Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1917-03-17


his arm in defense of the rights oil
his Catholic neighbors and kinsmer
in the County of Wicklow; and he
bought, his freedomuSwith black
bull. which. according to family
tradition, he first stole, and he be
came a United States Senator from
Vermont, and cast the vote, against
the wishes OF his constituents
which made Thomas Jefferson Presi.
dent of this country over Aaron
Burr, and by so doing altered the
entire course OF our oountry's his.
tory; and while he was in Jail in
town in Vermont for his attacks
on the odious alien and sedition
laws he issued challenge for a
duel to the President of the United
States, and being released, he moved
down to Kentucky and became a
Congressman; and later, having
quarreled with all his neighbors
there, ne moved on to Arkansas and
was named as Arkansas first Terri
torial Delegate to Washington, and
he might have moved still further
West and might have filled still
more offices had he not In the full
mesa of his maturity. when he was
seventy years young, been thrown
from a mule and had his neck
broken. like TO think OF Mathew
was an ancestor of mine.
But I kept on working and I dis
covered a lot of things about the
lost tribes of the Irish in the South.
The State of Kentucky, from which
| hail, has been called the cradle
of the Anglo-SaNon race in Amer
lea, and 1t has been said that the
mountaineers of that State, with
their feuds and their Elizabethan,
Chaucerian methods of speech rep
resent the purest strains of English
blood to be found today on this
continent. Now then let us see if
that Is true. I have looked into
that matter and tell you that so
per cent. at least of the jewellers of
the mountains OF the South and
notably OF Kentucky and Virginia
are the lineal descendants of runa-
way indenture men. Irish rebels
mainly, from the Virginia planta-
tions. know a mountain county in
Kentucky of which half of the popu-
lation bear one of three names.
They are either Mayos. or Patricks,
or Powers. And once heard an
orator stand up before an audience
of those Mayos and Powers and
Patricks and congratulate them on
their pure English descent, and they
believed il!
wish you would pardon me once
more for referring to my line of
ancestry. for 1t is testimony to
prove my claim. On my fathers
side l am descended from group
of men who went from New Eng
land to Kentucky and the names OF
these men were Lyon and Cobb.
which is a Danish corruption of
O'Connor, and Machen, and Glen
denim, and O'Hara. and Glenn,
which is corruption OF Glynn.
What a hot bunch of Anglo-Saxonsi
The Congressional district in which
1 was born and where l used to
live has thirteen counties in IL.
Listen TO the names of these thir-
teen counties: Marshall, Galloway,
Graves, McCracken, Lyon, Living
ston, Caldwell. Trigg, Crittenden,
Ballard, Hickman. Fulton. Carlisle
thirteen counties and all but two
of them have Irish names.
What Is true of my own section
of Kentucky is true OF the rest of
the States. Daniel Boone has been
called the first explorer of Ken
lucky and 1t has been said he was
of English descent. Both of those
statements are wrong. Daniel
Boone was not the first explorer of
Kentucky. The first man to explore
was an Irishman by the
name OF John Finley. But before
him was still another Irishman by
the name of McBride-James Nc
Bride. He fingers in State history
rs a shadowy figure, but 1 like to
think of him as a red-haired chap
with rifle in one hand and pos
sibly a demi John in the other, COM
ng out through the trackless wild |
srness alone and landing from his I
sanoe on what was afterward to be !
Known as the Dark and Bloody |
sround. Aside from his name, II is
proven that he was an Irishman by
he legendary circumstances that
after coming ashore he
;arved his name in deep and endur-
ng letters in the bark of the largest
,eech tree of the forest, and claimed
ii OF the land that lay within his
'ision as his own. and shot an
indian or two and went on his way
e joicing AS for Daniel Boone, the
'reat pathfinder. he really was de-
cended from the line of Buhun,
5hich Is Norman-Irish, and his
Mother was Morgan, and his wife
,as Bryan, and his father was an
IRISH Catholic.
The records show that nearly II
hree-fourths OF that dauntless lit
e band who under the leadership
( George Rogers Clark, an Irish
ian, waded through the foods to !
Ike Vincennes and thereby won all I
ie great Northwest Territory. away {
,om the British and gave TO the {
merican colonies what today Is the [
chest part of the. United States,
ere Irishmen-not SCOTCH Irish, /
or English-Irish, but plain Irish
ish men who were rebels and pa '
lots by instinct and born adven-
Irers by reason OF the blood which b
IN in their veins. The first settle c
emf of English-speaking Catholics .
,yond the Allegheny Mountains v
as not located IN the North but {
the South. and in my own State b
Kentucky at that II endures Q
day, after having given TO this {
untry one OF its greatest and most p
holarly churchmen, Bishop d
'aulding. The children of the pio- b
'ers of Kentucky, almost without 4