Happy St. Patrick's Day



Commodore John Berry
Continental Navy
Born in Tacumshane, County Wexford, Ireland.

Happy St. Patrick's Day


Let me raise a pint of Guinness for a toast to our Brothers from Ireland who helped make the United States the great nation it is today.

Americans should know that Irish participation in the American Revolution helped make American independence a reality.

One must wonder why tens of thousands of old Gaelic names of 17th and 18th Century Irish immigrants appear with astonishing regularity in completely verifiable colonial records, yet any reference to these people is almost totally omitted from our standard American histories, including the American Revolution.

A few following documented facts will reveal some accurate history of Irish participation in the American Revolution.

Battle of Lexington (April 19, 1775), 174 Irish were present.

Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775), 698 Irish were present.

A prominent American, Joseph Galloway, also an English Tory, on Oct. 27, 1779, told the English House of Commons that one-half of Washington's Continental Army was Irish.

On April 2, 1784, Luke Gardiner, afterward Lord Mountjoy, told the English Parliament, "America was lost by Irish emigrants ... I am assured from the best authority, the major part of the American Army was composed of Irish and that the Irish language was as commonly spoken in the American ranks as English, I am also informed it was their valor that determined the contest ..."

Many Irish, banished by England, came with Lafayette; 637 were killed at the Siege of Savannah.

Charles Carroll
Signer of the United States Declaration of Independence,
was the descendant of Irish nobility in County Tipperarry.
U.S. Senator from Maryland.  Federalist Party.

Andrew Jackson
7th President 1829–37: He was born in the predominantly Scotch-Irish
Waxhaws area of South Carolina two years after his parents left Boneybefore,
near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.

144,221 Union soldiers were born in Ireland.

The Irish Brigade consisted predominantly of Irish Americans, that served in the Union Army in the American Civil War.

The designation of the first regiment in the brigade, the 69th New York Infantry, or the "Fighting 69th", continued in later wars. The Irish Brigade was known in part for its famous war cry, the "faugh a ballagh", which is an anglicization of the Irish phrase, fág an bealach, meaning "clear the way".

Of all Union army brigades, only the 1st Vermont Brigade and Iron Brigade suffered more combat dead than the Irish Brigade during America's Civil War.


We'll Fight for Uncle Sam

I am a modern hairo: my name is Paddy Kearney;
Not long ago, I landed from the bogs of sweet Killarney;
I used to cry out: SOAP FAT! bekase that was my trade, sir,
Till I 'listed for a Soger-boy wid Corcoran's brigade, sir.

Chorus: For to fight for Uncle Sam;
He'll lade us on to glory, O!
He'll lade us on to glory, O!
To save the Stripes and Stars.

Ora, once in regimentals, my mind it did bewildher.
I bid good-bye to Biddy dear, and all the darling childher;
Whoo! says I, the Irish Volunteers the divil a one afraid is,
Bekase we've got the soger bould, McClellan, for to lade us.

Chorus: For to fight for Uncle Sam, &c.

We soon got into battle: we made a charge of bay'nets:
The Rebel blaggards soon gave way: they fell as thick as paynuts.
Och hone! the slaughter that we made, bedad, it was delighting!
For, the Irish lads in action are the divil's boys for fighting.

Chorus: They'll fight for Uncle Sam, &c.

Och, sure, we never will give in, in any sort of manner,
Until the South comes back agin, beneath the Starry-Banner;
And if John Bull should interfere, he'd suffer for it truly;
For, soon the Irish Volunteers would give him Ballyhooly.

Chorus: Oh! they'll fight for Uncle Sam, &c.

And! now, before I ind my song, this free advice I'll tender:
We soon will use the Rebels up and make them all surrender,
And, once again, the Stars and Stripes will to the breeze be swellin',
If Uncle Abe will give us back our darling boy McClellan.

Chorus: Oh! we'll follow Little Mac, &c.

Irish Americans  -   A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Approximately 50,000 to 100,000 Irishmen, over 75 percent of them Catholic, came to America in the 1600s, while 100,000 more Irish Catholics arrived in the 1700s.

Irish immigration had greatly increased beginning in the 1820s due to the need for labor in canal building, lumbering, and civil construction works in the Northeast. The large Erie Canal project was one such example where Irishmen were many of the laborers. Small but tight communities developed in growing cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Providence.

From 1820 to 1860, 1,956,557 Irish arrived, 75% of these after the Great Irish Famine of 1845–1852, struck.

(Irish in America)                   (Commodore John Barry)

John F. Kennedy • Mother Jones • George M. Cohan
James J. Braddock • Michael J. McGivney • James M. Curley
Victor Herbert • Eugene O'Neill • Ed Sullivan