Hatch is also a well-known marathon runner. From 1904 through 1922 he runs more than 45 marathons with a score of victories including the Chicago Marathon in 1909 and the Yonkers Marathon in 1911, competing as a member of the Illinois State Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). In 1910, he finishes in 5th place in the Yonkers Marathon, competing as a member of the Chicago Irish American Athletic Club.
Hatch never fails to finish a marathon. He is a six-time (1906, 1907, 1908, 1911, 1914, and 1915) winner of the Missouri Athletic Club‘s All Western Marathon in St. Louis including the 1908 marathon that qualifies him for the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. He competes in the marathon in two Olympics, placing 8th in 1904 at St. Louis and 14th in 1908 in London. He wins a silver medal in the 1904 Olympics Four-Mile team event.
On January 8, 1909, Hatch finishes third behind Matthew Maloney and James Crowley in an indoor marathon before 5,000 “wildly cheering” spectators held within the second Madison Square Garden with a time of 3:03:29.4. Maloney is reported to have set a new indoor record for the event (2:54:45.4).
On November 27, 1909, Hatch finishes sixth in the third edition of the Yonkers Marathon with a time of 3:00:24. In July of the same year, he wins a 100-mile race in Chicago, Illinois.
In March 1912, Hatch is one of “twenty of the best distance runners in the middle west” scheduled to participate in a 20-mile indoor marathon at Riverview Rink in Chicago. He also qualifies for the 1912 Summer Olympics but does not compete. He places in the top 10 in the Boston Marathon several times with a second-placed finish in 1917. He finishes third in the Boston Marathon in 1915 and 1916. In October 1916, he sets a record in the 96-mile Milwaukee to Chicago Run, completing the race in 14 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds.
Hatch serves as a U.S. Army messenger in World War I and is decorated for “extraordinary heroism” under fire near Brieulles, France, October 11, 1918. He is awarded the Purple Heart and Distinguished Service Cross as well as the French Croix de Guerre. After World War I, he returns to run two more Boston Marathons before retiring from marathon running. He is a letter carrier in River Forest, Illinois, from 1923 to 1953, retiring at age 70. He and Gertrude Morris are married in 1921 and have three children, Herbert, and twin girls June and Jane.
Hatch dies in Maywood, Illinois, on October 17, 1966. He is buried at the Chapel Hills Gardens West Cemetery, Oak Brook Terrace, Illinois.
Patrick “Patsy” J. Touhey, a celebrated player of the uilleann pipes, is born on February 26, 1865, in Cahertinny, Bullaun, Loughrea, County Galway. His innovative technique and phrasing, his travels back and forth across the United States to play on the variety and vaudeville stage, and his recordings make his style influential among Irish American pipers. He can be seen as the greatest contributor to a distinctive American piping style.
According to Chief Francis O’Neill of the Chicago Police Department, in his seminal work O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians, Touhey is the third generation of accomplished pipers stemming from his grandfather, Michael Twohill (the original spelling, b. ca. 1800), his father James and his uncle Martin, who are considered accomplished players. The family arrives in Boston around 1868, and his father arranges for his instruction from Bartley Murphy of County Mayo. However, at the age of ten Patsy loses his father and later lays the pipes aside.
In his late teens Touhey strays into a Bowerymusic hall where John Eagan, the “White Piper” of Galway, is engaged. Enthralled by Eagan’s virtuosity, he takes up the pipes again, and under the instruction of Eagan and Billy Taylor of Philadelphia soon becomes a master.
Touhey and Eagan tour the northeastern United States with “Harrigan’s Double Hibernian Co., Irish and American Tourists” in 1885 and 1886. This is his apparent introduction to theatrical life. Harrigan’s company stars Jeremiah “Jere” Cohan, the father of George M. Cohan, later a famous songwriter and showman. Despite a persistent legend, there is no evidence that Touhey plays publicly for the step-dancing of George M. Cohan, who is seven or eight years old at the time. Between 1886 and 1895 he appears in several theatre productions including “Inshavogue” and “The Ivy Leaf.” At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, he plays at the Irish Village, one of two rival Irish pavilions, and is later engaged for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis (Louisiana Purchase Exposition). From about 1896 until 1921 he plays in vaudeville skits, trading jokes with his wife, Mary, and their on and off partner Charles Henry Burke. The shows include slapstick, low-brow gags, Irish nostalgia, and a piping finale to which Mary Touhey dances.
