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.

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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 the Irish pioneers in the Carolinas are found in every conceivable connection, in the parochial and court records, in the will books, in the minutes of the general Assembly, in the quaint old records of the Land and Registers’ offices, in the patents granted by the colonial Government, and in sundry other official records.  In public affairs they seem to have had the same adaptability for politics which, among other things, has in later days brought their countrymen into prominence.  Florence O’Sullivan from Kerry was surveyor-general of South Carolina in 1671.  James Moore, a native of Ireland and a descendant of the famous Irish chieftain, Rory O’More, was governor of South Carolina in 1700; Matthew Rowan from Carrickfergus was president of the North Carolina Council during the term of office of his townsman, Governor Arthur Dobbs (1754 to 1764); John Connor was attorney-general of the Province in 1730, and was succeeded in turn by David O’Sheall and Thomas McGuire.  Cornelius Hartnett, Hugh Waddell, and Terence Sweeny, all Irishmen, were members of the Court, and among the members of the provincial assembly I find such names as Murphy, Leary, Kearney, McLewean, Dunn, Keenan, McManus, Ryan, Bourke, Logan, and others showing an