When did the first Irish immigrants arrive in the U.S.?
History of Irish Americans in Boston
The Irish have been in Boston since colonial times, when they arrived as indentured servants, merchants, sailors, or tradesmen. According to historian James Cullen, a large number of Irish immigrants arrived as early as 1654, on the ship Goodfellow, and were "sold" into indentured servitude "to such of the inhabitants as needed them."[1]
History of Ireland
The earliest confirmed inhabitants of Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who arrived some time around 7900 BCE.[5] While some authors take the view that a land bridge connecting Ireland to Great Britain still existed at that time,[6] more recent studies indicate that Ireland was separated from Britain by c. 14,000 BCE, when the climate was still cold and local ice caps persisted in parts of the country.[7] The people remained hunter-gatherers until about 4000 BCE. It is argued this is when the first signs of agriculture started to show, leading to the establishment of a Neolithic culture, characterised by the appearance of pottery, polished stone tools, rectangular wooden houses, megalithic tombs, and domesticated sheep and cattle.[8] Some of these tombs, as at Knowth and Dowth, are huge stone monuments and many of them, such as the Passage Tombs of Newgrange, are astronomically aligned. Four main types of Irish Megalithic Tombs have been identified: dolmens, court cairns, passage tombs and wedge-shaped gallery graves.[8] In Leinster and Munster, individual adult males were buried in small stone structures, called cists, under earthen mounds and were accompanied by distinctive decorated pottery. This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. Near the end of the Neolithic new types of monuments developed, such as circular embanked enclosures and timber, stone and post and pit circles.