... After the Cromwellian persecutions,
more than thirty thousand, many of them members of elite or formerly elite
families, left for the European continent, where Irish contingents of
soldiers and others served Catholic monarchs well into the nineteenth
century. However welcome Irish might have been on the Continent they were
generally unwelcome in the North American colonies, as we have seen from
Lord Calvert's experience in Virginia. An undeterminable number of
Catholic Irish came as indentured servants, but there were enough so that
at least three colonies --South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland -- passed
laws, probably ineffective, aimed at stopping or reducing the importation
of Irish papists at the end of the seventeenth century.�
�And not all Irish Catholics were poor. One Charles Carroll moved to Maryland in 1681 after his estates in Ireland were confiscated. Almost a century later a descendant would add his name to the Declaration of Independence with a flourish -- Charles Carroll of Carrollton. He was the only Roman Catholic signer. At times during the Stuart restoration Catholics were appointed to high positions in the colonies: Sir Thomas Dongan, who served as governor of New York (1682-88), was the most prominent of these. There were well-to-do Irish Catholics in New York City and Philadelphia by the mid-eighteenth century, and even in pope-hating Boston the Charitable Irish Society, which had been formed by Protestants, was willing to admit Catholic donors about the same time.�
�During the Revolution, most of the Irish seem to have been supporters of the patriot cause: Few can have had any serious affection for the British crown. Not only were there specific Irish units -- such as the Volunteers of Ireland, raised in Philadelphia and containing both Catholics and Protestants -- but John Barry (1745-1803), born in County Wexford, became the "father" of the American Navy.�
�If we know relatively little about the Irish Catholics in colonial America-- the not-particularly-reliable 1931 survey ... indicates that there were more than one hundred thousand of them -- it is because the overwhelming majority of them were poor and scattered: They were clearly overrepresented, not only in the port cities but also in their penal and charitable institutions.
�
