Cumann Staire Agus Seandálaíochta Oirdheisceart Na Gaillimhe
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Ruins in the village of Carihaken, County of Galway, ILN 1849 Cumann Staire agus Seandálaíochta Oirdheisceart na Gaillimhe Newsletter No. 28 Winter 2017 Events and Lectures, Autumn/Winter 2017 Contents CONFERENCE The Bishop & Loughrea Mercy Sisters by Declan Kelly 2 On Saturday October 7th, the Workhouse will host a Upcoming Events: Autumn/Winter 2017 4 major conference on ‘The Workhouse, Famine, and Images of the Past: The Irish Schoolmaster 5 Emigration’. Speakers include Professor Christine Tales from the Workhouse 6 Kinealy, Dr Gerry Moran, and Gerard Madden. The Dolphin Family by Adrian Martyn 7 The event is free, lunch will be provided, and in lieu of 1883 United States Pensions Roll by Clare Lowery 9 a fee attendees will be requested to donate towards the Poems of Old 10 development of a museum at the centre. Those inter- Postcards: Society Street, Ballinasloe 10 ested should book a place ASAP, See pages 4 and 19. Recommended Sources in Local History 11 The RIC in Athenry by Ronan Killeen 12 SEGAHS Lectures, 8.30pm in Galwaymen at War by Marie Bennett 14 The Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna. Heritage Week Highlights 15 Tuesday, October 10th (Lecture) What it says in the Papers 15 Lecture by John Joe Conwell on ‘The Rise & Fall of Freemasons in Co Galway by Steve Dolan 16 Lord Dunkellin’. The eldest son of Lord Clanricarde, Treasures of Lisreagan House by Aron Donnelly 18 Lord Dunkellin (1827-1867) served as MP for both GAA Heroes of Old - Derrydonnell 19 Galway borough and county. In May 1922, a statue in Larkin Matters: Killimor 20 his memory by renowned sculptor John Henry Foley Kilteskill gravestones by Christy Cunniffe 20 was pulled from its pedestal in Eyre Square and _______________________________________________________________ dumped into the River Corrib. We discover why! Chairperson’s Update Tuesday, November 21st (Lecture) This year we have covered as wide a variety of subjects In her first lecture to the society, we welcome former as possible through our lectures and events right around Minister for Justice Nora Owen on ‘Michael Collins—a the county. And we’re looking forward to 2018 already, with loads of lectures and other events to come. man of diversity’ covering some of the main events in the years in the run up to independence. Ann O’Riordan, Chairperson, October 2017. The Irish Workhouse Centre and SEGAHS The seasonal SEGAHS newsletters are published in part- nership with the Irish Workhouse Centre - Portumna, home of the society. The Workhouse is open from for guided tours 7 days a week from 09.30 to 17.00. For more information, please visit us on facebook or at http://irishworkhousecentre.ie/. The Irish Workhouse Centre, Saint Brigids Road, Portumna, Co Galway. 0909-759200 A centre for the Arts, Community, Education, History, and Tourism The Bishop who brought the Mercy Sisters to Loughrea Declan Kelly Two weeks before the first group of Mercy Sisters arrived in Loughrea in October 1851 there was an unusual phenomenon in Limerick. A tornado (referred to as a ‘whirlwind’ in contemporary reports) roared through the city leaving a trail of dev- astation behind it.1 If Bishop John Derry was aware of this meteorological anomaly in Munster, he may well have consid- ered the impending arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in Loughrea an ironic blessing as the town had witnessed similar de- struction from the elements only twelve years before during the Night of the Big Wind. The Big Wind, which seemed to have ‘blown from the face of Heaven’,2 had ravaged the western suburbs of Loughrea and left 400 souls destitute. The charitable disposition of local merchant Laurence Fahy ensured that space was made available in his brewery on Barrack Street for 89 homeless families4 but there were precious few mechanisms to care for the destitute.3 Loughrea had just be- gun to recover when the Famine struck and carried off huge numbers from the district including Bishop Derry`s immediate predecessor, Dr Thomas Coen, and two successive parish administrators. Recognising that these events impacted most on the poorest of his flock, Dr Derry knew that such incidents highlighted the urgency for a dedicated and organised human resource to care for the destitute and he had already seen the effectiveness of the Sisters in their mission at Ballinasloe. While Bishop Derry left behind little correspondence by which we might seek to interpret his character, there is sufficient evidence to deduce that he was highly intelligent, progressive, and also eminently practical. As a person, he was regarded by contemporaries as having an old-world courtesy and the requisite social-skills for any company. This probably came of his rearing in a public house, an environment open to all classes of personality and requiring a ready response to