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Birth of Irish American Novelist Thomas Mayne Reid

Thomas Mayne Reid, Irish American novelist, who fought in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), is born on April 4, 1818, in Ballyroney, a hamlet near Katesbridge, County Down, in present day Northern Ireland.

Reid is the son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid, a Presbyterian minister and later a senior clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and his wife, a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford. Educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, he rebels against his father’s plans for him and decides not to pursue a career in the church. He briefly runs a school at Ballyroney before emigrating to the United States in 1839. Arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana, he finds a job as a corn factor’s clerk in the corn market. After six months he leaves because he refuses to whip slaves. Travelling across America, he works as a teacher, a clerk and an Indian-fighter, and anonymously publishes his first poem in August 1843. Later that year he meets Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia and the two become close friends. Poe later admits that Reid was ‘a colossal but most picturesque liar,’ but was impressed by his brilliant story-telling abilities.

With the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846 Reid enlists in the 1st New York Infantry Regiment and is commissioned second lieutenant. Contributing a series of reports from the front under the pseudonym ‘Ecolier,’ he performs with great bravery in the Battle of Chapultepac on September 13, 1847. Wounded during the battle, he is promoted to first lieutenant three days later. Following his discharge from the army in 1848 he claims to have reached the rank of captain, but this is another of his inventions.

Reid’s first play, Love’s Martyr, is staged at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, for five nights in October 1848, and the following year he publishes an embellished account of his experiences in Mexico entitled War Life. All of his works are published under the name ‘Captain Mayne Reid.’ In July 1849 he sails to England with a group of Hungarian radicals but decides against accompanying them to the Continent. Returning briefly to Ireland, he settles in London in 1850 and writes a novel, The Rifle Rangers. It is an immediate success and is followed quickly by The Scalp Hunters (1851), The Desert Home (1852), and The Boy Hunters (1853). While in England in 1851 he meets and falls in love with a 13-year-old girl, Elizabeth Hyde, daughter of his publisher, G. W. Hyde, an English aristocrat. When he discovers her age, he tells her that she is ‘getting old enough to have a lover, and you must have me.’ Two years later he continues with his suit, and this time is successful as they marry in 1853. He is immensely proud of his young bride, and later writes a semi-autobiographical novel The Child Wife (1868), based on their relationship.

Establishing a reputation as one of the most popular novelists of his generation, Reid does much to enhance the romantic image of the American West. His internationally successful books include The White Chief (1855), Bush Boys (1856), Oceola (1859), and The Headless Horseman (1865), and his novel about miscegenation, The Quadroon (1856), is later plagiarised by Dion Boucicault for The Octoroon (1859). A champion croquet player, he writes a treatise on the subject in 1863.

Disaster strikes in November 1866 when Reid is declared bankrupt. He had squandered all his money on the construction of ‘The Ranche,’ a Mexican-style hacienda in England. To raise money, he returns to the United States and embarks on a successful lecturing tour. Settling at Newport, Rhode Island, he writes another novel, The Helpless Hand (1868), which is a huge success and alleviates some of his difficulties. His wife hates America, however, and after he is briefly hospitalised in 1870, they decide to return to England.

Ill health, artistic doubts, and financial insecurity plagued Reid’s final years. Diagnosed with acute depression, he is unable to recapture his earlier audience and, despite a pension from the U.S. government, he struggles for money. He dies at Ross in Herefordshire on October 22, 1883, and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Although not regarded as an important novelist, Reid none the less has a significant influence on subsequent writers. The young Vladimir Nabokov is deeply impressed by his adventure stories, and one of his own first works is a poetic recreation of The Headless Horseman in French alexandrine. Both Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are admirers, and politicians as diverse as Theodore Roosevelt and Leon Trotsky also make reference to his varied output. In total, Reid publishes over sixty novels, which are printed in ten languages.


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Birth of Emmet Dalton, Soldier & Film Producer

James Emmet Dalton MC, Irish soldier and film producer, is born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on March 4, 1898. He serves in the British Army in World War I, reaching the rank of captain. However, on his return to Ireland he becomes one of the senior figures in the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which fights against British rule in Ireland.

Dalton is born to Irish American parents James F. and Katharine L. Dalton. The family moves back to Ireland when he is two years old. He grows up in a middle-class Catholic background in Drumcondra in North Dublin and lives at No. 8 Upper St. Columba’s Road. He is educated by the Christian Brothers at O’Connell School in North Richmond Street. He joins the nationalist militia, the Irish Volunteers, in 1913 and the following year, though only fifteen, is involved in the smuggling of arms into Ireland.

