seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: County Tipperary


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William Smith O’Brien Pardoned from Deportation

william-smith-obrien

William Smith O’Brien, leader of the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848, is pardoned from his deportation to Van Diemen’s Land on February 26, 1854, on the condition of exile from Ireland.

From April 1828 to 1831 O’Brien serves as Conservative MP for Ennis. He becomes MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons until 1849.

Although a Protestant country-gentleman, O’Brien supports Catholic Emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O’Connell, he joins O’Connell’s anti-union Repeal Association.

Three years later, O’Brien withdraws the Young Irelanders from the association. In January 1847, along with Thomas Francis Meagher, he founds the Irish Confederation, although he continues to preach reconciliation until O’Connell’s death in May 1847. He is active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he speaks out in favour of a National Guard and tries to incite a national rebellion. He is tried for sedition on May 15, 1848, but is not convicted.

On July 29, 1848, O’Brien and other Young Irelanders lead landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an almost bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England.

In Dublin on June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land, which is Tasmania in present-day Australia.

O’Brien attempts to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania but is betrayed by Captain Ellis of the schooner hired for the escape. He is sent to Port Arthur where he meets up with John Mitchel, who had been transported prior to the rebellion. The cottages which O’Brien lives in on Maria Island and Port Arthur have been preserved in their 19th century state as memorials.

Having emigrated to the United States, Ellis is tried by another Young Irelanders leader, Terence MacManus, at a lynch court in San Francisco for the betrayal of O’Brien. He is freed for lack of evidence.

In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O’Brien is released on the condition he never return to Ireland. He settles in Brussels. In May 1856, he is granted an unconditional pardon and returns to Ireland that July. He contributes to The Nation newspaper but plays no further part in politics.

In 1864 he visits England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement takes place, and he dies at Bangor, Wales on June 16, 1864.


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Death of Singer Delia Murphy Kiernan

delia-murphy

Delia Murphy Kiernan, singer and collector of Irish ballads, dies of a massive heart attack on February 11, 1971, five days before her 69th birthday. She records several 78 RPM records in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In 1962 she records her only LP record, The Queen of Connemara, for Irish Prestige Records, New York, on the cover of which her name appears alongside the LP title. Her notable voice gives her the nickname the “Queen of Connemara.”

Murphy is born on February 16, 1902, in Ardroe, Roundfort, County Mayo, to a well-off family. Her father, John Murphy, from nearby Hollymount, makes his fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. While in America, he marries Ann Fanning from Roscrea, County Tipperary. They return to Ireland in 1901 and purchase the large Mount Jennings Estate in Hollymount. Murphy’s father encourages her interest in singing ballads from a young age. He also allows Irish travellers to camp on the estate. According to her own account, she learns her first ballads at their campfires.

Murphy is educated at Presentation Convent in Tuam, Dominican College in Dublin, and University College Galway (UCG), where she graduates with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. While at UCG she meets Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, and they marry in 1924, on her 22nd birthday. Kiernan then joins the Irish diplomatic service, where his first posting is to London. While there Murphy sings at many venues including many gatherings of Irish emigrants and becomes quite well-known. In 1939 she records The Blackbird, The Spinning Wheel, and Three Lovely Lassies for HMV.

In 1941, Kiernan is appointed Irish Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See in Rome. The Irish legation is the only English-speaking legation to remain open after the United States enters World War II. Murphy becomes one of those who assist Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty in saving the lives of 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews. In 1943, when Italy changes sides, many escaped POWs are helped by the legation to leave Italy.

In 1946, Murphy is awarded to Dame Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Kiernan later serves as Irish High Commissioner and later first Ambassador in Australia, and later to West Germany, Canada, and the United States. In 1961, while living in Ottawa, Murphy makes the recording of The Queen of Connemara produced by Ken Goldstein. Murphy and Kiernan purchase a farmhouse in Jasper, Ontario, near the Rideau Canal where she spends most of her time, even after Kiernan is posted to Washington, D.C. Tom Kiernan dies in December 1967.

By 1969 Murphy’s health is in decline. In November of that year, she sells her farmhouse in Canada and returns to Ireland. She lives in a cottage in Strawberry Beds, Chapelizod, County Dublin, until her death. During her lifetime she records upwards of 100 songs.


