Chapter M: J. Harson, (3)

The characteristics which we deem essentially Irish are not
distinctly Irish; they are merely more widely distributed among the
Irish. Wit, humor, poesy, melancholy, loyalty to faith and
fatherland, patience under trial and hardship, daring in adventure,
valor in battle,—these are found in all lands, among all peoples,
though the Irish have displayed them so conspicuously in all the
centuries that some, aye, many of our own people have come to regard
them as exclusively theirs. While good blood will tell and bad, we
must look to other things, we must consider other causes than race
and blood, if we are to understand the workings of a mysterious
Deity and learn how he makes nations and differentiates peoples.

The crude ore lies in the mines of the hills all over the earth,
potential in its possibilities, yet heavy, dull, inert, awaiting the
day when man shall dig it from its hiding place, try it in the fires
of the furnace, beat it on the anvil and transform it into the
polished rail that ties together the ends of civilization, that will
shape it into the massive engine that carries the fruits of industry
and commerce to the uttermost parts of the world, that moulds it
into the type and press that spreads intelligence and frees the
soul, and that fashions it into the sword that frees the slave. And
as the ore, so is man; he must be tried in the fires to be re-made
for the work he is to do. The elements lie everywhere; circumstances
and conditions weld and mould him into nations. He may creep on into
the centuries dull, heavy, oppressed, carrying the thrall of the
master, content that he shall eat and drink and sleep in the peace
of ignorance, content that his master shall do his thinking and
fighting, heedless who the master is, for the hands of all are
heavy; taking his religion and his lot from him who rules and
starves him.

Others there are who have lived for centuries watching the tide of
civilization and the higher life sweep by them, too hotly engaged in
the struggle of life and death to snatch the prizes as they go by.
Such a land for the long centuries has been Ireland. Seven hundred
years has Ireland felt the edge of the sword, and for seven
centuries she has shown the naked breast and empty hand to the
oppressor, beaten but unsubdued.

Into the fires of hate and oppression, into the hell of battle and
persecution, into the _inferno_ of famine, misgovernment, robbery,
torture, and all the evils that cold, deliberate malice and
wickedness could invent, Celt and Saxon, Norman and French, Dane and
Norse, Englishman and Scotchman were thrown, to be fused and
mingled, that, in the cooling, God might draw from the ashes the
Irishman.

In all those long dark centuries his courage never failed, his hope
never dimmed, his faith in God never faltered; he never acknowledged
the right of might; he accepted nothing from the man who boasted
himself the conqueror of him who is to-day unconquered; he believed
the day would come, and it is coming, when the forces of evil would
sink beneath the scorn of the world.

In this terrible school the Irishman was made; here was learned the
infinite patience of his kind; here was bred that mental alertness,
that wit and humor, tinged with the melancholy the world calls
typical; here he drank into his blood the courage and flame and
battle, that marches him to death with a song and a laugh; here
every fiber and tissue of his elemental parts were made over, and
upon the green sod, that blood-soaked soil, he preserved the virtues
of the man who lives with God and nature.

THIS IS THE IRISHMAN.

The man born on Irish soil, breathing Irish air, drinking in the
beauty of the hills and vales and streams and loughs of Ireland,
listening to whispering winds of Irish seas, hearing the story and
legend of the Irish days long gone, his heart and soul responding to
the hopes of those around him, be his father English or Norman,
Scotch or Welsh, Dane or Norse, French or Dutch, that man will grow
into an Irishman. This is the verdict of history; this is the
experience of seven centuries. Let them come from where they will,
those who plunge into the Irish Lethe emerge on the other bank
Irishmen, better betimes than the son of the older race, more Irish
than the Irish.

Conditions, climate, environment are more potent than blood; they
are the instruments with which God works. The normal man born on
Irish soil and growing to manhood on it is an Irishman. Carry him to
the most remote quarter of the earth, and he is still Irish, and his
children even to the tenth generation.

On May 4, 1897, the sad tidings reached the society of the death of Admiral Meade, the President of the society. He was born in New York City, 1837; appointed midshipman Oct. 2, 1850; first sea service in sloop-of-war _Preble_, 1851; warrant as master and commission as lieutenant, 1858; lieutenant-commander, 1862; was a commander in 1870; commissioned captain in 1880; became a commodore in 1892, and rear-admiral in 1894; admitted to the society at its organization, Jan. 20, 1897, and chosen President-General of the same, being the first to hold the office.