Dalton joins the British Army in 1915 for the duration of the Great War. His decision is not that unusual among Irish Volunteers, as over 20,000 of the National Volunteers join the British New Army on the urgings of Nationalist leader John Redmond. His father, however, disagrees with his son’s decision. He initially joins the 7th battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers (RDF) as a temporary 2nd Lieutenant. By 1916 he is attached to the 9th Battalion, RDF, 16th (Irish) Division under Major-General William Hickie, which contains many Irish nationalist recruits.

During the Battle of the Somme in September 1916, Dalton is involved in bloody fighting during the Battle of Ginchy, in which over 4,000 Irishmen are killed or wounded. He is awarded the Military Cross for his conduct in the battle. Afterwards he is transferred to the 6th Battalion, Leinster Regiment, and sent to Thessaloniki then Palestine, where he commands a company and then supervises a sniper school in el-ʻArīsh. In 1918 he is re-deployed again to France, and in July promoted to captain, serving as an instructor.

On demobilisation in April 1919, Dalton returns to Ireland. There, finding that his younger brother Charlie had joined the IRA, he himself follows suit. He later comments on the apparent contradiction of fighting both with and against the British Army by saying that he had fought for Ireland with the British and fought for Ireland against them.

Dalton becomes close to Michael Collins and rises swiftly to become IRA Director of Intelligence and is involved in The Squad, the Dublin-based assassination unit. On May 14, 1921, he leads an operation with Paddy Daly that he and Collins had devised. It is designed to rescue Gen. Seán Mac Eoin from Mountjoy Prison using a hijacked British armoured car and two of Dalton’s old British Army uniforms.

Dalton follows Collins in accepting the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and is one of the first officers, a Major General, in the new National Army established by the Irish Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. The Treaty is opposed by much of the IRA and Civil War between pro and anti-treaty factions eventually results.

Dalton is in command of troops assaulting the Four Courts in the Battle of Dublin which marks the start of the war in June 1922. At Collins’ instigation he, as Military liaison officer with the British during the truce, takes control of the two 18 pounder guns from the British that are trained on the buildings. He becomes commander of the Free State Army under Richard Mulcahy‘s direction. He is behind the Irish Free State offensive of July–August 1922 that dislodges the Anti-Treaty fighters from the towns of Munster. He proposes seaborne landings to take the Anti-Treaty positions from the rear and he commands one such naval landing that takes Cork in early August. In spite of firm loyalty to the National Army, he is critical of the Free State’s failure to follow up its victory, allowing the Anti-Treaty IRA to regroup resuming the guerrilla warfare started in 1919.

On August 22, 1922, he accompanies Collins in convoy, touring rural west Cork. The convoy is ambushed near Béal na Bláth and Collins is killed in the firefight. He had advised Collins to drive on, but Collins, who is not an experienced combat veteran, insists on stopping to fight.

Dalton is married shortly afterwards, on October 9, 1922, to Alice Shannon in Cork’s Imperial Hotel. By December 1922 he has resigned his command in the Army. He does not agree with the execution of republican prisoners that mark the latter stages of the Civil War. After briefly working as clerk of the Irish Senate, Seanad Éireann, he leaves the job to work in the movie industry.

Over the following forty years, Dalton works in Ireland and the United States in film production. In 1958 he founds Irish Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow. His company helps produce films such as The Blue Max, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and The Lion in Winter, all of which are filmed in Ireland. His daughter is Irish actress Audrey Dalton.

Dalton dies in his daughter Nuala’s house in Dublin on March 4, 1978, his 80th birthday, never having seen the film that Cathal O’Shannon of RTÉ had made on his life. During the making of the film, they visit the battlefields in France, Kilworth Camp in Cork, Béal Na Bláth, and other places that Dalton had not visited since his earlier years. He wishes to be buried as near as possible to his friend Michael Collins in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin and is buried there in March 1978 after a military funeral. None of the ruling Fianna Fáil government ministers or TDs attend.

(Pictured: Dalton photographed in lieutenant’s uniform, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, taken circa. 1914-1918)


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Birth of John Morrissey, Irish American Politician & Boxing Champion

John Morrissey, Irish American politician, bare-knuckle boxing champion and criminal also known as ‘Old Smoke,’ is born on February 12, 1831, at Templemore, County Tipperary.

