Hugh White (d. ca. 1841), farmer, was a native of Ireland who fled to the United States to avoid persecution for advocating Irish independence. He acquired land in Economy Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. In 1801 White chaired a meeting of immigrants in that county who urged TJ to obtain repeal of the Alien Act (John W. Jordan, Genealogical and Personal History of Beaver County Pennsylvania [1914], 1:112; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 45 vols. description ends , 33:297–9, 34:8–9; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Beaver Co., 1840; Beaver Co. tax records, 1841).

John R. Shannon (1784–1860), attorney and public official, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and admitted to the bar there and in adjacent Beaver County in 1808. He served as a private in the Beaver County militia in 1812. Shannon was a district attorney, 1809–24, and he represented Beaver in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives during five sessions, 1826–29 and 1830–32. He was a delegate to the state Democratic convention in 1829, and he helped obtain legislative support for the Beaver and Shenango Division of the Pennsylvania Canal in the following decade. In 1850 Shannon’s real-estate holdings were valued at $40,000. He died in Erie, Pennsylvania (Joseph H. Bausman, History of Beaver County Pennsylvania and its Centennial Celebration [1904], 212, 219, 247, 342–3, 478; Thomas Henry and Jacob Fraise Richard, History of Beaver County, Pennsylvania [1888], 141, 381; Washington, Pa., Reporter, 7 Nov. 1808; Washington, Pa., Examiner, And Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Repository, 21 Mar. 1829; Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania 15 [1835]: 68, 72; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Beaver Co., 1830–50).

holy league: the Holy Alliance. The barbarian “legitimater” was presumably Mahmud II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 1808–39.

In the Bible, a city of refuge is mentioned in Joshua 21.13, 21, 27, 32, 38, and 1 Chronicles 6.57. meliniom: “millennium.” Noah’s Ark comes to rest after the Flood on the mountains of ararat (Genesis 8.4). Moses enjoys a ‘pisgahs’ view of the land of promise at the top of that mountain (Deuteronomy 34.1). dagon, the “national deity of the ancient Philistines” (OED description begins James A. H. Murray, J. A. Simpson, E. S. C. Weiner, and others, eds., The Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., 1989, 20 vols. description ends ), is mentioned in 1 Samuel 5.2–7, 1 Chronicles 10.10, and Judges 16.23. The blinded Samson pulls down the pillars of the temple of Dagon and thereby kills himself and his captors (Judges 13–6). After Moses parts the red sea and thus allows the Israelites to cross, the waters return and drown their Egyptian pursuers (Exodus 15.4–12).

The voracious bear was Russia. brother jonathan is a nickname for the American people. Ireland’s association with Patrick (pat) and other saints led to its being called the holy island or “Sacred Isle” (E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, rev. ed. [1898], 180, 688, 1089, 1262). The apparently proverbial description of the shillelagh (shelelah) as a weapon of Irishmen that never mist fire is discussed in the American Farmer 3 (1821): 208.