The Meade family has been to a wonderful extent identified with the growth and development of our national life. A glance at the societies of which Admiral Meade was a member, will show the active and heroic part this family has taken in every movement since the settlement of the land.

* * * * *

1. The Order of the Founders and Patriots of America, 1607–57, 1775–83. (Councillor of New York Society.)

_Period 1607–57._

_Ancestors._ 1) Vincent Meigs, 1583–1658.
2) John Meigs, 1st, 1612–72.
3) John Meigs, 2d, 1640–91.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
NEW YORK CITY
]

PATRICK WALSH
GEORGIA
]

THOMAS ADDIS EMMET
NEW YORK CITY
]

Vincent Meigs and his son John, 1st, were emigrants to Connecticut in 1637–38, and in 1639 were among the founders of Guilford, Conn. John Meigs, 2d, was one of the patentees of Guilford mentioned in the Charter granted by James II to the town, May 25, 1685.

_Period 1775–83._

The patriot progeny of the above-named who made their mark in the War of Independence were four brothers (sons of Admiral Meade’s maternal great-great-grandfather, Return Meigs, of Middletown, Conn., born 1708, died 1770) as follows:

1) Col. Return Jonathan Meigs, of the 6th Connecticut line, born 1740, died 1823. He was with Montgomery at Quebec, having crossed the wilderness with Arnold, and he commanded the expedition against Sag Harbor, May 21, 1777, which destroyed the British vessels’ defenses and stores. He was one of the four colonels that led the forlorn hope at the storming of Stony Point, July 15, 1779, under General Wayne. He figures as one of the best and most reliable soldiers of the Revolution.

2) Maj. Giles Meigs.

3) Capt. John Meigs.

4) Josiah Meigs, of Yale College. (Eighteen years of age when Revolution broke out.)

2. The Society of Colonial Wars, 1607–1775.

Admiral Meade was the Deputy-Governor of the District of Columbia Society.

_Ancestors._ 1) Maj. Simon Willard, born 1605, died 1676. (Son of Richard Willard, of Horsemonden, Kent, Esquire.)

Simon Willard emigrated from England to America in 1634, and in 1635 was one of the founders of Concord in the colony of Massachusetts Bay; deputy to the General Court, 1636–54; assistant to governor and a councillor from 1654–76; commander-in-chief of the expedition of the United Colonies against Ninigret, Sachem of the Nyantics, 1655; led the heroic relief against the Indians at the battle of Brookfield; commanded the Middlesex Regiment of Massachusetts troops in King Philip’s War; a magistrate of Salem.

2) Capt. Janna Meigs, born 1672, died 1739. (Son of John Meigs, 2d, of Guilford.) Served in the Queen Anne Wars as lieutenant and captain of the Guilford Company; deputy to the General Court of the Province of Connecticut in 1717–26.

3. The Military Order of Foreign Wars of the United States of America.

War of Independence.—War with Tripoli.—War of 1812.—War with Mexico.

Admiral Meade was Vice-Commander-General for Pennsylvania.

Hereditary member by right of his father, Richard Worsam Meade, 2d, who served as a lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, during the Mexican War, on board of the U. S. frigate _Potomac_, Captain Aulick, at Vera Cruz.

Incidentally it may be said that Richard Worsam Meade, 1st, was naval agent of the United States abroad, during the War of Tripoli and War of 1812, and that George Meade (father of R. W. Meade, 1st) was a prominent agitator against the Stamp Act of 1765, and was one of the signers of the non-importation resolutions of merchants of Philadelphia, Oct. 25, 1765, and though a man of wealth, served as a private soldier in 3d battalion of Col. Cadwalader’s regiment. He gave £2000 sterling to the fund for Washington’s suffering army at Valley Forge. Was a member of the Philadelphia “Associators” during the Revolutionary War. Left the city when the British army came in and did not return until Washington’s troops reoccupied it.

4. The Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, 1861–65. Pennsylvania Commandery.

Joined 1866, No. 187 on general roll.