Morrissey is the only son among eight children of Timothy Morrissey, factory worker, and Julia (or Mary) Morrissey. In 1834 the family emigrates to Canada and then the United States, settling at Troy, New York. From the age of ten he works, first in a mill, and then as an iron worker due to his size and strength. He becomes involved in various street gangs, developing a reputation as a pugilist of great strength and resolve. As leader of the Down-Town gang, he defeats six members of the rival Up-Town gang in a single afternoon in 1848. He takes work on a Hudson River steamer and marries Sarah Smith, daughter of the ship’s captain, around 1849. They have one child who dies before reaching adulthood.

In a New York saloon Morrissey challenges Charley ‘Dutch’ Duane to a prize fight and, when he is not to be found, with typical bravado he extends the challenge to everyone present. This impresses the owner, Isaiah Rynders, the Tammany Hall politician, and he employs Morrissey to help the Democratic Party, which involves intimidating voters at election time. A fistfight with gang rival Tom McCann earns him the nickname ‘Old Smoke.’ Mid-fight he is forced onto a bed of coals, but despite having his flesh burned, refuses to concede defeat. He fights his way back and beats McCann into unconsciousness. Stowing away to California to challenge other fighters, he begins a gambling house to raise money and embarks on a privateering expedition to the Queen Charlotte Islands in a quixotic attempt to make his fortune.

In his first professional prize fight on August 21, 1852, Morrissey defeats George Thompson at Mare Island, California, in dubious circumstances, and begins calling himself the ‘champion of America.’ However, it is only on October 12, 1853, that he officially earns this title, when he wins the heavyweight championship of America in a bout at Boston Corner, New York, against Yankee Sullivan. The fight lasts thirty-seven rounds, and Morrissey has the worst of most of them, but he is awarded the contest after a free-for-all in the ring.

Increasingly involved in New York politics, Morrissey and his supporters fight street battles against the rival gang of William Poole, known as ‘Bill the Butcher,’ a Know Nothing politician later fictionalised in the film Gangs of New York (2002). On July 26, 1854, the two men fight on the docks, but Morrissey is beaten badly and forced to surrender. This marks the beginning of a bitter feud between the two parties, with heavy casualties on both sides, which climaxes on March 8, 1855, when Poole is murdered. Morrissey is indicted as a conspirator in the crime but is soon released because of his political connections.

On October 20, 1858, Morrissey fights John C. Heenan (1835–73) in another heavyweight championship bout. Heenan breaks his hand early in the fight and is always at a disadvantage. After taking much punishment Morrissey finally makes his dominance count. There is a rematch on April 4, 1859, which Morrissey again wins, and after this he retires from the ring. Investing his prize money, he runs two saloons and a gambling house in New York. With the huge profits from his gambling empire, he invests in real estate in Saratoga Springs, New York, opening the Saratoga Race Course there in 1863 which has endured to become America’s oldest major sports venue.

A political career beckons as a reward for Morrissey’s consistent support for the Democratic Party. He is elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1866 representing New York’s fifth district, is re-elected the following year, and serves until March 3, 1871. He supports President Andrew Johnson against demands for his impeachment and is skeptical about the Radicals’ plans for reconstruction in the south. In his final years he serves in the New York State Senate (1875–78).

After contracting pneumonia, Morrissey dies at the Adelphi Hotel, Saratoga Springs, on May 1, 1878, and is buried at Saint Peter’s Cemetery, Troy. On the day of his funeral, flags at New York City Hall are lowered to half-mast, while the National Police Gazette declares on May 4, 1878, that “few men of our day have arisen from beginnings so discouraging to a place so high in the general esteem of the community.” His name is included in the list of ‘pioneer’ inductees in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, and each year the John Morrissey Stakes are held at Saratoga Race Course in honour of its founder.

(Pictured: John Morrissey, U.S. Representative from New York, circa 1870s, source Library of Congress)


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Death of Gobnait Ní Bhruadair, Irish Republican & Lifelong Radical

Gobnait Ní Bhruadair, Irish republican and lifelong radical, dies in Sneem, County Kerry, on January 16, 1955. She campaigns passionately for causes as diverse as the reform of nursing, protection and promotion of the Irish language and the freedom of Ireland from British rule.

