SNIPPET: Although Irish migration to North America peaked in the mid-to-late 19th century, the Irish had been coming to the New World in substantial numbers since the colonial era of the 18th century. The first immigrants included farmers and laborers, landless peasants, military and political prisoners deported by their government, and religious dissenters. The vast majority were poor and surprisingly, tended not to be Catholic. They belonged instead to an altogether different category called Scotch-Irish. Today's Scotch-Irish Americans are descendants of people removed from Scotland in the 17th century by the English, who sent them to Ulster, where they were expected to establish Protestantism. They had a bad time of it in Northern Ireland, however, often suffering discrimination, and in the 18th century an estimated 250,000 departed for America, settling at first in New England. Many of these immigrants paid for their passage by contracting out as indentured ser! vants, that is, as hirelings required to repay the costs of their transatlantic journey by working for a specified length of time, usually as menial farmhands. It was a condition scarcely better than enslavement, and some indentured servants reacted by running away, vanishing into the frontier wilds where their masters had little hope of tracking them down. Newspapers such as Benjamin FRANKLIN's "Pennsylvania Gazette" were filled with advertisements offering rewards for the return of runaways, many of whom bore Irish names. Those who stuck out their term of servitude, normally about seven years, often fled the New England colonies. A popular destination was the Appalachian Mountains, where they became subsistence farmers, rather like the majority of Irish who remained in Ireland. Others went farther south, to Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. These immigrants belonged to the Irish Protestant - or Presbyterian - church, and brought to the New World a for! m of piety that still bore the imprint of Martin LUTHER. They attended Sabbath services that were long, severe, and strictly observed. The somber tone of those services echoed in the home, where such frivolities as theater, dancing, and card playing were frowned upon. Presbyterian beliefs influenced other denominations of American Protestants. One feature of Presbyterianism was an English legacy - extreme antipathy toward Catholics - that through the 18th century overrode the democratic principles of the colonies, some of which denied Catholics the vote. In addition, Catholics were castigated in propaganda routinely spread by ministers, teachers, and newspaper publishers. In most colonies - even Maryland, designted as a Catholic haven by its founder, LORD BALTIMORE - the minority religion could be observed only with great discretion. As late as the Revolutionary War, only about 25,000 Catholics lived in America, compared with 3.5 million Protestants. Nonetheless, prejudice in America was less severe than in Ireland, and some prominent Irish Catholics figured in early American history. One example was Charles CARROLL III of Carrollton, Maryland, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Another was Thomas FITZSIMMONS, the only Catholic whose signature graces the Constitution. FITZSIMMONS li! ved in Philadelphia, one of the first American cities to attract a sizable Irish Catholic population; by 1880 the city had 6,000 Irish Catholics, making it the largest such community in North America. At this time, many Irish immigrated to Canada, which had even more unclaimed land than the American colonies. The government of Canada (British North America) was eager to send new arrivals to out-of-the-way areas, so Irish immigrants joined other newcomers from the British Isles on the pioneer trek north and west. They were aided in this adventure by land companies, which received large grants of territory from the governoment with the stipulation that they attract settlers whom they assisted by building roads and providing services. The biggest of these land companies, the Canada Company, had obtained 2.4 million acres by 1830. A steady flow of pioneers staked claims in New Brunswick and farther north, following waterways such as the Saint John and Ottawa rivers, then fanning out along the shore. The northern shores of the Great Lakes, especially Ontario, Erie, and Huron, became major settlement areas. It was not only land companies that arranged for immigrant settle! ments in Canada. In the Maritime Provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) modest communities were often set up by individual entrepreneurs. One of the best known was Colonel Thomas TALBOT, who between 1812 and 1837 had populated the shore of Lake Erie with 50,000 pioneers. Another agent, Peter ROBINSON, a native Canadian, brought 2,000 immigrants over from Ireland in 1825 and established them in five communities north of Lake Ontario. Once they arrived, these settlers faced a difficult task. They had to cut down trees, build cabins, scrounged up farm animals, and provide for immediate needs such as food and clothing. It took three years, on average, to clear 30 acres, which meant that towns grew slowly. Between 1815 and 1850, however, hundreds of small communities - each with several mills, a few stores, and a school that oftened doubled as a church - had sprung up, enough to usher in a new era of commerce and transportation. In that same peri! od, Canada's population more than tripled, reaching 2.3 million in 1851. The first of the Irish Catholics immigrants actually landed in Canada, some of them as early as the 17th century because of ties between southern Ireland and France, a Catholic nation which ruled much of Canada. In fact five percent of "New France" was Irish, as was the large portion of Newfoundland, the island province off the mainland coast. These newcomers had a rough time; most worked as fishermen, faring no better than they had as laboreres or tenant farmers in Ireland. Even after Canada's economy exoopanded in the 19th century, offering new opportunites to immigrants, few of those from Ireland could afford to travel across the enormous country. Most clung to the eastern provinces. Meanwhile, Irish Catholics had begun to arrive in the United States in large numbers. Some 300,000 had already immigrated in the years between 1800 and 1830, and in the following decade, when the failure of the potato crop devastated Ireland, the numbers swelled dramatically. - Excerpts, "The Peoples of North America/Irish Americans," J. F. Watts (1988). --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.701 / Virus Database: 458 - Release Date: 6/7/2004