5. The Grand Army of the Republic, 1861–65.

Commander of Lafayette Post, No. 140, Department of New York. Reelected December, 1896, for a second term.

6. The California Pioneer Society of New York City, 1849–50.

An ex-President of the society, 1893–94.

7. The New England Society in the city of New York. Life member.

8. The American Catholic Society of Philadelphia.

9. The Christ Church Historical Society of Philadelphia.

10. The National Geographical Society of Washington, D. C.

11. The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, New York City. A Vice-President of the society.

12. The Navy Mutual Aid Society. An ex-President, having held the office five years.

13. The Society of Graduates of the U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. Class of 1850.

Admiral Meade is also a lineal descendant of John Benjamin (gentleman), who came over from Wales, England, with Governor Winthrop in 1630, and settled at Cambridge, Mass. His son John removed to Connecticut. Admiral Meade’s great-great-grandfather, Col. John Benjamin, of Stratford, served in the War of Independence and received a British musket ball in his shoulder at the battle of Ridgefield. His brother, Col. Aaron Benjamin, of Stratford, was with Montgomery in the expedition to Quebec, and in the battles of White Plains, Princeton, Monmouth, Germantown, Fort Mifflin, Stony Point, and at Valley Forge. He was more than one hundred times under fire. At Stony Point, it is said, he was the second man to enter the fort. He was lieutenant and adjutant during the greater part of his service.

The Admiral is also a lineal descendant of John Hopkins, of Hartford, Conn., who came to America in 1630. This John Hopkins is now alleged to have been one of the children (by first wife) of Stephen Hopkins, who came over in the _Mayflower_, 1620, and was the fourteenth signer of the compact of the Plymouth colonists. It is alleged (see the _Signers of Mayflower Compact_, by A. A. Haxtun) that John Hopkins (of Hartford) having a harsh stepmother, was left behind with his dead mother’s relatives in England, but followed his father to America in 1630, being then only seventeen years of age.

Another line of descent is through Thomas Coates, who came over with William Penn in 1682. The descendant of this Thomas Coates was William Coates, of Philadelphia (a colonel in the Revolution), and the great-great-grandfather of the admiral.

* * * * *

Summing up the various strains of blood, here is the result:

_Irish._—Meade, Butler.

_English._—Meigs, Willard, Hopkins, Austin, Worsam, Stretch, Hosmer, Hamlin, Wilcox, Judd, Fry, Backus, Beckley, Sharpe, and Bronson.

_Welsh._—Benjamin.

_French._—Jacques.

* * * * *

_Religions._ _Catholic._—Meade.

_Church of England._—Worsam, Butler, Austin, Richard Willard.

_Non-Conformist or Puritan._—Meigs, Simon Willard, Hopkins, Hosmer, Benjamin, Wilcox, Hamlin, Judd, Fry, Backus, Beckley, Bronson, and Sharpe.

_Quaker._—Coates.

_Huguenot._—Jacques.[2]

Footnote 2:

This Jacques was Thomas Jacques, who, with his wife Elizabeth, were
Huguenot refugees from France, settling in Leicestershire, England.
They subsequently emigrated to America, and their daughter Beulah
married, October, 1694, Thomas Coates (son of Henry), who was born
1659 in Sproxton, England, emigrated, as before stated, with William
Penn, and died in Philadelphia, July 22, 1719.

* * * * *

At the funeral of Admiral Meade, the society was represented by Messrs. Edward A. Moseley, J. R. Carmody, J. D. O’Connell, and Capt. John M. Tobin. The honorary bearers were: Rear-Admiral John G. Walker, Commodore Charles S. Norton, Admiral George Dewey, Commodore Norman H. Farquhar, Commodore Winfield S. Schley, Capt. A. S. Crowninshield, Capt. Charles O’Neil, U. S. N., and Col. Charles Heywood, United States Marine Corps. Eight stalwart seamen bore the body. A battalion of marines from the Washington barracks, under command of Capt. E. B. Robinson, and a delegation from Lafayette Post of New York City, escorted the body to Arlington, preceded by the United States Marine Band.