Chicago Police Chief Francis O’Neill, a prominent compiler of Irish dance tunes, calls Touhey “the genial wizard of the Irish pipers . . . A stranger to jealousy, his comments are never sarcastic or unkind, neither does he display any tendency to monopolize attention in company when other musicians are present.”
Touhey lives on Bristow Street in the Bronx, New York City, from at least 1900 until 1908. He and Mary live in rural East Haddam, Connecticut from 1908 to 1919, then in Freeport, New York from 1919 to 1922. In 1922 he moves back to the Bronx. He dies suddenly in his home at 1175 Concourse, New York, on January 10, 1923. He is buried in Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.
A statue of Patsy Touhey is unveiled in 2008 in Loughrea, near the place where he was born. It is a bronze sculpture by James MacCarthy that shows Touhey sitting on a limestone block and playing his pipes. Behind him, on the wall, there are three plaques with portraits of Peter and Vincent Broderick, two other local musicians, and Touhey himself. The statue is a tribute to the musical heritage of Loughrea and Galway, and a reminder of the connection between Ireland and its diaspora.
O’Hare is born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 13, 1914, the son of Edward Joseph O’Hare and Selma Anna (née Lauth). He is of Irish and German descent. When his parents divorce in 1927, he and his sisters, Patricia and Marilyn, stay with their mother in St. Louis while their father moves to Chicago. His father is a lawyer who works closely with Al Capone before turning against him and helping convict Capone of tax evasion.
On Sunday evening, January 11, 1942, as O’Hare and other VF-3 officers eat dinner in the wardroom, the USS Saratoga is damaged by a Japanese torpedo while patrolling southwest of Hawaii. She spends five months in repair on the west coast, so VF-3 squadron transfers to the USS Lexington on January 31.
At 15:42 on February 20, 1942, a jagged vee signal draws the attention of the USS Lexington‘s radar operator. The contact is then lost but reappears at 16:25 forty-seven miles west. O’Hare is one of several pilots launched to intercept nine Japanese Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers from the 4th Kōkūtai‘s 2nd Chutai. His squadmates shoot down eight bombers but he and his wingman, Marion “Duff” Dufilho, are held back in the event of a second attack.
At 16:49, the USS Lexington‘s radar picks up a second formation of “Bettys” from the 4th Kōkūtai’s 1st Chutai, only 12 miles out, on the disengaged side of the task force. With the majority of VF-3 still chasing the 2nd Chutai, only O’Hare and Dufilho are available to intercept.
O’Hare’s initial maneuver is a high-side diving attack from the formation’s starboard side employing deflection shooting. He manages to hit the outside Betty’s right engine and wing fuel tanks. When the stricken aircraft abruptly lurches to starboard, he switches to the next plane up the line. The plane catches fire, but the crew manages to extinguish the flames with a fire-extinguisher. This plane catches up with the group before bomb release.
With two “Bettys” out of formation, O’Hare begins his second firing pass, this time from the port side. His first target is the outside plane. His bullets damage the right engine and left fuel tank, forcing the pilot to dump his bombs and abort his mission. O’Hare then targets another plane which becomes his first definite kill.
As O’Hare begins his third firing pass, again from the port side, the remaining “Bettys” are nearing their bomb release point. He shoots down another plane, leaving the lead plane exposed. His concentrated fire causes the plane’s port engine nacelle to break free from its mountings and fall from the plane. The resulting explosion leaves a gaping hole in the left wing, and the plane falls out of formation.
Shortly afterward, O’Hare makes a fourth firing pass, likely against the plane that had caught fire during his initial pass but runs out of ammunition. Frustrated, he pulls away to allow the ships to fire their anti-aircraft guns. The four surviving bombers drop their ordnance, but all their 250 kg bombs miss. O’Hare believes he has shot down six bombers and damaged a seventh. Captain Frederick C. Sherman later reduces this to five, as four of the reported nine bombers are still overhead when he pulls off.
In fact, O’Hare destroys only three “Bettys.” One of the planes, however, is not yet finished. The command pilot regains enough control to level his damaged plane and attempts to crash it into USS Lexington. He misses and crashes into the water near the carrier at 17:12. Another three “Bettys” are damaged by O’Hare’s attacks. Two safely land at Vunakanau Airfield at 19:50, while the third becomes lost in a storm and eventually ditches at Simpson Harbour at 20:10.
