FREDERICK MACY IRISH

IRISH, ROBINSON ALSO MENTIONS WORTH, FOLGER, COFFIN, MACY

Posted By: jh (email)
Date: 12/21/2019 at 17:40:04

IN MEMORIAM.

FREDERICK MACY IRISH, born in the city of Hudson, Columbia County, New York, March 13th, 1801; Died in Iowa City, Feb. 16th, 1875.

Shortly after the close of the Revolutionary war, a colony left the Island of Nantucket and settled at Hudson, New York. They were all seafaring families for generations beyond their exodus, and amongst them were the historic names of Nantucket, the Worths, Folgers, Coffins, Macys and Irishes. And they were nearly all of kin, for the Macy stock, the oldest on the island, which settled there under the circumstance poetically told by Whittier in “The Exiles,” had early become confluent with the Irishes and those in turn with the Worths and Folgers. Bluff and brave Quaker sailors all, in whose families the sweethearts, wives and children of each generation had given their love to the mercy of the ocean, and waited patiently each three years’ voyage’s ending – and many learned a longer waiting, -- until the sea shall yield its dead.

With this colony came Jonathan Irish and his wife Ruth, the father and mother of FREDERICK MACY IRISH, and five other sons and six daughters.

Though they had got almost beyond the sea breeze and quite above tide-water, the sailors were not content with quiet village life. The passion of their fathers was strong upon them and they must seek content and a competence with only a deck between them and death. So, Hudson became a whaling port and the notable Captain Worth and others put stout fortunes into ships to hunt the seas, as their fathers had done.

But Jonathan Irish and Ruth, sought to rear their sons to a less dangerous calling, that should have fewer sad partings and not the risk of that awful heart-ache which looks out over the sea for the sail that never whitens the waters so they plunged into the wilderness of central New York to carve from the forests a home. Here their family of twelve all grew to be men and women, for Death held back his hand, from that house.

But how futile the forest refuge against that long, hereditary passion for the sea!

First, an older son went out from the fireside and was a sailor; years went by, and he never came back. A few leagues out from Java, homeward bound, the soft sea was his sepulcher, and there is his resting place.

Upon FREDERICK the sea spell was strong, but before his majority he found his way back to the island of his ancestors and realized a dream that had been the companion of his very infancy, by going on the same pathless way of his forefathers.

Shipping with the famed Captain Ray on the good ship Stonington, whose stout timbers rest now on the bottom in the Straits of Magellan, he entered the whaling service and followed it for several years. More than fifty years ago he sailed through the Golden Gate and heard the Angelus ring in the adobe mission church of San Francisco. Sailing further north to where the Columbia poured its unfretted flood into the Pacific, he faced that wild coast about which, since, wars have been fought, treaties made, flags changed and from which History has culled a golden page. Resting upon the Sandwich Islands, he pulled an oar in the boat which landed the first load of American Missionaries; and there acquired the soft language of the natives and so observed their customs and habits as to supply the material for many an interesting narrative.

But finely homeward, around the Horn he came, to find the family scattered, as is Nature’s order, brothers and sisters married new homes made, and new faces in them. So he too settled down; the waves wooed him no more and having profitable engagement with the old Dry Dock Company, in service in N. Y. harbor, where his sailing knowledge availed him, there came into his life the tender longing, out of which homes grow up, and firesides come, in which men and women reach their best estate; and on December 12th, 1826, he and Elizabeth Ann Robinson of the village of Mamaroneck, West Chester County, New York, were married, and, blessed with more of health and manly and womanly attractions than fall to the lot of many, they entered on that long journey that has lasted until its fiftieth year was but a little further on.

Here a son was born and died in infancy, and a daughter came to pass away in her sweet childhood, and another son was born. Ere many years the past fever for the sea was supplanted by a passion for migration to the new country west of the mountains. Leaving wife and children under the old family roof, he came to Indiana, where at the village of Terre Haute, he built the first foundry and machine shop in the Wabash valley and entered upon the task of introducing Jethro Wood’s new iron moldboard plow upon the prairies; for our grandfathers turned the globe with a wooden moldboard. When the home was ready the family journeyed to it by slow canal boat and mountain stage.

Here he prosecuted a large business, going with steamboats and flatboats through the network of rivers, for the coal of Pennsylvania, and the iron of Tennessee, and here, after the expense of vast energies, came business disasters and the young pioneer lost all that he had so stoutly built and found a shelterless family in his arms and no hope of fortune again, only in the wilderness.

Farewell to the grave of the little girl, who died meantime, -- and with the family, which now consisted of Charles and Gilbert, the former born in New York city, and the latter in Terre Haute, sent with their mother to a temporary home, he invested all he had in a horse and mounting it, followed the sun.