The following letter was subsequently received:

1100 Vermont Ave.,
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 7, 1897.

MY DEAR MR. MOSELEY:—Your kind and sympathetic note of the 5th was
most gratefully received, as was also the beautiful emblem of your
society, which now rests on my father’s grave. On behalf of my
mother and sisters, as well as myself, I want to thank you,
individually, and the American-Irish Historical Society, for the
touching tributes you have paid his memory. We shall not forget how
much this crushing blow has been lightened by the sympathy of my
father’s associates in the organizations of which he was a member.

Respectfully and sincerely yours,
(Signed) RICHARD W. MEADE, Jr.

The council of the society, at its September meeting, was entertained by the Rhode Island members at a banquet in Pawtucket, at which Hon. Hugh J. Carroll presided. Mr. Thomas Hamilton Murray delivered the following address of welcome on that occasion:

Gentlemen of the Council of the American-Irish Historical
Society,—We are glad to have the honor of your visit, and we hope
that your stay in Pawtucket will be pleasant to you and profitable
to the great movement in which you are engaged.

The organization you represent seeks to write an unwritten chapter
of American history, an essential chapter which has been too long
ignored. Yet, until this chapter is written and its prime importance
recognized, American history as published will be radically
defective.

Every American, therefore, no matter what his ancestry and no matter
what his creed, must wish you Godspeed in your patriotic labors.

While supplying this missing chapter in American history, you are at
the same time helping to supply a missing chapter in Rhode Island
history.

The Irish chapter in the history of Rhode Island has its roots away
back in the days of Roger Williams. But it is little known by this
generation. In the old colonial days men of Irish blood figured
prominently in this land of refuge. Like Williams and his
colleagues, they found here a haven of peace, found rest and
freedom.

Many soldiers of Irish birth or extraction battled during King
Philip’s War, 1675–76, in defense of the homes and lives of the
settlers. Not a few of them participated in the Great Swamp Fight in
Southern Rhode Island, and settled here when that war had ended. We
may mention as an interesting fact that an Irishman, Robert Beers,
was killed by the Indians in 1676 within a few miles of where you
meet to-night.

Another Irishman, Charles Macarty (McCarthy), was one of the
founders in 1677 of our town of East Greenwich. The town of Warren
in this state was named in honor of an Irishman, Sir Peter Warren,
whose deeds of valor no word of ours need chronicle.

Irish Rhode Islanders are heard from in the capture of Louisburg,
and there the bones of some of them repose to this day.

The Revolution found among its most ardent supporters in Rhode
Island men of Irish lineage. The Blacks, the Dorrances, the
Sterlings, the Larkins, and a host of other people of Hibernian
origin are evidence of this.

General Knox, a member of the Boston Charitable Irish Society, was
here during the early part of the Revolution; Gen. John Sullivan,
son of the Irish schoolmaster, commanded the Rhode Island Department
for a considerable period, and was in command of the patriot forces
at the siege of Newport and the battle that ensued. His brother
James, the Governor of Massachusetts, received in after years the
degree of LL.D. from Brown University.

You see, therefore, gentlemen, that Rhode Island is rich in historic
material for your society. The shaft needs but be sunk to bring the
treasures to the surface. Your coming here on this occasion helps to
sink it.

We Rhode Islanders are very proud of our little state. That much of
the Irish chapter in the history of this state is but little known
we acknowledge and regret.

Yet some of it we do know. We recall many noble men that Ireland has
given us—Berkeley, McSparran, Brown, Jackson, and the rest. We
recall the Irishman Wilson, who was head of one of the first free
schools opened in Providence, and of those other Irish schoolmasters
here at an early day—Kelly, Reilly, Knox, Phelan. May their memory
be in benediction!

We know, too, that Irish blood was not wanting in the veins of Perry
and of Burnside. At least two of our governors could truthfully
claim an Irish ancestry on the one side or the other, and at least
three of our secretaries of state. We know that at the founding of
Rhode Island College, now Brown University, the first funds for the
institution came from Ireland, generously contributed by Irish men
and women.

