| OCR Text |
Show Irish in Cuba. . You see and hear a good many Irish names in Havana, writes William E. Curtis. The O'Reillys, the O'Donnells and O'Farrells. and the O'Lawlelrs are quite prominent. Several others of the wealthiest families in the island are descended from immigrants "who came from Ireland after the battle of the I'.oyne in 1869. You also find them in Chile. Peru and other narts of South America, where they have distinguished distin-guished themselves as soldiers, sailors and statesmen. In Cuba they appear to have done very well in a business capacity, and Leopold O'Donnell, who was governor general of the island from 1S43 to 1S4S. Is said to have acquired such immense im-mense wealth during his term of office of-fice that the king was jealous of him when he went back to Spain. From the year 1794 until the American Amer-ican occupation in 189P, the O'Reilly family held by royal grant a monopoly of transporting the carcasses of beef from the slaughter house to the markets mar-kets shops of Havana, and they collected col-lected 50 cents for every carcas. Their revenues amounted to several hundred thousand dollars a year. General Brooke canceled this ancient contract and since then the city of Havana has performed the same service at half the price -with considerable profit. |