Ní Bhruadair is born the Hon. Albinia Lucy Brodrick on December 17, 1861, at 23 Chester Square, Belgrave, London, the fifth daughter of William Brodrick, 8th Viscount Midleton (1830–1907), and his wife, Augusta Mary (née Freemantle), daughter of Thomas Fremantle, 1st Baron Cottesloe. She spends her early childhood in London until the family moves to their country estate in Peper Harow, Surrey in 1870. Educated privately, she travels extensively across the continent and speaks fluent German, Italian and French, and has a reading knowledge of Latin.

Ní Bhruadair’s family is an English Protestant aristocratic one which has been at the forefront of British rule in Ireland since the 17th century. In the early twentieth century it includes leaders of the Unionist campaign against Irish Home Rule. Her brother, St. John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton, is a nominal leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance from 1910 until 1918 when he and other Unionists outside Ulster establish the Irish Unionist Anti-Partition League.

The polar opposite of Ní Bhruadair, her brother is consistent in his low opinion of the Irish and holds imperialist views that warmly embrace much of the jingoism associated with social Darwinism. The young Albinia Lucy Brodrick conforms to her familial political views on Ireland, if her authorship of the pro-Unionist song “Irishmen stand” is an indicator. However, by the start of the twentieth century she becomes a regular visitor to her father’s estate in County Cork. There she begins to educate herself about Ireland and begins to reject the views about Ireland that she had been raised on. In 1902 she writes about the need to develop Irish industry and around the same time she begins to develop an interest in the Gaelic revival. She begins to pay regular visits to the Gaeltacht where she becomes fluent in Irish and is horrified at the abject poverty of the people.

From this point on, Ní Bhruadair’s affinity with Ireland and Irish culture grows intensely. Upon her father’s death in 1907 she becomes financially independent and in 1908 purchases a home near West Cove, Caherdaniel, County Kerry. The same year she establishes an agricultural cooperative there to develop local industry. She organises classes educating people on diet, encourages vegetarianism and, during the smallpox epidemic of 1910, nurses the local people. Determined to establish a hospital for local poor people, she travels to the United States to raise funds.

There Ní Bhruadair takes the opportunity to study American nursing, meets leading Irish Americans and becomes more politicised to Ireland’s cause. Upon her return to Kerry, she establishes a hospital in Caherdaniel later in 1910. She renames the area Ballincoona (Baile an Chúnaimh, ‘the home of help’), but it is unsuccessful and eventually closes for lack of money. She writes on health matters for The Englishwoman and Fortnightly, among other journals, is a member of the council of the National Council of Trained Nurses and gives evidence to the royal commission on venereal disease in 1914.

Ní Bhruadair is a staunch supporter of the 1916 Easter Rising. She joins both Cumann na mBan and Sinn Féin. She visits some of the 1,800 Irish republican internees held by the British in Frongoch internment camp in Wales and writes to the newspapers with practical advice for intending visitors. She canvasses for various Sinn Féin candidates during the 1918 Irish general election and is a Sinn Féin member on Kerry County Council (1919–21), becoming one of its reserve chairpersons. During the Irish War of Independence, she shelters Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers and consequently her home becomes the target for Black and Tans attacks.

Along with Dr. Kathleen Lynn she works with the Irish White Cross to distribute food to the dependents of IRA volunteers. By the end of the Irish War of Independence she has become hardened by the suffering she has seen and is by now implacably opposed to British rule in Ireland. She becomes one of the most vociferous voices against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 6, 1921. She becomes a firebrand speaker at meetings in the staunchly republican West Kerry area. In April 1923 she is shot by Irish Free State troops and arrested. She is subsequently imprisoned in the North Dublin Union, where she follows the example of other republicans and goes on hunger strike. She is released two weeks later. Following the formation of Fianna Fáil by Éamon de Valera in 1926, she continues to support the more hardline Sinn Féin.

In October 1926 Ní Bhruadair represents Munster at the party’s Ardfheis. She owns the party’s semi-official organ, Irish Freedom, from 1926–37, where she frequently contributes articles and in its later years acts as editor. Her home becomes the target of the Free State government forces in 1929 following an upsurge in violence from anti-Treaty republicans against the government. She and her close friend Mary MacSwiney leave Cumann na mBan following the decision by its members at their 1933 convention to pursue social radicalism. The two then establish an all-women’s nationalist movement named Mná na Poblachta, which fails to attract many new members.

