The Irish were arriving in the Province in such great numbers during this period as to be the cause of considerable jealousy on the part of other settlers from continental Europe.  They were a vigorous and aggressive element.  Eager for that freedom which was denied them at home, large numbers of them went out on the frontier.  While the war-whoop of the savage still echoed within the surrounding valleys and his council fires blazed upon the hills, those daring adventurers penetrated the hitherto pathless wilderness and passed through unexampled hardships with heroic endurance.  They opened up the roads, bridged the streams, and cut down the forests, turning the wilderness into a place fit for man’s abode.  With their sturdy sons, they constituted the skirmish line of civilization, standing as a bulwark against Indian incursions into the more prosperous and populous settlements between them and the coast.  From 1740 down to the period of the Revolution, hardly a year passed without a fresh infusion of Irish blood into the existing population, and, as an indication that they distributed themselves all over the Province, I find, in every Town and County history of Pennsylvania and in the land records of every section, Irish names in the greatest profusion.  They settled in great numbers chiefly along the Susquehanna and its tributaries; they laid out many prosperous settlements in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, and in these sections Irishmen are seen occupying some of the foremost and most coveted positions, and their sons in after years contributed much to the power and commercial greatness of the Commonwealth.  They are mentioned prominently as manufacturers, merchants, and farmers, and in the professions they occupied a place second to none among the natives of the State.  In several sections, they were numerous enough to establish their own independent settlements, to which they gave the names of their Irish home places, several of which are preserved to this day.  It is not to be wondered at then that General Harry Lee named the Pennsylvania line of the Continental army, “the Line of Ireland”!

Ireland gave many eminent men to the Commonwealth, among whom may be mentioned:  John Burns, its first governor after the adoption of the Constitution, who was born in Dublin; George Bryan, also a native of Dublin, who was its governor in 1788; James O’Hara, one of the founders of Pittsburgh; Thomas FitzSimmons, a native of Limerick, member of the first Congress under the Constitution which began the United States Government and father of the policy of protection to American industries; Matthew Carey from Dublin, the famous political economist; and many others who were prominent as nation-builders in the early days of the “Keystone State.”

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