On March 26, O’Hare is greeted at Pearl Harbor by a horde of reporters and radio announcers. Credited with shooting down five bombers, he becomes a flying ace, is selected for promotion to lieutenant commander, and becomes the first naval aviator to receive the Medal of Honor. With PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt looking on, his wife Rita places the Medal around his neck. After receiving the Medal of Honor, he is described as “modest, inarticulate, humorous, terribly nice and more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing.”
O’Hare receives further decorations later in 1943 for actions in battles near Minamitorishima in August and subsequent missions near Wake Island in October.
O’Hare’s final action takes place on the night of November 26, 1943, while he is leading the U.S. Navy’s first-ever nighttime fighter attack launched from an aircraft carrier. During this encounter with a group of Japanese torpedo bombers, his Grumman F6F Hellcat is shot down. A radio message is sent out, but there is no response. The aircraft is never found. He is declared dead a year later, his widow Rita receiving her husband’s posthumous decorations, a Purple Heart and the Navy Cross on November 26, 1944. On January 27, 1945, the U.S. Navy names a Gearing-class destroyer, USS O’Hare (DD-889), in his honor.
On September 19, 1949, the Chicago-area Orchard Depot Airport is renamed O’Hare International Airport, six years after O’Hare perished. A Grumman F4F Wildcat, in a livery identical to the aircraft flown by O’Hare, is on display in Terminal 2. The display is formally opened on the seventy-fifth anniversary of his Medal of Honor flight.
(Pictured: Lieutenant Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, USN, circa April-May 1942, official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives)
During the first part of 1879, O’Neill responds to an item in The Washington Star calling for men to migrate to the Arizona Territory. He arrives in Phoenix, riding a burro, in September of the same year. Upon his arrival in town, he is hired as a printer by the Phoenix Herald. By late 1880, he has become bored with the position and seeks to experience the “Real West” in the boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona.
In Tombstone, O’Neill takes the opportunity to experience the local saloons before taking a job with The Tombstone Epitaph. By mid-1881 he again feels a wanderlust and leaves town. Where he goes next is unknown, one story having him journey to Hawaii, unlikely due to the travel time, and then traveling through California. He is known to visit Santa Fe before going to Albuquerque, New Mexico and works briefly as a court reporter. In early 1882, he is back in Phoenix working as a deputy to Marshal Henry Garfias. Several weeks later he moves to Prescott, his home for the next fifteen years.
In Prescott O’Neill rapidly progresses in his journalistic career. Starting as a court reporter, he soon founds his own newspaper, Hoof and Horn, a paper for the livestock industry. He becomes the editor of the Arizona Miner weekly newspaper in 1884 to February 1885.
In 1886, O’Neill becomes captain of the Prescott Grays, the local unit of the Arizona Militia. On February 5, 1886, Dennis Dilda, a convicted murderer, is hanged. O’Neill and the Prescott Grays stand honor guard for the event. When the trap drops, O’Neill faints, which causes him severe embarrassment. He later writes a story called “The Horse of the Hash-Knife Brand.” In it, a member of a posse admits to nearly fainting at the hanging of a horse thief.
On April 27, 1886, O’Neill marries Pauline Schindler. They have a son, but he dies shortly after being born premature.
On March 20, 1889, four masked men, William Sterin, John Halford, Daniel Harvick, and J. J. Smith, rob the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad passenger train in Canyon Diablo. A four-man posse, made up of O’Neill, Jim Black, Carl Holton, and Ed St. Clair, is soon formed and they take off after the robbers. On April 1, the posse catches up with the robbers. After exchanging rifle shots, the posse captures the four men. During the fight, no men are injured, but one of the robber’s horses is killed. All four are sent to the Yuma Territorial Prison but are pardoned eight years later. There is unfounded speculation that, in 1898, Sterin enlists under a false name in the Rough Riders and is killed in action in the Battle of San Juan Hill.
After his term is up, O’Neill is unanimously elected mayor of Prescott. In 1894 and 1896 he runs for Delegate to the United States House of Representatives from Arizona Territory, running on the People’s Party ticket.
In 1897, after years of speculating on mines, O’Neill sells a group of claims near the Grand Canyon to Chicago backers, who also propose building a railroad from Williams to the mines and the South Rim. He becomes a director of the development companies, and soon begins railroad surveys, mine developments, and building a smelter. He also uses profits to begin building rental buildings, leading him to financial independence.