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Death of Dan Breen, Irish Patriot & Politician

Irish republican Dan Breen (1967)

Daniel “Dan” Breen, volunteer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, dies in Dublin on December 27, 1969. In later years, he was a Fianna Fáil politician.

Breen is born in Grange, Donohill parish, County Tipperary, on August 11, 1894. His father dies when he is six, leaving the family very poor. He is educated locally before becoming a plasterer and later a linesman on the Great Southern Railways.

Breen is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1912 and the Irish Volunteers in 1914. On January 21, 1919, the day the First Dáil meets in Dublin, Breen takes part in the Soloheadbeg Ambush. The ambush party of eight men, led by Seán Treacy, attacks two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) men who are escorting explosives to a quarry. The two policemen, James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell, are fatally shot during the incident. The ambush is considered to be the first incident of the Irish War of Independence.

During the conflict, the British put a £1,000 price on Breen’s head, which is later increased to £10,000. He quickly establishes himself as a leader within the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is known for his courage. On May 13, 1919 he helps rescue his comrade Seán Hogan at gunpoint from a heavily guarded train at Knocklong station in County Limerick. Breen, who is wounded, remembers how the battalion is “vehemently denounced as a cold-blooded assassins” and roundly condemned by the Catholic Church. After the fight, Treacy, Séamus Robinson, and Breen meet Michael Collins in Dublin, where they are told to make themselves scarce although they do not necessarily agree.

Breen and Sean Treacy shoot their way out through a British military cordon in the northern suburb of Drumcondra (Fernside). They escape, only for Treacy to be killed the next day. Breen is shot at least four times, twice in the lung.

The British reaction is to make Tipperary a “Special Military Area,” with curfews and travel permits. Volunteer GHQ authorises entrerprising attacks on barracks. The British policy forces Breen and Treacy to retreat to Dublin. They join Michael Collins’ Squad of assassins, later known as the Dublin Guard, and Dublin becomes the centre of the war.

Breen is present in December 1919 at the ambush in Ashtown beside Phoenix Park in Dublin where Martin Savage is killed while trying to assassinate the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount John French. The IRA hides behind hedges and a dungheap as the convoy of vehicles drives past. They have been instructed to ignore the first car but this contains their target, Lord French. Their roadblock fails as a policeman removes the horse and cart intended to stop the car.

Breen utterly rejects the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which makes him, like many others, angry and embittered. In the June 1922 elections Breen is nominated as a candidate by both the pro- and anti-Treaty sides, but is not elected.

Breen is elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1923 general election as a Republican anti-Treaty Teachta Dála (TD) for the Tipperary constituency. Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Breen joins the Anti-Treaty IRA in the civil war, fighting against those of his former comrades in arms who support the Treaty. He is arrested by the National Army of the Irish Free State and interned at Limerick Prison. He spends two months there before going on hunger strike for six days followed by a thirst strike of six days, prompting his release.

Breen writes a best-selling account of his guerrilla days, My Fight for Irish Freedom, in 1924. He represents Tipperary from the Fourth Dáil in 1923 as a Republican with Éamon de Valera and Frank Aiken. He is defeated in the June 1927 general election and travels to the United States where he opens a prohibition speakeasy. In 1932 he returns to Ireland and regains his seat as a member of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil at that year’s general election. During World War II he is said to hold largely pro-Axis views. He represents his Tipperary constituency without a break until his retirement at the 1965 election.

Breen dies in Dublin on December 27, 1969 and is buried in Donohill, near his birthplace. His funeral is the largest seen in west Tipperary since that of his close friend and comrade-in-arms Seán Treacy at Kilfeacle in October 1920. An estimated attendance of 10,000 mourners assemble in the tiny hamlet, giving ample testimony to the esteem in which he was held.

Breen is the subject of a 2007 biography Dan Breen and the IRA by Joe Ambrose.


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Birth of Shane MacGowan, Lead Singer of The Pogues

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Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan, Anglo-Irish musician and singer, best known as the lead singer and songwriter of Celtic trad punk band The Pogues, is born to Irish parents in Pembury, Kent, England, on December 25, 1957.