Ní Bhruadair continues to speak Irish and regularly attends Conradh na Gaeilge branch meetings in Tralee. Although sympathetic to Catholicism, she remains a member of the Anglican Church of Ireland, and regularly plays the harmonium at Sneem’s Church of Ireland services. Described by a biographer as “a woman of frugal habits and decided opinions, she was in many ways difficult and eccentric.” She dies on January 16, 1955, and is buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard in Sneem, County Kerry.

In her will Ní Bhruadair leaves most of her wealth (£17,000) to republicans “as they were in the years 1919 to 1921.” The vagueness of her bequest leads to legal wrangles for decades. Finally, in February 1979, Justice Seán Gannon rules that the bequest is void for remoteness, as it is impossible to determine which republican faction meets her criteria.


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Annie Moore Becomes First Immigrant Processed Through Ellis Island

On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore, a 15-year-old Irish émigré from County Cork, becomes the first immigrant to the United States to pass through federal immigrant inspection at the Ellis Island station in New York Harbor.

Over 12 million immigrants are processed at the station that eventually closes in 1954. Third class and steerage passengers are processed at the Ellis Island station. First- and Second-class passengers are generally processed on the boats they arrive on as they are seen to be of lesser “risk.”

Moore arrives from County Cork aboard the Guion Line steamship Nevada in 1892. Her brothers, Anthony and Philip, who journey with her, have just turned 15 and 12, respectively. As the first person to pass inspection at the newly opened facility, she is presented with an American $10 gold piece from an American official.

Moore’s parents, Matthew and Julia, had come to the United States in 1888 and were living at 32 Monroe Street in Manhattan. Annie marries a son of German Catholic immigrants, Joseph Augustus Schayer (1876-1960), a salesman at Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market, with whom she has eleven children, five of whom survive to adulthood. The rest all die before the age of three.

Moore dies of heart failure on December 6, 1924, at age 47 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens. Her previously unmarked grave is identified in August 2006. On October 11, 2008, a dedication ceremony is held at Calvary which celebrates the unveiling of a marker for her grave, a Celtic cross made of Irish blue limestone.

A woman named “Annie Moore” who died near Fort Worth, Texas, in 1924 had long been thought to be the one whose arrival marked the beginning of Ellis Island. Further research, however, establishes that the Annie Moore in Texas was born in Illinois.

The Irish American Cultural Institute presents an annual Annie Moore Award “to an individual who has made significant contributions to the Irish and/or Irish American community and legacy.” She is also honored by two statues sculpted by Jeanne Rynhart. One stands at Cobh Heritage Centre (formerly Queenstown), her port of departure, and another at Ellis Island, her port of arrival. The image is meant to represent the millions who pass through Ellis Island in pursuit of the American dream.

(Pictured: Statue of Annie Moore and her brothers on the quayside in Cobh, County Cork)


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Death of Thomas Derrig, Fianna Fáil Politician

Thomas Derrig (Irish: Tomás Ó Deirg), Irish Fianna Fáil politician, dies in Dublin on November 19, 1956. He serves as Minister for Lands from 1939 to 1943 and 1951 to 1954, Minister for Education from 1932 to 1939 and 1940 to 1948 and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in September 1939. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1921 to 1923 and 1927 to 1957.

Derrig is born on November 26, 1897, in Westport, County Mayo. He is educated locally and later at University College Galway. During his time in college, he organises a corps of the Irish Volunteers. After the 1916 Easter Rising, he is arrested and imprisoned, and sent to the prisons of Woking, Wormwood Scrubs and Frongoch internment camp. He is arrested in 1918 and is accused of attempting to disarm a soldier. He is sentenced to five months imprisonment by a court in Belfast. When he is released, he supports Joseph MacBride at the 1918 Irish general election. He also graduates from college and becomes headmaster in a technical college in Mayo.

During the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) Derrig is the commander of the Westport Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), before being captured and interned at the Curragh Camp. While there he is elected a Sinn Féin TD for Mayo North and West.

Derrig takes the Republican/Anti-treaty side during the Irish Civil War (1922-23). During the war he is an auxiliary assistant to Liam Lynch. He is later captured by the Irish Free State army. While in custody of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) he is severely injured, having an eye shot out by CID detectives.

