A while ago, as part of a podcast style discussion I was taking part in, one of the viewers asked a question about the Catholic Irish during the American Revolution.
It's an excellent question – when I was in Boston nearly 2 years ago I saw the monument to Wexford-born Commodore John Barry of the US Navy (my photos below) on Boston Common. Tomorrow, 13 October, is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the US Navy, and Barry was given his first command on 7 December 1775, of the ship Lexington.
As a general source for the religious demographics of Revolution-era America, William Warren Sweet's 1939 book The Story of Religion in America is frequently cited.
On page 293 he says that "at the close of the Revolution the number of Catholics in the United States numbered some 24,000, the great majority being found in Maryland and Pennsylvania. There were 24 clergy...". Sweet also says that in 1784 a letter by John Carroll (later Archbishop John Carroll) specified "15,800 in Maryland, 1,500 in New York, 7,000 in Pennsylvania, and 200 in Virginia".
That's the total figure; a few sources estimate that around 10,000 of those were from Ireland. Compared with the circa 200,000 Scotch-Irish who were in the 13 Colonies at the time, that gives a ratio of about 20:1.
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