MacGowan spends his early childhood in County Tipperary, before his family moves back to England when he is six years old. He lives in many parts of the southeast of England, including Brighton and London.

MacGowan’s father, Maurice, works for a department store. MacGowan’s mother, Therese, is a singer and traditional Irish dancer, and has worked as a model in Dublin. In 1971, after attending Holmewood House School at Langton Green, Tunbridge Wells, MacGowan earns a literature scholarship and is accepted into Westminster School. He is found in possession of drugs and is expelled in his second year.

MacGowan gets his first taste of fame in 1976 at a concert by British punk band The Clash, when his earlobe is damaged by Jane Crockford, later to be a member of Mo-dettes. A photographer snaps a picture of him covered in blood and it makes the papers, with the headline “Cannibalism at Clash Gig.” Shortly after this, he forms his own punk rock band, The Nipple Erectors, later renamed The Nips.

MacGowan draws upon his Irish heritage when founding The Pogues and changes his early “punk” voice for a more authentic sound with tutoring from his extended family. Many of his songs are influenced by Irish nationalism, Irish history, the experiences of the Irish in London and the United States, and London life in general.

Between 1985 and 1987, he co-writes “Fairytale of New York,” which he performs with Kirsty MacColl. In the coming years MacGowan and The Pogues release several albums.

After The Pogues throw MacGowan out for unprofessional behaviour, he forms a new band, Shane MacGowan & The Popes, recording two studio albums, a live album, three tracks on The Popes Outlaw Heaven (2010) and a live DVD, and touring internationally. From December 2003 until May 2005, Shane MacGowan & The Popes tour extensively in the UK, Ireland, and Europe.

The Pogues and MacGowan reform for a sell-out tour in 2001 and each year from 2004 to 2009 for further tours, including headline slots at GuilFest in England and the Azkena Rock Festival in Basque Country. In May 2005, he rejoins The Pogues permanently.

The Pogues’ last performance on British soil occurs on July 5, 2014 at the British Summer Time festival in London’s Hyde Park.

For many years MacGowan suffers from binge drinking and heroin use. In 2001, Sinéad O’Connor reports MacGowan to the police in London for drug possession in what she says is an attempt to discourage him from using heroin. Initially furious, MacGowan later expresses gratitude towards O’Connor and claims that the incident helped him kick his heroin habit.

MacGowan has long been known for having very bad teeth. He loses the last of his natural teeth around 2008. In 2015, he has 28 new dentures on a titanium frame fitted in a nine-hour procedure which is the subject of an hour-long television programme. Dr. Darragh Mulrooney, the dental surgeon who carries out the procedure, comments that MacGowan recorded most of his great works while he still had some teeth: “We’ve effectively re-tuned his instrument and that will be an ongoing process.”

In the summer of 2015, MacGowan falls as he is leaving a Dublin studio, fracturing his pelvis. He is seen in public on crutches by December 2015, and continues to experience difficulty with general mobility.


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Founding of the Gaelic Athletic Association

gaelic-athletic-associationThe Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is founded on November 1, 1884, by a group of Irishmen gathered in the billiard room of the Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary. The architects and founding members are Michael Cusack of County Clare, Maurice Davin, Joseph K. Bracken, Thomas St. George McCarthy, P.J. Ryan of Tipperary, John Wyse Power, and John McKay. Their goal is to to formulate a plan and establish an organisation to foster and preserve Ireland’s unique games and athletic pastimes.

The GAA focuses primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball, and rounders. The Association also promotes Irish music and dance, as well as the Irish language.

It has more than 500,000 members worldwide, assets in excess of €2.6 billion, and declares total revenues of €94.8 million in 2010, with a total gross profit of €78.5 million.

Gaelic football and hurling are the most popular activities promoted by the organisation, and the most popular sports in the Republic of Ireland in terms of attendances. Gaelic football is also the largest participation sport in Northern Ireland. GAA competitions, activities, and structures are organised on an all-Ireland basis, without reference to the border drawn in 1921. The women’s version of these games, ladies’ Gaelic football and camogie, are organised by the independent but closely linked Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association respectively. GAA Handball is the Irish governing body for the sport of handball, while the other Gaelic sport, rounders, is managed by the GAA Rounders National Council.