At the June 1927 Irish general election Derrig is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for Carlow–Kilkenny. In Éamon de Valera‘s first government in 1932 Derrig is appointed Minister for Education. He initiates a review of industrial and reformatory schools and the rules under the Children Act 1908, resulting in the critical 1936 Cussen Report that follows which he shelves, and a report in 1946-48 by the Irish American priest Father Edward J. Flanagan, which is also shelved. His lack of action wis noted in 2009 when the Ryan Report examines the subsequent management of these “residential institutions.” He is the first Minister to seek a report that could result in much-needed reforms. It is suggested that he does not want to follow British law reforms in the 1920s and 1930s, because of his strong anti-British views, and that Irish children have suffered needlessly as a result. From 1939 to 1943, he serves as Minister for Lands. He is re-appointed to Education in 1943 until 1948. During this period a bitter teachers’ strike, involving the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), takes place, lasting from March 20 to October 30. Between 1951 and 1954, he becomes Minister for Lands again.

Derrig marries Sinéad Mason, an Irish civil servant and Michael Collins‘s personal secretary, in 1928. They live with their two daughters, Úna and Íosold, at 58 Dartmouth Square and 33 Pembroke Road, Dublin.

Derrig dies in Dublin on November 19, 1956, seven days before his 59th birthday.

(Pictured: Photograph of Irish politician Thomas Derrig, circa 1932, taken from a Fianna Fáil election poster)


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Birth of Grace Kelly, Award Winning Actress & Princess of Monaco

Grace Patricia Kelly, an American Academy Award winning actress, is born into an affluent Catholic family of half Irish and half German descent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 12, 1929. After starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, she becomes Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956.

Kelly’s father, Irish American John B. Kelly, Sr., wins three Olympic gold medals for sculling, and owns a successful brickwork contracting company that is well known on the East Coast. As Democratic nominee in the 1935 election for Mayor of Philadelphia, he loses by the closest margin in the city’s history. In later years he serves on the Fairmount Park Commission and, during World War II, is appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as National Director of Physical Fitness. Her mother, Margaret Majer, has German parents. She teaches physical education at the University of Pennsylvania and is the first woman to coach women’s athletics at Penn. She also models for a time in her youth. After marrying John Kelly in 1924, she focuses on being a housewife until her four children are of school age, following which she begins actively participating in various civic organizations.

Kelly receives her elementary education in the parish of Saint Bridget’s in East Falls. While attending Ravenhill Academy, a reputable Catholic girls’ school, she models fashions at local charity events with her mother and sisters. In 1942, at the age of 12, she plays the lead in Don’t Feed the Animals, a play produced by the Old Academy Players also in East Falls. In May 1947, she graduates from Stevens School, a socially prominent private institution in nearby Chestnut Hill, where she participates in drama and dance programs. Owing to her low mathematics scores, she is rejected by Bennington College in July 1947. Despite her parents’ initial disapproval, she decides to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress.

After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1949, Kelly begins appearing in New York City theatrical productions and over 40 live drama productions broadcast in early 1950s Golden Age of Television. She gains stardom from her performance in John Ford‘s adventure-romance Mogambo (1953), for which she is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the drama The Country Girl (1954). Other notable works include the western High Noon (1952), the romance-comedy High Society (1956), and three consecutive Alfred Hitchcock suspense thrillers: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). She works with some of the most prominent leading men of the era, including Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Ray Milland, James Stewart, Bing Crosby, William Holden, Cary Grant, Alec Guinness, and Frank Sinatra.

Kelly retires from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier and begins her duties as Princess of Monaco. Hitchcock hopes that she will appear in more of his films which require an “icy blonde” lead actress, but he is unable to coax her out of retirement. The Prince and Princess have three children: Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Princess Grace retains her link to America by her dual U.S. and Monégasque citizenship. Her charity work focuses on young children and the arts, establishing the Princess Grace Foundation-USA to support local artisans in 1964. Her organization for children’s rights, World Association of Children;s Friends (AMADE), gains consultive status within UNICEF and UNESCO. Her final film contribution is in 1977 to documentary The Children of Theatre Street directed by Robert Dornhelm, where she serves as the narrator. The documentary is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

On September 13, 1982, Princess Grace suffers a small stroke while driving back to Monaco from her country home in Roc Agel. As a result, she loses control of her 1971 Rover P6 3500 and drives off the steep, winding road and down the 120-foot mountainside. Her teenage daughter Stéphanie, who is in the passenger seat, tries but fails to regain control of the car. The Princess is taken to the Monaco Hospital (later named the Princess Grace Hospital Centre) with injuries to the brain and thorax and a fractured femur. She dies the following night at 10:55 PM after Rainier decides to turn off her life support. Stéphanie suffers a slight concussion and a hairline fracture of a cervical vertebra and is unable to attend her mother’s funeral.

