238 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
province, after 1735, a continuous stream of emigrants flowed to the 
South and West.” 
In November, 1713, three Irish Presbyterian ministers, the Rev. 
James Kirkpatrick, of Belfast, the Rev. John Abernethy, of Antrim, 
and the Rev. Francis Iredell, of Dublin, memorialized the Lord Lieu- 
tenant stating that the discouragement of their people in view of pre- 
vailing conditions was so great that they thought of transplanting 
themselves to America that they might there “in a wilderness enjoy, 
by the blessing of God, that ease and quiet to their consciences, persons, 
and families” which was denied them in their native land. Within two 
years after this a number of people, including some ministers, arrived 
in Boston; but on the 4th of August, 1718, a company of Ulster people, 
comprising probably from six to eight hundred of “the oppressed 
brethren from the North of Ireland,” as Mather calls them, reached 
the Massachusetts capital. Their migration was in direct pursuance of 
a memorial signed by three hundred and nineteen men, inhabitants of 
Ulster, to his Excellency the Right Honourable Col. Samuel Shute, 
Governor of Massachusetts, bearing date March 26, 1718, which was 
brought over to New England by the Rev. William Boyd, declaring to 
the governor the memorialists’ desire to transplant themselves to that 
“very excellent and renowned plantation” on receiving from his 
Excellency suitable encouragement. The frontier line of Massachusetts 
was in need of defence, for the Indians were still troublesome, and 
Governor Shute was willing to have them settle in the wilderness parts 
of New Hampshire and Maine; acting on his suggestion, therefore, 
some two or three hundred of them soon left Boston for Falmouth, now 
Portland, where they arrived late in the fall. Some of these remained 
at Portland, many settled on the Kennebec at or near Wiscasset, and 
some came back to Haverhill, Massachusetts, and from there removed 
permanently to Nutfield, New Hampshire. 
The greater number of the immigrants, however, spent the winter 
at Dracut and Andover, waiting until land for a permanent settlement 
could be found, and in the spring a large number of these joined their 
more adventurous friends at Nutfield and all together founded the New 
Hampshire colony, whose name in honour of the chief city of their 
native Ulster they now changed to Londonderry. The wilderness 
township offered them, wherever they might elect to lay it out, was 
to cover an area of twelve miles square, and this was the extent of the 
now permanently created New Hampshire town. À certain number 
of the immigrants remained in Boston, where in 1727 they founded a 
Presbyterian church; and a very considerable number located at 
Worcester, Massachusetts, up to this time an unsuccessful frontier 
settlement, in September, 1722, helping permanently to organize the 