Since its foundation in the late 19th century, the Association has grown to become a major influence in Irish sporting and cultural life with considerable reach into communities throughout Ireland and among the Irish diaspora.


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Birth of Catholic Teetotalist Reformer Theobald Mathew

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Theobald Mathew, Irish Catholic teetotalist reformer popularly known as Father Mathew and “The Apostle of Temperance,” is born at Thomastown, near Golden, County Tipperary, on October 10, 1790.

Mathew receives his schooling in Kilkenny, then moves for a short time to Maynooth. From 1808 to 1814 he studies in Dublin, where in the latter year he is ordained to the priesthood. Having entered the Capuchin order, after a brief period of service at Kilkenny, he joins the mission in Cork.

The movement with which his name is associated begins on April 10, 1838, with the establishment of the Cork Total Abstinence Society, which in less than nine months enrolls no fewer than 150,000 names. It rapidly spreads to Limerick and elsewhere, and some idea of its popularity may be formed from the fact that at Nenagh 20,000 persons are said to take the pledge in one day, 100,000 at Galway in two days, and 70,000 in Dublin in five days. At its height, just before the Great Famine, his movement enrolls some 3 million people, or more than half of the adult population of Ireland. In 1844 he visits Liverpool, Manchester, and London with almost equal success.

His work has a remarkable impact on the condition of the people in Ireland. The number committed to jail falls from 12,049 in 1839 to 9,875 by 1845. Sentences of death fall from 66 in 1839 to 14 in 1846, and transportations fall from 916 to 504 over the same period.

Mathew visits the United States in 1849, returning in 1851. While there, he finds himself at the center of the Abolitionist debate. Many of his hosts are pro-slavery and want assurances that their influential guest will not stray outside his remit of battling alcohol consumption. But Mathew has signed a petition encouraging the Irish in the U.S. to not partake in slavery in 1841 during Charles Lenox Remond‘s tour of Ireland. Now however, in order to avoid upsetting his slave-owning friends in the U.S., he snubs an invitation to publicly condemn chattel slavery, sacrificing his friendship with that movement. He defends his position by pointing out that there is nothing in the scripture that prohibits slavery. He is condemned by many on the abolitionist side, including the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who had received the pledge from Mathew in Cork in 1845.

Mathew dies on December 8, 1856, in Queenstown, County Cork, after suffering a stroke. He is buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Cork City, which he had established himself.

Statues of Mathew stand on St. Patrick’s Street, Cork by John Henry Foley (1864), and on O’Connell Street, Dublin by Mary Redmond (1893). There is also a Fr. Mathew Bridge in Limerick, County Limerick, which is named after the temperance reformer when it is rebuilt in 1844-1846.


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The Death of Bobby Clancy of The Clancy Brothers

bobby-clancy

Robert Joseph “Bobby” Clancy, Jr., singer and musician best known as a member of The Clancy Brothers, one of the most successful and influential Irish folk groups, dies on September 6, 2002, in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He plays the five-string banjo, guitar, bodhrán, and harmonica.

Bobby Clancy is born on May 11, 1927, in Carrick-on-Suir. He leaves home in the late 1940s to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) where he travels all over Europe, including Greece and Egypt where he learns many folk songs. He later joins his older brothers Paddy Clancy and Tom Clancy in New York City, where they work as actors. The trio sometimes sing, informally beginning the group later known as The Clancy Brothers.

In 1955, Bobby returns to Ireland to settle down and run his father’s insurance business. His youngest brother Liam Clancy takes his place in America and officially forms The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem with Paddy, Tom Clancy, and friend Tommy Makem. Bobby forges his own solo career, as well as performing the other half of two duos with sister Peg Clancy and an American folk singer named Sharon Collen. As a solo artist, Bobby brings his show to the small screen with his own TV series, When Bobby Clancy Sings, on Irish television.

When Tommy Makem leaves in 1969, Bobby takes his place and becomes a member of The Clancy Brothers. The four brothers, Paddy, Tom, Bobby, and Liam release three studio albums, Clancy Brothers Christmas, Flowers in the Valley, and Welcome to Our House.

