,
1687, Governor Dongan recommended "that natives of Ireland be sent to
colonize here where they may live and be very happy." Numbers of them
evidently accepted the invitation, for many Irishmen are mentioned in
the public documents of the Province during the succeeding twenty
years.

That the Irish continued to settle in the Province all through the
eighteenth century may be seen from the announcements in the New York
newspapers of the time and other authentic records. The most
important of these, in point of numbers and character of the
immigrants, were those made in Orange County in 1729 under the
leadership of James Clinton from Longford, and at Cherry Valley, in
Otsego County, twelve years later. On the Orange County assessment
and Revolutionary rolls, and down to the year 1800, there is a very
large number of Irish names, and in some sections they constituted
nearly the entire population. In the northwestern part of New York,
Irishmen are also found about the time of the Franco-English war.
They were not only among those settlers who followed the peaceful
pursuits of tilling and building, but they were "the men behind the
guns" who held the marauding Indians in check and repelled the
advances of the French through that territory. In this war, Irish
soldiers fought on both sides, and in the "Journals of the Marquis of
Montcalm" may be seen references to the English garrison at Oswego,
which, in August, 1756, surrendered to that same Irish Brigade by
which they had been defeated eleven years before on the battlefield
of Fontenoy. In the "Manuscripts of Sir William Johnson", are also
found some interesting items indicating that Irishmen were active
participants in the frontier fighting about that time, and in one
report to him, dated May 28, 1756, from the commandant of an English
regiment, reference is made to "the great numbers of Irish Papists
among the Delaware and Susquehanna Indians who have done a world of
prejudice to English interests."

The early records, with hardly an exception, contain Irish names,
showing that the "Exiles from Erin" came to the Province of New York
in considerable numbers during the eighteenth century. The baptismal
and marriage records of the Dutch Reformed and Protestant churches of
New York City; of the Dutch churches at Kingston, Albany,
Schenectady, and other towns; the muster rolls of the troops enrolled
for the French, Indian, and Revolutionary wars; the Land Grants and
other