O’Neill also helps introduce a bill allowing women to vote in municipal elections in 1897. Although he convinces his Populist friends to sign the bill into law, the high court dismisses the bill in 1899.
In 1898, war breaks out between the United States and Spain. O’Neill joins Theodore Roosevelt‘s Rough Riders and becomes Captain of Troop A. First Lieutenant Frank Frantz serves as O’Neil’s Deputy Commander. Along with Alexander Brodie and James McClintock, he tries to make an entire regiment made up of Arizona cowboys. Eventually though, only three troops are authorized.
The Rough Riders land at Daiquirí on June 22, 1898. Two Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment fall overboard. Upon seeing this, O’Neill jumps into the water in full uniform and sabre. He searches for the men for two minutes before having to come up for breath.
On June 25, 1898, the Rough Riders see their first action. O’Neill leads his men at the front of the line in the Battle of Las Guasimas, capturing the Spanish flank. During the action he sees several men, who he believes to be Spaniards, across the road from him, and shouts “Hostiles on our right, fire at will!” He learns after the firing ceases that the men he exchanged shots with were Cuban rebels.
On July 1, 1898, at about 10:00 a.m., the Rough Riders and the 10th Cavalry are stationed below Kettle Hill. The Spaniards, who are on top of the hill, pour Mauser rifle fire down on the Americans. O’Neill is killed in action.
Before the fighting is over, O’Neill’s men bury him on the slope of San Juan Hill. After the war, his family and friends enlist help from the United States Department of War to find and recover his body. After six men fail to find the site, the War Department sends Henry Alfred Brown, the Rough Riders’ Chaplain, to find him. Despite it being eight months since O’Neill’s death, Chaplain Brown locates the site within two hours after arriving in Santiago de Cuba. The well-preserved body is exhumed, placed in a coffin, and returned to the United States on the Army transport Crook. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington County, Virginia. The epitaph on his gravestone reads, “Who would not die for a new star on the flag?”
On July 3, 1907, a monument by sculptor Solon Borglum is dedicated to O’Neill and the other Rough Riders in their memory in Prescott, Arizona. Seven thousand people gather to witness the unveiling.
The Irish American Athletic Club, an amateur athletic organization based in Queens, New York, is established on January 30, 1898, originally as the Greater New York Irish Athletic Association. They shorten the name to the Irish American Athletic Club a few years later. They purchase a plot of land in what is then called Laurel Hill, Long Island, near Calvary Cemetery, Queens, and build a state-of-the-art athletic facility on what is farmland. The stadium, called Celtic Park, formally reopens after renovations on May 9, 1901, and until the facility is sold for housing in 1930, some of the greatest American athletes train or compete on Celtic Park’s track and field. The Irish American Athletic Club adopts a winged fist adorned with American flags and shamrocks as their emblem, with the Irish Gaelic motto “Láim Láidir Abú” or “A strong hand will be victorious,” and are often referred to as the “Winged Fists.” At one time they have clubs in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Yonkers, New York.
The Irish American Athletic Club is predominantly composed of Irish-born and first generation Irish American athletes, but many of the athletes who compete for the Winged Fist organization are neither.
The Irish American Athletic Club wins the Amateur Athletic Union national outdoor track and field team championship titles in 1904, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1916. They also win the national indoor track and field team championship titles in 1906, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1914 and 1915. Individual athletes of the IAAC win 81 national outdoor championships titles and 36 individual national indoor championship titles.
In 1912–13, 1913–14, 1914–15 and 1916–17 the Irish American Athletic Club has a team, the New York Irish-Americans, represented in the American Amateur Hockey League. The team is coached by James C. “Jimmy” O’Brien and has on its roster for various seasons future NHL players Tom McCarthy and Moylan McDonnell. John McGrath and Patsy Séguin also play for the club.
Before the largest crowd that has ever assembled to see a track meet in the United States, on September 9, 1916, the Irish American Athletic Club defeats the New York Athletic Club at the Amateur Athletic Union’s National Championships, by a score of 38 to 27. Before a crowd of 30,000 spectators at Newark, New Jersey‘s Weequahic Park, the Irish American Athletic Club wins what is to be their last national championship title. The club disbands a year later when the United States becomes a combatant in World War I.
