st census
of Maryland (1790), published by the United States Government,
enumerates the names of all "Heads of Families" and the number of
persons in each family. A count of the Irish names shows
approximately 21,000 persons. This does not take into account the
great number of people who could not be recorded under that head, as
it is known there were many thousand Irish "redemptioners" in
Maryland prior to the taking of the census, and while no precise data
exist to indicate the number of Irish immigrants who settled in
Maryland, I estimate that the number of people of Irish descent in
the State in 1790 was not far short of 40,000.

* * * * *

The Land Records and Council Journals of Georgia of the last half of
the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century afford
like testimony to the presence of the Irish, who crossed the sea and
colonized the waste places of that wild territory, and whose
descendants in after years contributed much of the strength of the
patriot forces who confronted the armed cohorts of Carleton and
Cornwallis. From the Colonial Records of Georgia, published under the
auspices of the State Legislature, I have extracted a long list of
people of Irish name and blood who received grants of land in that
colony. They came with Oglethorpe as early as 1735 and continued to
arrive for many years. It was an Irishman named Mitchell who laid out
the site of Atlanta, the metropolis of the South; an O'Brien founded
the city of Augusta; and a McCormick named the city of Dublin,
Georgia.

* * * * *

From the records of the Carolinas we obtain similar data, many of an
absorbingly interesting character, and the number of places in that
section bearing names of a decidedly Celtic flavor is striking
evidence of the presence of Irish people, the line of whose
settlements across the whole State of North Carolina may be traced on
the high roads leading from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Hawk, one of
the historians of North Carolina, refers to the "Irish Romanists" who
were resident in that Province as early as 1700, and Williamson says
that "the most numerous settlers in the northwestern part of the
Province during the first half of the eighteenth century were from
Ireland." The manuscript records in the office of the Secretary of
State refer to "a ship load of immigrants" who, in the year 1761,
came to the Carolinas from Dublin. The names of