seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Jeanne Rynhart


by 2 Comments

Monument Honouring Francis O’Neill Unveiled in Trawlebane, County Cork

Francis O’Neill (Irish: Proinsias Ó Néill), an Irish-born American police officer and collector of Irish traditional music, is honoured in his native West Cork on March 11, 2000, where Garda Commissioner Patrick Byrne unveils a life-size monument of O’Neill playing a flute adjacent to the O’Neill family homestead in Trawlebane, County Cork. The monument, made by sculptor Jeanne Rynhart, and a commemorative wall are erected through the efforts of the Captain Francis O’Neill Memorial Company.

O’Neill is born in Trawlebane, near Bantry, County Cork, on August 28, 1848. At an early age he hears the music of local musicians, among them Peter Hagarty, Cormac Murphy and Timothy Dowling. At the age of 16, he becomes a cabin boy on an English merchant ship and remains a seaman until 1869. On a voyage to New York City, he meets Anna Rogers, a young emigrant whom he later marries in Bloomington, Illinois. They move to Chicago, and he becomes a Chicago policeman in 1873. He rises through the ranks quickly, eventually succeeding Joseph Kipley as the Chief of Police from 1901 to 1905. He has the rare distinction, in a time when political “pull” counts for more than competence, of being re-appointed three times to the position by two different mayors.

O’Neill is a flautist, fiddler and piper and is part of the vibrant Irish community in Chicago at the time. During his time as chief, he recruits many traditional Irish musicians into the police force, including Patrick O’Mahony, James O’Neill, Bernard Delaney, John McFadden and James Early. He also collects tunes from some of the major performers of the time including Patsy Touhey, who regularly sends him wax cylinders and visits him in Chicago. He also collects tunes from a wide variety of printed sources.

O’Neill retires from the police force in 1905. After that, he devotes much of his energy to publishing the music he has collected. His musical works include:

  • O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903), containing 1,850 pieces of music.
  • The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), sometimes called, “O’Neill’s 1001,” because of the number of tunes included.
  • 400 tunes arranged for piano and violin (1915).
  • Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (1922), 365 pieces.
  • Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (1910). Appendix A contains O’Farrells Treatise and Instructions on the Irish Pipes, published 1797-1800; appendix B is Hints to Amateur Pipers by Patrick J. Touhy.
  • Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913), biographies of musicians, including those from whom he collected tunes in Chicago.

O’Neill dies of heart failure at his home in Chicago at the age of 87 on January 26, 1936. He is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.

In 2008, Northwestern University Press issues Chief O’Neill’s Sketchy Recollections of an Eventful Life in Chicago, a non-musical memoir edited by Ellen Skerrett and Mary Lesch, a descendant of O’Neill, with a foreword by Nicholas Carolan of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Carolan himself writes a musical biography of O’Neill, A Harvest Saved: Francis O’Neill and Irish Music in Chicago, which is published in Ireland by Ossian in 1997. An historical biography of O’Neill, The Beat Cop: Chicago’s Chief O’Neill and the Creation of Irish Music, by Michael O’Malley, is published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.

Chief O’Neill’s life is memorialized in the musical play Music Mad: How Chief O’Neill Saved the Soul of Ireland, which premieres in Chicago in 2012. Written by Adam B. Whiteman with the approval and acceptance of Francis O’Neill’s great-granddaughter, Mary Lesch, the show contains both dramatized content and material from O’Neill’s own writings.

Peter Hagarty and Francis O’Neill are memorialized in the song, Píobaire Bán, written by Tim O’Riordan. It is recorded by Patrick O’Sullivan on the CD One More Time and on O’Riordan’s own CD Taibhse.

In August 2013, the inaugural Chief O’Neill Traditional Music Festival takes place in Bantry, County Cork, just a few miles from Trawlebane. The 2013 event marks the centenary of the publication of O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians. The event has taken place annually since.

Chief O’Neill’s Pub and Restaurant in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood bears his name and displays related memorabilia.

O’Neill’s biographer, Nicholas Carolan, refers to him as “the greatest individual influence on the evolution of Irish traditional dance music in the twentieth century.”


by Leave a comment

Death of Jeanne Rynhart, Sculptor & Creator of the Molly Malone Statue

Jeanne Patricia Rynhart (nee Scuffil), Irish sculptor and creator of the Molly Malone statue, dies in Cork, County Cork, on June 9, 2020.

Rynhart is born Jeanne Scuffil in Dublin on March 17, 1946, to Kathleen Connolly and Frederick Scuffil, a sign writer for the Guinness Brewery. She is an apprentice to George Collie RHA for two years and then attends the National College of Art and Design, graduating in 1969 before moving to Coventry, England, where she continues her studies in fine art and sets up a studio with sculptor John Letts. She returns to Ireland in 1981, moving to Ballylickey, near Bantry in County Cork, where she establishes the Rynhart Fine Art gallery and workshop with her husband, Derek.

One of the first bronze craft studios in Ireland, the Rynhart pieces include both small figurative cold cast bronze sculptures of flower sellers, fishermen, horses, sailing boats and musical instruments as well as bronze life-size statues, smelted in a foundry. Her busts of Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift are in the Dublin Writers Museum and a Rynhart bust of James Joyce is in New York Public Library.

Rynhart creates the Molly Malone statue for the 1988 Dublin Millennium celebrations. The statue is controversial at the time of its unveiling due to the statue’s revealing dress. Registrar of Aosdána, Adrian Munnelly, writes to the An Bord Fáilte criticising it. The statue is defended by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Ben Briscoe. Rynhart herself writes in The Irish Times that the clothing and appearance are accurate for women of that era. The statue has since become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Dublin and is fondly regarded by locals.

Rynhart also sculpts a statue commemorating the original Rose of Tralee, Mary O’Connor, which stands in Tralee Town Park. In 1993, she produces two statues in honour of Annie Moore, the first passenger processed through the Ellis Island immigration station on January 1, 1892. The statues are located at the Cobh Heritage Centre in Cork and Ellis Island in New York City. The Ellis Island statue is dedicated by the then-President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.

In 1994, Rynhart’s daughter Audrey joins the business. In 2010, Audrey and her husband, Les Elliott, take over the running of the business which is now based in their studio in Glengarriff, County Cork. From then onwards, Rynhart continues to do some modelling work but has largely retired.

Rynhart dies on June 9, 2020, aged 74, in Schull Community Hospital, Cork, following a short illness. She is buried in the Abbey Cemetery, Bantry, and is survived by her husband, Derek, daughter, Audrey, son, Barry, and grandchildren, Lydia and Sophie.


by Leave a comment

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)