Princess Grace’s funeral is held at the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate in Monaco-Ville, on September 18, 1982. After a Requiem Mass, she is buried in the Grimaldi family vault. Over 400 people attend, including Cary Grant, Nancy Reagan, Danielle Mitterrand, the Princess of Wales, and Empress Farah of Iran.

Rainier, who does not remarry, is buried alongside her after his death in 2005.


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Death of Sculptor Seamus Murphy

Seamus Murphy, Irish sculptor and stone carver best known for designing the Church of the Annunciation, Blackpool, Cork, dies in Cork, County Cork, on October 2, 1975.

Murphy is born near Mallow, County Cork on July 15, 1907, the son of James Murphy, a railway employee, and Margaret Sheehan of Little Island, County Cork. He attends Saint Patrick’s School on Gardiner’s Hill. In 1921 he enrolls as a part-time student at the Crawford School of Art, Emmet Place, Cork. In 1922 he finds work as an apprentice stone-carver at John Aloysius O’Connell’s Art Marble Works, Watercourse Road, Blackpool. There he specialises in architectural and foliage carving while continuing his studies at Crawford by night.

Murphy studies at the Académie Colarossi and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1932-1933 where he is befriended by the Irish American sculptor Andrew O’Connor. He opens his studio/workshop on Watercourse Road, Blackpool, Cork in 1934.

He is elected associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1944, elected a full member in 1954, and appointed Royal Hibernian Academy Professor of Sculpture in 1964.

Also in 1944, he marries Maighread Higgins, daughter of the Cork sculptor Joseph Higgins, and they go on to have three children – the knitwear designer Bebhinn Marten, the novelist Orla Murphy and the painter and De Dannan member Colm Murphy.

Murphy designs the Church of the Annunciation on Great William O’Brien Street in Blackpool, Cork, for William Dwyer in 1945. The stonework in the church is mostly by Murphy himself. It is officially dedicated on October 7, 1945.

Seamus Murphy dies in Cork on October 2, 1975. He is buried in Rathcooney, County Cork.

Examples of Murphy’s unique carvings of statues, gravestones, monuments and plaques can be seen around Cork and Ireland, including a signed panel of the four evangelists outside the entrance of the church of Our Lady and Saint John in Carrigaline, County Cork.


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Death of Brigadier General Robert Nugent of the U.S. Army

Brigadier General Robert Nugent, Irish-born American United States Army officer during the American Civil War and the Indian Wars, dies at the age of 76 in Brooklyn, New York on June 20, 1901.

Born in Kilkeel, County Down on June 27, 1824, Nugent serves with the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, from its days as a militia unit and into its incorporation into the Union Army at the start of the war and is one of its senior officers at the First Battle of Bull Run.

When the unit is originally mustered out of service, the 90-day enlistment terms having expired, Nugent accepts a commission as a captain in the regular army. He is immediately assigned to the 13th Infantry Regiment whose commanding officer, General William Tecumseh Sherman, personally requests. Taking a leave of absence to return to New York, he assists Thomas Francis Meagher in organizing the Irish Brigade. The newly reformed 69th Infantry Regiment is the first unit assigned to the Irish Brigade and, with Nugent as its colonel, he leads the “Fighting 69th” at the Battles of Seven Pines, Gaines’ Mill, Savage’s Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, and Malvern Hill.

Nugent is wounded, shot in the stomach, at the Battle of Fredericksburg and is eventually forced to resign his command. He is appointed acting assistant provost marshal for the southern district of New York, which includes New York City and Long Island, by the U.S. Department of War. An Irishman and Democrat, his appointment is thought to assure the Irish American population that conscription efforts would be carried out fairly. The Irish-American, a popular Irish language newspaper, writes that the selection is a “wise and deservedly popular one.” He does encounter resistance from city officials wanting him to remain uninvolved, however by mid-June he reports to his superior officer and provost marshal general Colonel James Fry that conscription efforts are “nearing completion without serious incident.”

Understanding the seriousness of the situation, Nugent attempts to keep the draft selections quiet and in isolated parts of the city. In Manhattan however, lotteries are placed in the heart of Irish tenement and shanty neighborhoods where the draft is most opposed.