Bobby’s initial tenure with The Clancy Brothers was short-lived. Bobby resumes his solo work, releasing a solo album Good Times When Bobby Clancy Sings and appearing live on a compilation album from a 1974 German Folk Festival, both in 1974.

In 1976, The Clancy Brothers disband for a few months. Liam Clancy and Louis Killen leave the group and remaining brothers Paddy and Tom decide to go on a hiatus. In 1977, plans are set into motion to regroup and Paddy and Tom ask Bobby to join. The three brothers recruit their nephew, singer-songwriter Robbie O’Connell.

The quartet tours part-time, performing three-month-long tours each year in March, August, and November only in the United States. They release two live albums, one in 1982 and the other in 1988. During the remaining part of the year, Bobby continues running the insurance business in Carrick-on-Suir and continues his solo career in Ireland.

Youngest brother Liam Clancy rejoins Bobby, Paddy, and Robbie in 1990 when brother Tom is diagnosed with stomach cancer and dies in November 1990. The Clancy Brothers now perform more frequently than they had in the 1970s and 1980s, appearing on numerous TV shows in America and Ireland. The quartet releases the group’s first studio album in over 20 years, Older But No Wiser, in late 1995, an title coined by Bobby’s wife Moira. Soon after the album’s release, Liam Clancy and Robbie O’Connell leave the group. Bobby and Paddy continue performing with Bobby’s son Finbarr Clancy and friend Eddie Dillon from Boston. This new line-up tours until November 1998 when Paddy dies from lung cancer. Now as a trio, the Clancys and Eddie Dillon record two live albums and Bobby Clancy releases an additional two solo albums.

In 1999 Bobby is diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and by 2000 he is unable to perform on his feet and the trio performs while sitting down. By March 2002, Bobby is unable to perform and has to quit a scheduled tour. On September 6, 2002, Bobby Clancy dies at the age of 75. At the time of his death he is back home in Ireland, long since living at the home of his parents on William Street in Carrick-on-Suir, the home where he was born.


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The Peace Preservation Force is Established

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Robert Peel (pictured), chief secretary of Ireland (1812-18), establishes the Peace Preservation Force to counter rural unrest on July 25, 1814. This rudimentary paramilitary police force is designed to provide policing in rural Ireland, replacing the 18th century system of watchmen, baronial constables, revenue officers, and British military forces.

Peel masterminds Act 54, George III, c.131, which is passed on July 25, 1814, to “provide for the better execution of the Laws in Ireland, by appointing Superintending Magistrates and additional Constables in Counties in certain cases.” On foot of this Act, Peel forms the Peace Preservation Force.

The Peace Preservation Force is at the disposal of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for use in any district that has been “proclaimed” in a disturbed area. The first resident magistrates are appointed under the 1814 Act.

Sir Richard Willcocks, a former Dublin Magistrate and Special Government Magistrate, is the first appointed Chief Magistrate of the Peace Preservation Force and is allocated to the Barony of Middlethird, County Tipperary, with twenty constables who are ex-cavalry sergeants operating from a base at Cashel. He is appointed Inspector General of Munster and Stipendiary Magistrate. He dies in Dublin and is buried in Chapelizod Church of Ireland Cemetery.

The cost of the Peace Preservation Force operation has to be paid for by the area “proclaimed,” and when tranquility is restored the force will be either withdrawn or disbanded. Between 1814 and 1922 a total of four members of the Peace Preservation Force are killed on duty, namely, Sub Constable Thomas Manning is shot dead on August 16, 1821 when his patrol challenges a gang of insurgents; Chief Police Magistrate Richard Going, is shot dead on October 14, 1821 by a gang of four men while out riding; Sub Constable Hugh Colligan is killed on January 31, 1822 when his barracks are attacked; Sub Constable Thomas Knox is killed on March 10, 1822 while on sick leave and is identified as a policeman.


