Walking through the Dutch Reformed Church cemetery, one might be struck by the headstones, seemingly out of place, of four Irishmen. They were victims of the explosion of the Bellona Powder Mill in 1814. Most likely Presbyterians, they came from County Donegal. Because British aliens--and the Irish were British nationals at the time, Ireland having been incorporated into Great Britain by the 1801 Act of Union--had to register with the Federal Government at the beginning of the War of 1812, we know that John Stevenson arrived in the US on June 8, 1811, and that William Birney arrived May 3, 1812. According to his will of 24 April 1814, James Wilson was the son of Moses Wilson of Ireland. They may have come directly to Belleville, but it is also possible that they came from Ireland as part of a group recruited by the DuPont family of Delaware to work in their powder mill.
There is a connection between the powder mill in Belleville and the du Pont mill in Wilmington, Delaware. One John Mitchell wrote to du Pont from Belleville on 6 April 1811 in response to a letter du Pont had sent him. Mitchell was investigating the use of water looms for the weaving of woolen cloth and natural cotton. Mitchell says he had gone to Spotswood with Mr. Decatur. This Decatur was one of the owners of the Bellona Powder Works. He also mentions learning from a Mr. Stone(?) at Paterson of a Scotchman named James Murray of Cranetown who made the looms which, Mitchel reports, will do, “with some little improvement.”
Many of the Irish who later worked for du Pont were Irish Catholics from Ulster whose passage had been arranged by du Pont. It might be possible that many if not all of the early Irish in Belleville came through a connection with DuPont. Those whose origin is known came from the Province of Ulster.
While it has not been determined whether the Irish workers in the powder mill were brought over specifically for that work, or if they found it once they were here, we do know that Irish Murphys, also a Donegal name, but most likely a Catholic name, were specifically brought over to work in the calico printing plant.
In the January 11, 1812 issue of the New York Herald, the firm of Bullus, Decatur and Rucker of 33 Beaver Street, New York, advertised the products of the Belleville Powder Mill: “Single, Double and Treble F, and Cannon Powder . . . warranted to be equal to English, or any powder made in this country. In September 1812 an attempt was made to blow up “the extensive powder works of Capt. Decatur, at Belleville.
On April 20, 1814, the powder mill blew up. There was no indication that this was anything more than an accident. The account of the explosion in the April 26 edition of the Newark Centinel begins: “It is our painful duty this day to record one of the most afflicting occurrences which has happened in this part of the country for many years past.” The article goes on the say: “By this awful catastrophe, four of the workmen were instantly hurried into eternity; ten were badly wounded, seven of which have since died--and the remaining three, in all probability, will not long survive their comrades. The foreman and two of the workmen escaped the explosion, because they had gone to the aid of a gentleman whoe wagon had lost a wheel. Decatur and Ruckus were on their way to the mill, and would probably have been there at the time of the explosion if they had started their journey just ten minutes before they did.
The following men died in the explosion or soon thereafter: Thomas Lakey (leaving a mother and six children), Mr. Gillespy (a wife and two children), Wm. Burney (a wife and one child), Robert Doak (a wife and one child), John Davis ( a wife and two children), John Stevenson (a wife), and Alexander Dunsimore, John O'Neal, Andrew Norris, William Coventry, and William Wilson (all single). Three were still living at the time of publication-- Henry Connor, James Wilson, and Mr. Wilkinson--although the paper had heard that one died in the meantime.
According to the inscriptions on their headstones, we know that William Coventry, Andrew Norris, and William Wilson were natives of County Donegal, and Norris and Wilson more specifically of a town given as Auhnithen, County Donegal, a name that cannot be found in any list of Irish place-names, but is pretty definitely to be identified with Aghanunshin, in County Donegal, near Letterkenny, as a former archivist of Bantry House confirmed for me. I visited Aghanunshin and found in the cemetery there many of the same names as are to be found among the early Belleville Irish. Most of the names of those Irish known to be in Belleville at the time are all names found in the Letterkenny area.
The “Mr. Gillespy” who was one of the victims was Michael Gillespie, an Irish Catholic. He was not buried in the Dutch Reformed Cemetery, but was probably buried in the Catholic cemetery on New York City, where the Gillespie family owned plot. In 1820, a Catholic Mass was being celebrated in the house of the Michael Gillespie family, who had moved from to Belleville from Paterson shortly before. One of the members of the family was Edward Gillespie, who founded and edited the New York newspaper, The Shamrock, which began publication in 1810.
The Bellona Powder Mill, Hendricks Brothers Copper Rolling Mill, and the Calico Print Works were three Belleville industries that employed the Irish who settled in Belleville during the first third of the nineteenth century.
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