In the ensuing New York City draft riots, Nugent takes command of troops and attempts to defend the city against the rioters. Despite issuing the cancellation of the draft, the riots continue for almost a week. His home on West 86th Street is looted and burned by the rioters during that time, his wife and children barely escaping from their home. Upon breaking into his house, furniture is destroyed, and paintings of Nugent and Meagher are slashed, although Brigadier General Michael Corcoran‘s is left untouched.

On October 28, Nugent is relieved of his post and succeeded by General William Hayes. Returning to active duty, he assumes command of the Irish Brigade in November 1864, shortly after the death of Corcoran, and is present at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox campaign. As its last commanding officer, he and the Irish Brigade also march in the victory parade held in Washington, D.C. following Robert E. Lee‘s surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Nugent is brevetted Brigadier General for distinguished leadership of the 69th Regiment on March 13, 1865. The veterans of the Irish Brigade are honorably discharged and mustered out three months later. Nugent, however, remains in the regular U.S. Army for the next twenty years, a formidable “Indian fighter” during the America Indian Wars with the 13th and 24th Infantry Regiments. In 1879, he retires at the rank of major and resides in New York where he is involved in the Grand Army of the Republic, the War Veterans’ Association of the 7th Regiment and an honorary member of The Old Guard.

Nugent becomes ill in his old age, complications arising from his wounds suffered at Fredericksburg, and remains bedridden for two months before his death at his McDonough Street home in Brooklyn on June 20, 1901. In accordance with his last wishes, he is buried at Cypress Hills National Cemetery, located in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn.


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Birth of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Irish American politician who serves as the 35th president of the United States, is born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917. He serves from 1961 until his assassination in 1963 during the height of the Cold War, with the majority of his work as president concerning relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Kennedy is born into the wealthy, political Kennedy family, the son of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a businessman and politician, and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald), a philanthropist and socialite. All four of his grandparents are children of Irish immigrants. He graduates from Harvard University in 1940, before joining the United States Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commands a series of PT boats in the Pacific theater and earns the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his service.

Following a brief stint in journalism, Kennedy, a Democrat, represents a working-class Boston district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953. He is subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate and serves as the junior senator for Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, Kennedy publishes his book, Profiles in Courage, which wins a Pulitzer Prize.

Kennedy meets his future wife, Jacqueline Lee “Jackie” Bouvier (1929–1994), while he is a congressman. Charles L. Bartlett, a journalist, introduces the pair at a dinner party. They are married a year after he is elected senator, on September 12, 1953. Following a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956, they produce three children, Caroline, John, Jr., and Patrick, who dies of complications two days after birth.

In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy narrowly defeats Republican opponent Richard Nixon, who is the incumbent vice president. His humor, charm, and youth in addition to his father’s money and contacts are great assets in the campaign. His campaign gains momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history. He is the first Catholic elected president of the United States.

Kennedy’s administration includes high tensions with communist states in the Cold War. As a result, he increases the number of American military advisors in South Vietnam. The Strategic Hamlet Program begins in Vietnam during his presidency. In April 1961, he authorizes an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. He authorizes the Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, in November 1961. He rejects Operation Northwoods, plans for false flag attacks to gain approval for a war against Cuba, in March 1962. However, his administration continues to plan for an invasion of Cuba in the summer of 1962.

In October 1962, U.S. spy planes discover Soviet missile bases have been deployed in Cuba. The resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly results in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. He also signs the first nuclear weapons treaty in October 1963.

Kennedy presides over the establishment of the Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress with Latin America, and the continuation of the Apollo space program with the goal of landing a man on the Moon. He also supports the civil rights movement but is only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumes the presidency upon Kennedy’s death. Marxist and former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the state crime but is shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The FBI and the Warren Commission both conclude Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, but various groups contest the Warren Report and believe that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy.

After Kennedy’s death, Congress enacts many of his proposals, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Revenue Act of 1964. Despite his truncated presidency, he ranks highly in polls of U.S. presidents with historians and the general public. His personal life has also been the focus of considerable sustained interest following public revelations in the 1970s of his chronic health ailments and extramarital affairs. He is the last U.S. President to have been assassinated as well as the last U.S. president to die in office.

(Pictured: John F. Kennedy, photograph in the Oval Office, July 11, 1963)