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Death of John Moore Neligan, Physician & Medical Teacher

atlas-of-cutaneous-diseases

John Moore Neligan, one of the foremost physicians and medical teachers of his day, dies on July 24, 1863. Neligan, son of a medical practitioner, is born at Clonmel, County Tipperary, in 1815. He graduates M.D. at Edinburgh in 1836, and begins practice in his birthplace. He later moves to Cork, where he lectures on materia medica and medical botany in a private school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery in Warren’s Place.

In 1840 he takes a house in Dublin, and in 1841 is appointed physician to the Jervis Street Hospital. He also gives lectures on materia medica from 1841 to 1846, and on medicine from 1846 to 1857, in the Dublin school of Peter Street. He publishes in 1844 Medicines, their Uses and Mode of Administration, which gives an account of all the drugs mentioned in the London, Scottish, and Irish pharmacopœias, and of some others. Their sources, medicinal actions, doses, and most useful compounds are clearly stated. The compilation, though containing no original matter, is useful to medical practitioners, and goes through many editions.

Neligan enjoys the friendship of Robert James Graves, the famous lecturer on medicine, and in 1848 edits the second edition of his Clinical Lectures on the Practice of Medicine. In the same year he publishes The Diagnosis and Treatment of Eruptive Diseases of the Scalp, which is printed at the Dublin University Press. He describes as inflammatory diseases herpes, eczema, impetigo, and pityriasis, and as non-inflammatory porrigo, and gives a lucid statement of their characteristics in tabular form. He is unaware, however, of the parasitic nature of herpes capitis, as he calls ringworm, and seems not to have noticed the frequent relation between eczema of the occiput and animal parasites.

From 1849 to 1861 he edits the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, and publishes many medical papers of his own in it. In 1852 he publishes A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin, and, like most men who attain notoriety as dermatologists, issues in 1855 a coloured Atlas of Skin Diseases. His treatise is a compilation from standard authors, with a very small addition from his own experience. The subject is well arranged, and so set forth as to be useful to practitioners. It is much read, and leads to his treating many patients with cutaneous affections.

Neligan suffers from kidney disease in his final years. On July 17, he begins to feel unwell and returns to his country residence, Clonmel House, and goes to bed, from which he never rises again. Over the next few days his kidneys ceased to function altogether and he slips into a coma. John Moore Neligan dies on July 24, 1863.


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Ronald Reagan Visits His Ancestral Home in Ballyporeen

reagan-visits-ballyporeen-1984U.S. President Ronald Reagan visits his ancestral home in Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, on June 3, 1984. Reagan’s great-grandfather, Michael Regan, who later changed the spelling of his name, is baptised in the village in 1829. Around 1851, after the Great Famine, he emigrates to London and ultimately the United States in 1857.

Surrounded by throngs of photographers and security people, Reagan slowly makes his way through the tiny village in the bright green hills of County Tipperary. Speaking to 3,000 applauding and cheering visitors gathered under drizzly skies at the main crossroads of Ballyporeen, Reagan explains that until recently he had never known of his roots because his father had been orphaned before reaching the age of six.

“And now,” Reagan tells the exuberant crowd, “thanks to you and the efforts of good people who have dug into the history of a poor immigrant family, I know at last whence I came. And this has given my soul a new contentment. And it is a joyous feeling. It is like coming home after a long journey.”

Reagan, joined by his wife, Nancy, aides, dignitaries, and townspeople worship at the modest Church of the Assumption in Ballyporeen, where his great-grandfather was supposedly baptized in 1829.

After the service, Reagan makes his way down Church Street, shaking the hands of well-wishers. Amid the handshaking, a marching bagpipe corps plays A Nation Once Again and other patriotic tunes.

At the town center, the Reagans visit the pub run by John O’Farrell, who first capitalizes on the news of the President’s lineage and names his establishment “The Ronald Reagan” in 1981. Reagan unveils a plaque for the President Reagan tourist center that is to be built here. While the building housing the pub still stands, the pub closes in 2004 and the following year its fittings and external signage are transported to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, where it still stands today.

There is some opposition to Reagan’s visit to Ireland. Authorities keep approximately 600 protesters behind barriers on the outskirts of the village and they are not permitted into the village until after the presidential party had departed. The main focus of the protesters is toward the Reagan administration’s foreign policy, in particular its support of the Contras in Nicaragua.