At 6 ft. 3 in. (191 cm) and 194 lbs. (88 kg), Sheridan is the best all-around athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club, and like many of his teammates, serves from 1906 until his death in 1918 with the New York City Police Department. He is so well respected in the NYPD, that he serves as the Governor’s personal bodyguard when the governor is in New York City.
In 1907, Sheridan wins the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) discus championship and the Canadian championship, and in 1908 he wins the Metropolitan, National and Canadian championships as well as two gold medals in the discus throw and a bronze medal in the standing long jump at the 1908 Olympic Games.
Two of Sheridan’s gold medals from the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of his medals from the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens, are currently located in the USA Track & Field‘s Hall of Fame History Gallery, in Washington Heights, Manhattan.
It is often claimed that Sheridan fueled a controversy in London in 1908, when flagbearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag to King Edward VII. Sheridan supposedly supports Rose by explaining, “This flag dips to no earthly king,” and it is claimed that his statement exemplified both Irish and American defiance of the British monarchy. However, careful research has shown that this was first reported in 1952. Sheridan himself makes no mention of it in his published reports on the Games and neither does his obituary.
Sheridan dies in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York, on March 27, 1918, the day before his 37th birthday, a very early casualty of the 1918 flu pandemic. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. The inscription on the granite Celtic Cross monument marking his grave says in part: “Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.”
According to his obituary in The New York Times, Sheridan was “one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known.”
(Pictured: Martin Sheridan from the historical picture collection of Knut Gulbrandsen)
Burke starts playing traditional at age four and purchases his first accordion in the 1950s. He wins the All-Ireland Senior Accordion Championship in Thurles in 1959 and again in Boyle the following year. Together with fiddler Aggie Whyte, he wins the All-Ireland duet championship in 1962 in Gorey, County Wexford.
Burke co-founds the Leitrim Ceili Band with Padden Downey in 1956. Other members of the east Galway-based band, which wins All-Ireland Championships in 1959 and 1962, includes Irish flute players Paddy Carty, Ambrose Moloney and Tony Molloy, button accordionists Mick Darcy and Sean McGlynn, fiddlers Michael Joe Dooley, Paddy Doorhy, Aggie Whyte and Séamus Connolly, drummer Sean Curley and pianist Anne-Marie Courtney. The band tours in England and releases an LP on the New York-based Dublin label.
Burke first tours in the United States in 1961, and lives mainly in New York from 1962 to 1965, during which period he forms a musical partnership with fiddler Andy McGann. With McGann and pianist Felix Dolan, he records an LP, A Tribute to Michael Coleman, first released in 1966 on his own Shaskeen label. He records again with this trio, issuing The Funny Reel LP on the Shanachie Records label in 1979. Other musical collaborators over the years include Belfast fiddle great Sean McGuire, piper Michael Cooney, harpist Máire Ní Chathasaigh, fiddler Kevin Burke, pianist Charlie Lennon and his wife Anne Conroy Burke, whom he marries in 1990, on guitar and button accordion.
Burke’s first solo LP, Galway’s Own, is released in 1971. He also tours extensively for the next two decades, including with groups sponsored by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. From 1988 to 1991, he lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has a musical residency at John D. McGurk’s Pub and hosts radio programmes at two stations, one of them the “Ireland in America” programme on KDHX. He represents Ireland in 1989 and 1992 at the International Accordion Festivals, in Montmagny, Quebec, along with accordion greats who include Cajun accordion player Marc Savoy and jazz accordionist Art Van Damme.
After residing in the United States from 1988 until 1991, Burke returns to Kilnadeema in 1992. There, he carries on teaching and performing music. He dies at the age of 81 on February 20, 2021, at Galway Hospice.
Burke is named RTÉ‘s Traditional Musician of the Year in 1970. He goes on to win both the AIB Traditional Musician of the Year and the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Irish World in 1997. A Joe Burke Tribute Concert is held in April 1997 at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway, on his reception of the AIB award. Three years later, he receives an award in Musical Mastery from Boston College. He is later conferred Gradam an Chomhaltais in 2003.
Ryan is born Matthew Abraham Ryan in Hagerstown, Maryland on February 5, 1838, the fourth child of Irish immigrants Matthew Ryan and his wife, Mary Coughlin, both of Clogheen, County Tipperary, and their first to be born in the United States.