topical conversation points. He was certainly a single-minded individual. We can only imagine the sense of trepidation among the older members of the diocesan clergy as they stepped tentatively from Archdeacon Dillon`s residence5 on Main Street in Ballinasloe on 13th April 1852 in order to process towards Market Square to lay the foundation stone of St Michael`s Church. The older clergy had been trained while Penal Laws were still on the statute books and in 1822 one of their late contemporaries Fr John O`Connor, PP Aughrim and Kilconnell, had been tried, albeit unsuccessfully, for officiating at the wedding of a Catholic and a Protestant. For Catholic townspeople in Ballinasloe, the sight of almost thirty of their own fully robed clergy outside of the restricted space of a Catholic chapel and winding their way solemnly along one of the thoroughfares created by the second Earl of Clancarty would have been nothing less than thrillingly shocking. Dr Derry had been reared on what is now known as Dunlo Street, where his father kept a public house and grocery directly opposite what was then an area of open space known as Brutin`s Yard and which is now host to St Michael`s Presbytery. He proba- bly served at Mass for Bishop Thomas Costello and would also have known Archdeacon Dillon. He would have known some of the mostly vocally loyalist merchant families from his earliest age and he would have been able to predict pre- cisely how they would have reacted to the sight of a Roman Catholic episcopal mitre bobbing about in open local view for the first time since the Reformation. The Government knew exactly what the streetwise Dr Derry`s endgame was; fearful of fomenting unrest among the Catholic populace, however, its officials responded with token finger-wagging and a slightly sniffy letter to Derry ex- pressing the hope that ‘this violation of the law has been committed inadver- tently’.6 We do not know how Dr Derry reacted to this letter, but one would be surprised if he did not howl with laugh- ter. 2 Education was of the utmost importance to Derry and he quite clearly regarded the Sisters of Mercy as partners in advancing its cause. He was the first bishop of Clonfert to establish a successful educational academy, St Brendan`s (Minor) Seminary, which was overseen by priests of Clonfert diocese. St Brendan`s had only come into existence after a few other similar types of educational institutions had come and gone. The Irish Catholic Directory of 1843 reported that Dr Coen had established an academy in Loughrea ‘for the education of ecclesiastical students preparatory to their entrance into college’ and which was funded by contributions from Coen and his clergy. This was a rather slender base for financial support, however, and Dr Coen had left it late to attempt such a grand design. His own death in 1847 and the decline of Loughrea`s population from 7,152 in 1841 to 4,459 in 1851 ended the project. Dr Derry was prepared to make another attempt and on 12th May 1852, the Galway Vindicator reported that ‘hitherto the important town of Loughrea has been woefully defi- cient in facilities for giving a sound scientific and mercantile education to the youth of the middle class…we are glad, however, to perceive that Right Rev Dr Derry is taking active steps to supply the want which has so long existed’. One of the steps taken by Dr Derry was to accept the gift of a house for educational purposes from Lord Clanrickarde whose mother had been the Catholic daughter of Sir Thomas Burke of Marblehill. The property mentioned in the notice describes Rus-In-Urbe on the eastern approach to Loughrea and adjacent to Garrybreeda Cemetery. Thus was begun what would become St Brendan`s Seminary and while it was initially run by lay professors (one of whom was a former clerical student), from 1863 until 1880 its Presidents were also the local parish administrators. The grounding it gave in the Classics and its success as a springboard for prospective clergy is clear from the fact that from the latter half of the nineteenth century, clerical students for Clonfert diocese were ma- triculating straight into philosophy and theology, rather than the lower houses of humanity and rhetoric. Its death knell was sounded by the opening of a new diocesan college at Cartron in 1892, but it would trundle on for another decade until closed by Bishop O`Dea who then established his residence at the old college until Coorheen came up for purchase. The cordial relations between Clonfert clergy and the Sisters of Mercy must have been aided by the familial links between the clergy and the Sisters. There is a lengthy list of relatives of Clonfert clergy joining the Or- der, among them Archdeacon Dillon`s niece Sarah and Fr Thomas Pelly`s sister.7 All the newspaper reports of the reception of postulants at either Ballinasloe or Loughrea Convents note the presence of Dr Derry and the leading clerical lights of Clonfert diocese.