We are aware that many people of Irish extraction have married into
families of other extractions, some of these families representing
the oldest in the state. Thus we learn from the colonial and state
records that a Mahoney wedded an Olney, that a McGowan married an
Angell, that a McCarthy married a Maxson, that a Connor became the
wife of a Robinson, a McLoughlin the wife of a Steere, a Murphy the
husband of a Pitman. We see, moreover, that Prudence Mathewson
became Mrs. Kelley, that Harriet Thayer became Mrs. Patrick Brown,
that Rachel Aldrich wedded David Flynn.

Patrick Cunningham, the records show, was married in Providence to
Mary Goddard; Sally Mahoney became the wife of Asa Capron. The
records further show the marriage of persons bearing the following
names: Heffernan and Coggeshall, Flanagan and Cornell, Riley and
Sabin, Fallon and Cook, Connor and Odlin, Burke and Greene, Kenney
and Chadwick, Mulholland and Hooper, Hurlihy and Thorp, Carroll and
Slater, O’Brien and Newcome, McGee and Perkins, Donohue and Sutleff,
Egan and Wilson, and a long list of others.

I have already referred to the Olney name. I take it up again.
Thomas Olney came from England in 1635, and was one of the original
thirteen proprietors of Providence. His descendants are widespread.
Some of them were married as follows: Benjamin Olney to Mary
McFadyan, Sylvester Olney to Eliza McLaughlin, Sylvanus Olney to
Joanna W. Gorman, Frances M. Olney to J. P. Mahan, George E. Olney
to Mary E. Gilpatrick, Thomas D. Olney to Mary A. Dunagan, Bradley
Olney to Dora Fitzgerald, William N. Olney to Mary Oday (O’Day),
Amanda Olney to Jerry Mackay, Louis B. Olney to Kitty Sheehan,
Hattie M. Olney to Casper McManus.

This indicates that the process of assimilation has been progressing
in Rhode Island for many generations, and that Irish blood courses
to-day through the veins of thousands of the old Rhode Island stock.

These things we know, but there are many other facts just as
important we do not know.

We depend upon you, gentlemen, and the society of which you are the
official representatives, to unroll the drapery so that our
knowledge may be greatly increased.

Again we say, welcome to Pawtucket!

Addresses were made by Joseph Smith, of Lowell; James Jeffrey Roche, of Boston; and Thomas B. Lawler, of Worcester.

On May 15, 1897, Hon. Edward A. Moseley, of Washington, D. C., was chosen President-General of the society, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Admiral Meade.

A committee of three Washington members of the society was appointed to wait upon Mr. Moseley and officially notify him of his selection. This committee consisted of Mr. J. D. O’Connell of the U. S. Treasury Department; Paymaster Carmody, U. S. N., and Capt. John M. Tobin.

The committee had waited upon Mr. Moseley as instructed, and Chairman O’Connell thus presented the matter:

Mr. Moseley,—Complying with the directions of the Council of the
American-Irish Historical Society, we have come to announce to you,
in their name, your selection as President-General of the society.

To be the bearer of such information is generally a pleasant duty;
and it would be a pleasure to us in this instance, were it not for
the bereavement felt so keenly by every member of our society
because of the death of its first President-General, the late
Richard W. Meade, Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy—illustrious
in name and lineage and in the annals of his country.

It is a great honor to you, sir, to have been selected by the
unanimous voice of our council to the highest office in our society,
in immediate succession to such an illustrious man. Nevertheless, we
hope that under your administration the society is destined to grow
with the growth and strengthen with the strength of the Republic,
and that it will eventually achieve the glorious object of its
institution, namely, to prove to the civilized world, and especially
to the “English-speaking peoples,” that there is no distinction of
blood or race among the colonists and their descendants who peopled
this part of the continent from Great Britain and Ireland; that they
and the succeeding and ever-increasing waves of immigration, up to
and long after the Revolutionary War, were all people of the same
mixture of blood—Celtic and Germanic; the Celtic—and in that the
Irish Celtic—then predominant, as it still continues to be in every
region of the globe where the English language is spoken;
predominant also on every ocean where floats our own flag, and the
flag of “our kin beyond the sea,” which bears the insignia of the
“three kingdoms”—a flag we do not now respect, and never shall while
it is the emblem of tyranny in any land or on any sea.

GEN. JAMES R. O’BEIRNE
NEW YORK
]