come down to us in the colonial records that are distinctively Irish; and while there is 110 direct, local evidence, save in some cases, that their owners ever knelt before Catholic altars, the time of their advent here and the places whence they emigrated are sufficient proof that they yielded allegiance to Holy Mother Church. The Protestants of Ireland were not subjected to the barbarous treatment inflicted on their Catholic countrymen.
Mingled with the Irish names herewith presented are those of other nations, whose children, it is conceded, are, for the most part, at least, adhe- rents of the ancient faith.
It is not claimed that the following is a complete list of the Irish and. other foreign people in Connecticut in colonial times. These names are here given to teach those not of the household of Catholic faith that the brains and brawn and the virtue of the children of Ireland and other Catholic nations contributed, as well as others, to the laying strong and deep of the foundations of this our beloved commonwealth.
From a "List of the Settlers in New Haven from the Year 1639 to 1645 :''1
John Griffin, Thomas Nash,
Mathew Rowe,
William Gibbons, John Nash,
Ambrose Sutton,
Timothy Forde,
Joseph Nash,
John Thompson,
John Dyer, Anthony Thompson, John Vincon,
William Harding, Mathew Pierce, Andrew Ward,
Timothy Nash, William Russell,
George Ward,
Peter Mallory, James Russell,
Thomas Welch.
In 1639 Dr. Brian Rosseter, "a man of fine education," was the first town clerk of Windsor. He appears in Guilford in 1652. His naine needs 110 elucidation.
Thomas Dunn New Haven, 1647 Lawrence Ward. Branford, 1654
Joh11 Riley 1649
Thomas Welch Milford, 1654
Dr. Chayes, a French physician ..
John Reynolds. Norwich, 1655
New Haven, 1653
John Mead. Stamford, 1656
Mr. Benzio. New Haven, 1654
John Norton. Branford, 1656
Thomas Stanton Stamford, 1654
Henry Nicholson .Stamford, 1656
' The dates appended to the names in this list are those in connection with which the names appear in the records from which they are taken. In the majority of instances, the persons were in the localities assigned much earlier than the dates given.
44
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NEW ENGLAND.
Stephen Peirson .Stamford, 1657
Lawrence Turner .New Haven, 1657
Richard Butler. Stratford, 1669
Thomas Mullen 1657
Hugh Griffin.
1669
William Meade.
New London, 1669
Richard Hughes
.New Haven, 1659
Thomas Sha (Shea), Sr .Stonington, 1669 Thomas Tracy. .Norwich, 1669
Robert Poynere
Stamford, 1660
John Corey. 1660
Daniel Lane. New London, 1661
William Gibbons.
.New Haven, 1662
Thomas Welsh
Milford, 1669
Thomas Ford.
Milford, 1662
Michael Taintor Branford, 1669
Edward Fanning
.Mystic, 1662
Mary Reynolds
Norwich, 1664
George Hylend.
Guilford, 1664
William Keeney ... New London (about) 1664
Franchway Bolgway
1 1667
Christopher Crow. . Windsor, 1669
The following record shows the presence in Connecticut of a Catholic, a Spaniard, in 1670. He was held as a slave by a Mr. Hill, and was probably here previous to this year. Kidnapping was not unknown in those devout days, and this poor Spaniard may have been the victim of the greed of some unscrupulous ship-master. The record is: " This Court doth hereby impower the Court at New London to examine the matter concerning Mr. Hill's Spanyard, and if it doth appeare that the sayd Spaniard was legally pur- chassed, then the sayd Court of New London are to order him his freedome, and to empower some person to take order for his transportation home, pro- vided what is reasonable for his time out of the public treasury be ordered to Mr. Hill."-Pub. Rec. of Conn., 1665-1677.
Richard Jennings and Elizabeth
Reynolds 2 1678
Thomas Gould Hartford, 1677
James Reynolds. 1677 John Purdy Rye, 1679
Peter Bradley
.€
I687
John Ryly (Reilly) 1681
Thos. and John Butler ...
Jeremialı Blake New London, 1681
(about), 1680
Owen McCarty New London, 1693 Ambrose Thompson 1682
Captain Ohely (O'Healy) 1682
Thomas Mighill (McGill) 5 1696
Peter Demil. 1703 James Kelly. New London, 1682
George LeFevre .. .New London, 1705 Margaret Crow. .Windsor, 1683
1 " The Court granted liberty to Edward Turner to assigne over his right in Franch- way Bolgway, his French boy, to any such person in this colony as two assistants shall approve of, for twelve years from June next."-General Assembly held at Hartford, October, 1667 .- "Pub Rec. of Conn. Col.," 1665-1677., p. 76.
" They were married " the beginning of June, 1678." They were both emigrants from Barbadoes. Their children's names were Samuel, Richard, and Elinor .- Caulkins' " History of New London."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.