In 1840 the family relocates to Ralls County, Missouri, and then, in 1846, to St. Louis, where the father opens a general store. Ryan is educated at St. Joseph’s Academy, run by the De La Salle Brothers. Showing a strong inclination to piety, he is encouraged by his mother and teachers to consider becoming a priest. He decides to test a calling to the priesthood and on September 16, 1851, at the age of 13, enters the College of St. Mary’s of the Barrens, near Perryville, Missouri, a minor seminary for young candidates for the priesthood. By the time of his graduation in 1855, he has decided to pursue Holy Orders.
Ryan then enters the Vincentians, taking the oath of obedience to the Congregation. He does three more years of study at the college during the course of which, on June 19, 1857, he receives minor orders. In 1858, shortly after the death of his father, he is sent to the Seminary of Our Lady of the Angels near Niagara Falls, New York.
As a Southerner, Ryan feels out of place at the seminary, and soon begins to express his opposition to the abolitionist movement then gaining popularity in the Northeastern United States. He then joins in the sentiment expressed by the Catholic bishops and editors of the nation in that period, who feel threatened by the anti-Catholic opinions expressed by the leadership of the Abolitionists. His writings in that period begin to express suspicion of Northern goals. Possibly for that reason, he is sent back to St. Mary of the Barrens.
During the winter of 1860, Ryan gives a lecture series through which he starts to gain notice as a speaker. His abilities as a preacher gain wide approval, and his superiors decide to have him ordained a priest earlier than is the normal age under church law. On September 12, 1860, he is ordained a priest at his home parish in St. Louis, with the ordination being performed by the Bishop of St. Louis, Peter Richard Kenrick.
In the Fall of 1861, soon after the start of the American Civil War, Ryan is transferred back to the Seminary of Our Lady of the Angels in New York. After a couple of bouts of illness, he declares himself fit to teach again in April 1862, but his superiors instead transfer him to parish duties in LaSalle, Illinois. After arriving there, he realizes that he will not be able to express his strong views in support of the Confederacy. Frustrated, and feeling ignored by his immediate superior, he requests his release from his oath of obedience. Upon his release he returns home, where he and his brother David intend to enlist in the Confederate States Army.
Ryan makes sporadic early appearances as a freelance chaplain among Confederate troops from Louisiana and begins making appearances in Tennessee in 1862. He begins full-time pastoral duties in Tennessee in late 1863 or early 1864. Though he never formally joins the Confederate Army, he clearly is serving as a freelance chaplain by the last two years of the conflict, with possible appearances at the Battle of Lookout Mountain and the Battle of Missionary Ridge near Chattanooga, and well-authenticated service at the Battle of Franklin and the subsequent Battle of Nashville. Some of his most moving poems —”In Memoriam” and “In Memory of My Brother”— come in response to his brother’s death, who died while serving in uniform for the Confederacy in April 1863, likely from injuries suffered during fighting near Mount Sterling, Kentucky.
On June 24, 1865, Ryan’s most famous poem, “The Conquered Banner,” appears in the pages of the New York Freeman’s Journal over his early penname “Moina.” Starting in 1865, he moves from parish to parish throughout the South. Beginning in November 1881 he spends a year in semi-retirement at Biloxi, Mississippi while completing his second book, A Crown for Our Queen. In Augusta, Georgia, he founds The Banner of the South, a religious and political weekly in which he republishes much of his early poetry, along with poetry by fellow-southerners James Ryder Randall, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Sidney Lanier, as well as an early story by Mark Twain.
In 1879, Ryan’s work is gathered into a collected volume of verse, first titled Father Ryan’s Poems and subsequently republished in 1880 as Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous. His collection sells remarkably well for the next half-century. His work also finds a popular following in his family’s ancestral home of Ireland. An article about his work appears in Irish Monthly during his life, and a decade after his death, yet another collection of his poetry is published in Dublin by The Talbot Press under the title Selected Poems of Father Abram Ryan.
In 1880 Ryan’s old restlessness returns, and he heads north for the twofold object of publishing his poems and lecturing. He dies April 22, 1886, at a Franciscanfriary in Louisville, Kentucky, but his body is returned to St. Mary’s in Mobile, Alabama for burial. He is interred in Mobile’s Catholic Cemetery. In recognition of his loyal service to the Confederacy, a stained-glass window is placed in the Confederate Memorial Hall in New Orleans in his memory. In 1912 a local newspaper launches a drive to erect a statue to him. Dedicated in July 1913, it includes a stanza from “The Conquered Banner” below an inscription that reads: “Poet, Patriot, and Priest.”
