"…

The story of Chief O'Neill owes a great debt to his great-granddaughter Mary Lesch. It was Mary who followed through on family stories and hunted down her famous ancestor's unpublished manuscript. Then, with the aid of Chicago historian…

LUAIN -- On Dec. 16, 1971, soldier and politician General Richard Mulcahy (left) died in Dublin. Mulcahy was born in Waterford. After being educated in the Christian Brothers schools, Richard went to work for the postal service, like his father before him. He was a member of the Gaelic League…

DOMHNAIGH  -- On December 8, 1831, James Hoban, the architect of the White House, died in Washington, D.C. Hoban, a native of County Kilkenny, was educated as an artist by Thomas Ivory in Dublin. He worked as one of the architects on a number of buildings in Ireland, including…

Dear Friends,

I attended a two-week writing workshop run by the Sancho Panza Literary Society at Trinity College in Dublin in June. It was a wonderful writing experience as well as an opportunity to explore historic Dublin and attend the…

DOMHNAIGH -- On December 1, 1901, Fenian Thomas Clarke Luby died in New York. Luby was born in Dublin in 1821. He was the son of a Church of Ireland minister…

There's a stone covered grave on the wild mountainside.

There's a plain wooden cross on which this is inscribed:

Kneel down, dear stranger, say an Ave for me

I was sentenced to death being a wild rapparee

--…

Dungarvan’s George Gerard Lennon (1900-1991), of O’Connell Street, Western Terrace (circa 1915) and Mitchell Terrace (1936), had a noteworthy revolutionary career.

Lennon's tenure encompassed some 17 engagements against enemy forces in Waterford, Limerick and Cork: a 14 year old “adjutant” in the…

DOMHNAIGH -- On November 24, 1922, during the Irish Civil War, Irish republican Erskine Childers was executed by the Free State government. Childers, whose mother was from County Clare, was…

(Note: I delivered this eulogy today for my mother, Mary Louise Brooke, at All-Saints Church, in the University section of Syracuse, N.Y. My mother spent her earliest years a literal stone's throw from the church, where she was baptized.)…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Nov. 17, 1814, Joseph Finegan, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, was born in…

DOMHNAIGH -- On November 10, 1896, Lady Mary Heath (born Sophie Catherine Pierce), pioneer aviator and athlete, was born in Newcastlewest, County Limerick. Sophie was brought up in Newcastlewest and Dublin, where she attended a boarding school. At the outbreak of World War…

I haven’t posted in a month and my Irish guilt is gnawing at me! So it’s back to business this week as “that time of year” is fast approaching. I’ve already started plumping my fruit for the several varieties of fruitcake that I make, but not for this one because the fruit is boiled! I’ve had the…

DOMHNAIGH -- On Nov. 3, 1815, John Mitchel ,…

Francis O'Neill started as a policeman on August 17th, 1873. At that time, Chicago was still recovering from the devastation of the Great Fire a couple of years before. Francis had his own tragedies to contend with: He and his wife Anna lost their first child during that difficult time, and he struggled to keep a steady job in…

Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind, toward some resolution, which it may never find. -- The character Gene Garrison in the film "I Never Cried for My Father"



My Dad appeared to me this morning, most…

The night of November 1, 1920, All Souls Night, was extremely cold in the west of County Waterford. The members of the West Waterford Volunteers flying column huddled along the road at Piltown Cross were not only shivering because of the temperature. Most of them were also trembling slightly as…

CÉADAOIN -- On Oct. 30, 1892, Eoin O'Duffy, revolutionary and organizer of the infamous Blueshirts, was born in Castleblayney, County Monaghan.

(Right: O'Duffy's Blueshirts rally in a Dublin cemetery, 1934)

O'Duffy was…

DOMHNAIGH -- On October 20, 1881, the Irish National Land League was outlawed by the government. From the start (see below) the League had been a thorn in the side of government of British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone. The passage of the second Land Act in 1818 failed to mollify many of the…

Tombstone erected by Francis O'Neill in memory of his parents.

On a recent visit to West Cork, I had the fortune to properly explore Tralibane and the surrounding area. I was bowled over by the…