IrelandGenWeb-L Archives

From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] Earliest Known Irish in America (NC) -- BUTLER/NUGENT
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 17:47:56 -0700

SNIPPET: Certainly one of the earliest known Irishmen to set foot in the present-day United States was Richard BUTLER in the year 1584. Born in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, in the 1560s, he traveled to England and found work as a page for Walter RALEIGH, the future colonizer. He accompanied Raleigh's first expedition in 1584 that explored North Carolina's outer banks. BUTLER made a second voyage to the area in 1585 and spent several days exploring the territory with local Indians. It was this expedition that left behind the ill-fated settlement on Roanoke Island. BUTLER returned to Europe, where he took up privateering against Spanish and Portuguese ships. He was captured by the Spanish in 1592 and spent much of the rest of his life in a Spanish prison.

One of the men left by BUTLER on Roanoke Island was a fellow Irishman named Edward NUGENT. Unfortunately, the only written reference we have to NUGENT involves a particularly brutal incident. In his journal, Captain Ralph LANE wrote in 1586: "An Irishman serving me, one Edward NUGENT, volunteered to kill Pemisapan, king of the Indians. We met him returning out of the woods with Pemisapan's head in his hands, and the Indians ceased their raids against the British camp."

This and subsequent clashes between the colonists and local Indians provides the most likely explanation for the disappearance of the Roanoke settlement by 1590.

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• [IGW] Earliest Known Irish in America (NC) -- BUTLER/NUGENT by "Jean Rice" <>