Sterling’s post in Ireland ends on March 7, 1934, when he becomes U.S. minister to Bulgaria, a position he remains in until 1936. In 1937, he is appointed to minister roles for both Latvia and Estonia, however he does not accept the post. In 1938, he becomes U.S. minister to Sweden and remains in that role until 1941.
MacGahan’s father is an immigrant from Ireland who had served on the Northumberland, the ship which took Napoleon into exile on Saint Helena. He moves to St. Louis, where he briefly works as a teacher and as a journalist. There he meets his cousin, General Philip Sheridan, an American Civil War hero also of Irish parentage, who convinces him to study law in Europe. He sails to Brussels in December 1868.
MacGahan does not get a law degree, but he discovers that he has a gift for languages, learning French and German. He runs short of money and is about to return to America in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War breaks out. Sheridan happens to be an observer with the German Army, and he uses his influence to persuade the European editor of the New York Herald to hire MacGahan as a war correspondent with the French Army.
MacGahan’s vivid articles from the front lines describing the stunning defeat of the French Army win him a large following, and many of his dispatches to the Herald are reprinted by European newspapers. When the war ends, he interviews French leader Léon Gambetta and Victor Hugo and, in March 1871, he hurries to Paris and is one of the first foreign correspondents to report on the uprising of the Paris Commune. He is arrested by the French military and nearly executed and is only rescued through the intervention of the U.S. Minister to FranceElihu B. Washburne.
In 1871 MacGahan is assigned as the Herald‘s correspondent to Saint Petersburg. He learns Russian, mingles with the Russian military and nobility, covers the Russian tour of General William Tecumseh Sherman and meets his future wife, Varvara Elagina, whom he marries in 1873. In 1874 he spends ten months in Spain, covering the Third Carlist War.
In 1876 MacGahan quarrels with James Gordon Bennett Jr., the publisher of the New York Herald, and leaves the newspaper. He is invited by his friend, Eugene Schuyler, the American Consul-General in Constantinople, to investigate reports of large-scale atrocities committed by the Turkish Army following the failure of an attempted uprising by Bulgarian nationalists in April 1876. He obtains a commission from The Daily News, then the leading liberal newspaper in England, and leaves for Bulgaria on July 23, 1876.
MacGahan reports that the Turkish soldiers have forced some of the villagers into the church, then the church is burned, and survivors tortured to learn where they have hidden their treasures. He says that of a population of seven thousand, only two thousand survive. According to his account, fifty-eight villages in Bulgaria are destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand people in all massacred. These reports, published first in The Daily News, and then in other papers, cause widespread popular outrage against Turkey in Britain. The government of British Prime MinisterBenjamin Disraeli, a supporter of Turkey, tries to minimize the massacres and says that the Bulgarians are equally to blame, but his arguments are refuted by the newspaper accounts of MacGahan.
In the wake of the massacres and atrocities committed by the Ottoman forces during the suppression of the April Uprising, as well as centuries-long conflicts between Russia and Turkey in Crimea, the Russian Government, stirred by anti-Turkish and Pan-Slavism sentiment, prepare to invade the Ottoman Empire, and declare war on it on April 24, 1877. The Turkish Government of SultanAbdul Hamid II appeals for help to Britain, its traditional ally against Russia, but the British government responds that it cannot intervene “because of the state of public feeling.”
MacGahan is assigned as a war correspondent for The Daily News and, thanks to his friendship with General Skobelev, the Russian commander, rides with the first units of the Russian Army as it crosses the Danube into Bulgaria. He covers all the major battles of the Russo–Turkish War, including the Siege of Plevna and the Battle of Shipka Pass. He reports on the final defeat of the Turkish armies and is present at the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, which ends the war.
MacGahan is in Constantinople, preparing to travel to Berlin for the conference that determines the final borders of Bulgaria, when he catches typhoid fever. He dies on June 9, 1878, and is buried in the Greek cemetery, in the presence of diplomats, war correspondents, and General Skobelev. Five years later his body is returned to the United States and reburied in New Lexington and a statue is erected in his honor by a society of Bulgarian Americans.
seamus dubhghaill 