Hi, Connecticut River Valley Listers: I'd like to contact descendants of the Irish in the Connecticut River Valley who were taken out of Irish prisons in the 17th century, during or just after the English Reformation, brought to New England and sold for the remainder of their prison terms as indentured servants. According to a book by Michael J. O'Brien, "Pioneer Irish in New England," published in 1937 and republished in 1998 by Genealogical Publishing Co. of Baltimore, many of these were brought to and sold in Essex County, Massachusetts and after working out their indentures, spread out into the colony. They were ignored by earlier historians, who are accused of wishing to project a basically English settlement, because they were not freemen and thus not really settlers (!). Many others were sent to British plantations in the Caribbean and intermarried with natives (and thus called "black Irish"), but I'm looking for men (and women) who were brought directly to Massachusetts and were absorbed into that ! population. What interests me basically is the sources for descendants' research and how they were able to trace their descent from this unusual segment of the colonial population. Fred Murphy ([email protected])