Iowa was then just talked of, a few traders were posted on its Mississippi border, while the general Eastern public were under the impression that beyond the river bluffs the land was a rootless, leafless desert; and even the better informed who had read the journal of Lewis and Clark’s expedition, had learned that the country could never be settled, for it was pelted with everlasting rains, a sort of Alaskan shower, that never wholly ceased. But desert and deluge had no place in the fears of the coming pioneer and he came by National roads and Eastern shore there spread out under his feet the forest clad bottom, past whose leafy line marched, to its own majestic music, the Mississippi. Beyond was Burlington, the Capital of the newly organized territory, as it had been the Capital of Wisconsin territory before the division, and to that city he crossed. This was in 1838.

Congressional action was then had, or pending, whereby the Capital was to be set back nearer to the Indian line and soon Iowa City had a name on the map and was the Capital. Here he came and with sturdy Walter Butler, Henry Felkner, McCrory, Phillip Clark and the long list of pioneers, made ready for the seat of government, which came to the town in 1840 and rested here until 1857.

Here then, after the suns of every latitude had bronzed his face, and many trials had come to him, he came to stay. In life’s very prime, he entered in earnest upon the making of a home. A fortunate entry of land from the government, in the course of years brought to him affluence. Here his three youngest children, Thomas Myrick, John Powell and Ruth Elizabeth, were born.

The last twenty years of his life were passed in total blindness, a sudden attack of neuralgia having destroyed his vision. But let us hope that that last score of years brought to him much of life’s pleasures and that his extreme age, even, was not accompanied by any more than the usual trials of gathering infirmity. He was a man of most wonderful memory and with the rarest faculty of description. Of great head and great heart too let it to be written that the sorest trials of his life came through loyal adherence to the bruised fortunes of his friends.

With an imperious will that a tempest could not bend nor break, there came down through the long line of his Quaker ancestry, trickling through the tender hearts of demure and gentle women and just men, to his, a flood of tender feeling which to the last glorified his poor blind eyes, in which Pity’s sweet fountain never ran dry.

Largely self-cultured, he had a wide acquaintance with literature. But a few years since, assisted by his daughter, as amanuensis, he prepared for the Annals of Iowa, a history of Johnson county, which is a just monument to his mnemonic accuracy and a most interesting collation of fact and detail, cast into that vigorous and excellent English, of which he was capable.

Charitable to the last degree he was always on the alert to do some good things for the poor. There were formerly resident here several old and indigent blind people to aid whom was his habit. In order to combine employment for his active mental faculties with their succor, it was his fancy to deliver, in one of the public halls of the city, familiar talks upon whales and whaling, illustrated by the exhibition of implements used in whaling, the proceeds of these talks going to the needy and blind. Thus his early passion for a sailor’s life and its pursuit, was carried into comfort for the comfortless; and perchance in memory of this, yesterday some kind and thoughtful hand cast upon his coffin an anchor, wrought in living flowers, and buds and leaves.

During this winter he has persistently sought the procurement of a pension for an aged and helpless citizen, Mr. Conard, who was an Iowa “Graybeard” soldier in the late war.

With the first rigors of the season came to him a plea for help from an early settler, Stephen B. Gardner, now resident in Kansas, and within a few months stricken to utter helplessness with paralysis. With the cry for help all remembrance of feud and offense was washed away, and he buried himself in collecting amongst old settlers such addition to what he was able to give, as should make the helpless man comfortable. And on the last day of his life, his business to the city, that brought him past the fatal spot where Death lurked to strike him, was the mailing of some more of this fund to Mr. Gardner, which had accumulated since the former installment was sent.

The manner of his death, while intensely distressing, was as near a realization of his often expressed wish as was possible. He kept a careful boy to drive a very trusty horse, and so was accustomed to ride at pleasure from his home to the city. At one o’clock on last Tuesday, while coming as usual down Dubuque street, through the cluster of teams at the wood and hay market, his sleigh ran athwart a team which was moving west. As soon as they saw each other both drivers checked up, but too late to save a fatal collision. He was immediately brought to the private room of the PRESS office, where despite the earnest professional efforts of Dr. Graham and Profs. Peck, Shrader and Clapp, he died in two hours. There was no complete reaction from the shock and the apparent suffering was so inconsiderable as to go no farther than the vague uneasiness which is the usual accompaniment of such complete paralysis.

Obsequies were conducted at the residence, on Rose Hill, yesterday, Rev. Mr. Judd, Rector of Trinity, officiating.

So closed a long and active life. Let its unnumbered kindly acts be its eulogy, for a sore-hearted swell of feeling restrains this pen within the limit of barest detail.

Source: Iowa City Daily Evening Press | Iowa City, Iowa | 19 February 1875, page 4, columns 2-4.