Canada, but either escaped or was released, for we find him later an active participant in "Father Rasle's War." He is mentioned as "a Captain of the military forces at Deerfield in 1713." During the French-English war, his son, Joseph, commanded a company of Massachusetts soldiers and died in the service on June 4, 1753, and was buried in the camp burial-ground at Fort William Henry, N. Y. By his wife, Hannah Arms, he was the father of ten children.

Matthew, son of the immigrant was also an Indian fighter and took a prominent part in the battle in which his brother, Joseph, was captured. On June 24, 1709, he received a mortal wound while engaging a party of the savages in defence of the homes of the settlers, and the record says: "said Matthew Clesson dyed 4 days after of his wounds." A Captain Matthew Clesson is mentioned as of Deerfield in 1713, whom I believe to have been a son of Matthew, 2d.

Another Matthew Clesson, son of Joseph, who was born in 1713, was "prominent in civil and military affairs and was in the frontier service under Captain Kellogg at the age of 19" (Clesson Genealogy). In 1747 he led a scouting expedition towards Canada and in 1755 was Lieutenant and died on the expedition to Lake George on October 24, 1756. Several stories are told in local annals of the intrepid daring of this Matthew Clesson and it is evident also that he was one of the prominent men of his day in the Connecticut Valley. I find only one Revolutionary soldier of the name. He also was Matthew Clesson, and he served in a Deerfield company under Lieutenant Charles Dougherty. He was Assessor at Deerfield in 1784 and again in 1793 and 1798. He was of the fifth generation removed from the original Matthew Clesson.

And such men were descendants of the despised Irish “redemptioner," who, like so many of his countrymen, were driven across the sea by the edicts of the ruthless Cromwell and his successors in Ireland! Much information of this character concerning other Irish families is obtainable from the early American records, if we would only put ourselves to the task of searching for it. Irishmen and their descendants helped to make American history, but they did not write it, and hence it is that so little is known of their struggles and fortunes among unsympathetic strangers in the new country.

THE IRISH ANCESTRY OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

BY MICHAEL J. O'BRIEN.

(1) The Honorable Theodore Roosevelt is the grandson of Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt and of Margaret Barnhill, his wife.

(2) Margaret Barnhill's parents were Robert and Elizabeth Barnhill or Barnwell, of Beaufort, S. C. Elizabeth Barnhill was a granddaughter of Thomas Potts, founder of Pottsville, Pa. Potts commanded a regiment in the War of the Revolution and was a native of Ireland. Robert Barnwell also served as a Revolutionary officer. He was a member of the Continental Congress and in 1795 became Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives and in 1805 President of the Senate.

(3) Robert Barnwell's father was Nathaniel Barnwell, born in South Carolina in 1739.

(4) Nathaniel Barnwell's father, also named Nathaniel, was born in South Carolina in 1705.

(5) The father of the last-mentioned Nathaniel Barnwell was John Barnwell, born in the ancestral home of the family at Creekstown, County Meath, Ireland, in 1671, and came to America in the year 1701. The Council Journals of South Carolina show that John Barnwell was successively Secretary and Comptroller of the Colony, Member of the Commons and one of the Governor's Council. He was a noted Colonial soldier and is known in history as "Tuscarora John," on account of his decisive defeat of the Tuscarora Indians in the Carolinas.

The Barnwell family traces its descent from remote antiquity, and claims among its earliest progenitors persons of the most eminent renown. Like many others of Norman blood in Ireland, they became "as Irish as the Irish themselves." The American branch has contributed many honored names to the service of this country in war and peace, and, according to the genealogies, are allied to many of the best families of the South. Burke names Sir Michael de Barneval as "the first of the Barnwells in Ireland" and says that the records of the Tower of London show him to have been one of the chief Captains in the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1172 under Strongbow and that he landed at Berehaven, County Cork. Some of the family remained in

Cork, where they intermarried with the O'Beirnes. O'Hart (Irish Pedigrees) says some of these O'Beirnes changed their name to Barnwell. A branch of the family became Barons of Trimblestone, County Meath, and it is from this branch that John Barnwell of South Carolina sprang. In Ireland, they married into some of the best families-among them O'Briens and O'Neills, as well as the Butlers of Kilkenny. In America, we find a reuniting of the Irish strain by the marriage of two Barnwell girls from South Carolina with sons of Judge James O'Neill of Fernandina, Florida.

The foregoing-as well as much other interesting information concerning this family-I have obtained from the best authorities, among them: Burke's Peerage (p. 19); King James' Irish Army List, by Dalton (Dublin, 1855); American Ancestry (vol.5, p. 89); Genealogical Chart of The Barnwell Family of South Carolina; Genealogy of the Bellinger Family; Genealogy of the Roosevelt Family; Genealogy of the de Vaux Family.

When Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, in January, 1905, wrote that he was "related to the Fitzgeralds, the O'Briens and the Butlers," he undoubtedly meant that members of these families intermarried with his ancestors. I fail to find any Fitzgeralds, however, and don't know what connection they could have had with the Roosevelt ancestry. Mr. Roosevelt is also descended from another Irish family. In 1730 John Dunwoody, a native of Donegal, emigrated from Londonderry, and located in Londonderry Township, Chester County, Pa. His wife was also from Ireland. He was a schoolmaster at Fagg's Manor, Pa. In 1770, he removed with his family to Liberty County, Georgia. His son, Dr. James Dunwoody, was the first physician in that section and became a member of the "first Executive Council of the free State of Georgia." He served as a surgeon in the War of the Revolution. A daughter of James Dunwoody married Dr. James Elliott, United States Senator from Georgia. Mrs. Elliott's granddaughter, whose maiden name was Bullock, married the father of Theodore Roosevelt. Thus, the Irish immigrant schoolmaster was the great-great-great-grandfather of Theodore Roosevelt. A great many of the Dunwoodys are mentioned in county histories of Pennsylvania and Georgia, who were descendants of the original Irish immigrant. They exhibit much of the same independent and aggressive spirit which characterizes that eminent American, Theodore Roosevelt.