Vol. 5: Severens, Kenneth

Type: Article

Severens, Kenneth ‘Emigration and Provincialism: Samuel Cardy’s Architectual Career in the Atlantic World’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 21-36.

In 1752, Dublin master builder and carpenter Samuel Cardy emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina. Though involved in some successful buildings in Dublin, Cardy’s departure for America was the result of his being found to have overcharged for work done on the Barracks at Navan and then to have offered a bribe to the official inspecting his work. Once he got to America, however, Cardy used his knowledge of Irish architecture well and based several buildings on those he had known in Ireland. “Cardy’s career on both sides of the ocean provides persuasive architectural evidence for an interrelated Atlantic world, as well as a specific instance of Irish-American emigration”. Severens notes that Cardy’s exile was more characteristic of that of the catholics of the following century than of eighteenth-century protestants”, and comments on Cardy’s assimilation into the American community of English, Scottish, Huguenot, and protestant Irish residents. Severens concludes that: “In bringing to South Carolina the latest Dublin architectural style, Cardy…furthered the cause of North American Anglicisation”. Included are nine plates of buildings associated with Cardy.