Patterson is born on October 5, 1938, in Clonmel, County Tipperary. As a boy Patterson performs with his local parish choir and is involved in maintaining the annual tradition of singing with the “Wrenboys.” He sings in the local St. Mary’s Choral Society and at a production of The Pirates of Penzance performed with both his parents. His interests extend beyond music and as a boy he represents Marlfield GAAhurling club, plays tennis at Hillview and golf at the Mountain Road course. He quits school at an early stage to work in the printing business of his mother’s family. He moves to Dublin in 1961 to enroll at the National Academy of Theatre and Allied Arts where he studies acting while at the same time receiving vocal training from Hans Waldemar Rosen. In 1964, he enters the Feis Ceoil, a nationwide music competition, in which he wins several sections including oratorio, lieder and the German Gold Cup.
Patterson gives classical recitals around Ireland and wins scholarships to study in London, Paris and in the Netherlands. While in Paris, he signs a contract with Philips Records and releases his first record, My Dear Native Land. He works with conductors and some of the most prestigious orchestras in Europe including the London Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris. He also gains a reputation as a singer of Handel, Mozart, and Bach oratorios and German, Italian and French song. He has a long-running programme on RTÉ titled For Your Pleasure.
In the early 1980s Patterson moves to the United States, making his home in rural Westchester County, New York. A resurgence of interest in Irish culture encourages him to turn towards a more traditional Irish repertoire. He adds hymns, ballads, and traditional as well as more popular tunes to his catalogue. In March 1988, he is featured host in a Saint Patrick’s Day celebration of music and dance at New York City’s famous Radio City Music Hall. He also gives an outdoor performance before an audience of 60,000 on the steps of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Patterson is equally at home in more intimate settings. His singing in the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St. John Passion is given fine reviews. Further recordings follow, of Beethoven arrangements, Irish songs, Berlioz songs, Purcell songs and others, all on the Philips label.
Patterson performs sold-out concerts from London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall, and with his family he presents two concerts at the White House, for presidents Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1995. He records over thirty albums in six languages, wins silver, gold and platinum discs and is the first Irish singer to host his own show in Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Rising to greater prominence with the new popularity of Celtic music in the 1990s, Patterson sees many of his past recordings reissued for American audiences, and in 1998 he stars in the PBS special Ireland in Song. His last album outsells Pavarotti.
In 1999, Patterson learns he has a brain tumor. He has several operations in the following year and his condition appears to stabilise. He is diagnosed with a recurrence of his illness on May 7, 2000. He briefly recuperates and resumes performing. His last performance is on June 4, 2000, at Regis College in the Boston suburb of Weston, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter he is admitted to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York where he lapses into a coma and dies on June 10, 2000, at the age of 61.
O’Connor is born on June 7, 1874, at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O’Connor, a stonecutter from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who becomes a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O’Connor (née McFadden), of County Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he becomes apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He is employed in the early 1890s on sculptural work for the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on his colossal Statue of the Republic, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition.
Moving to London (1894–98), O’Connor works on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who uses him as a model for his mural Frieze of Prophets for the Boston Public Library. His first independent work, Sea Dreams, a relief of a head, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896. Returning to the United States (1898–1903), he becomes a studio assistant of French, through whom he receives his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt Memorial Doors for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, New York, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim. He also executes the tympanum and lateral friezes.
Around 1900, O’Connor marries an artist’s model named Nora, by whom he has a daughter. In 1902, he hires as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown from New Jersey and of County Down parentage. The following year he elopes with her to Paris, where they marry and have four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O’Connor, becomes an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continues for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O’Connor coarsening the features for the latter.
During his years in Paris (1903–14), O’Connor is influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriends. Among his pupils in Paris is the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continues to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the United States, an example of the former being the Recuillement in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. From 1906 he exhibits annually at the Salon in Paris, where he is the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton. Included in his only exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1907) is a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors. The relief is subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris in 1909.
In 1909, O’Connor wins a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry, the County Wexford-born “father of the American navy,” for Washington, D.C. His design includes a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled Exile from Ireland, and another group representing the Genius of Ireland, which includes a female figure of the “Motherland.” Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission is not completed. His marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), a plaster of which is exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1909, is placed by the state of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Another marble, Peace by Justice, is commissioned as a gift from the United States to the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913.
Returning to Paris in the mid-1920s, O’Connor becomes the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes in 1928, for the marble sculpture Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The French government makes him a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1929. In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre, at the Salon in Paris. The sculpture is requested in 1932 by the people of Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O’Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a “Tree of life” are three figures of Christ, representing in turn “Desolation,” “Consolation” and “Triumph.” Cast in bronze, throughout World War II the statue remains hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, due to clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography, it is not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue until its eventual unveiling in 1978 as Triple Cross in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. His other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. Inspired by Rodin’s famous Monument to Balzac, the work is executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare in 1931–32.
During the 1930s, O’Connor lives and works in London and Ireland, where he has residences at Glencullen House, County Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Square, Dublin. He dies at the latter address on June 9, 1941, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His own bronze relief, Le feu sacré, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick in 1940, is in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O’Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family. The collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the Lafayette cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled The Victim, on view in Merrion Square Park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O’Connor under the general title Le Débarquement. The National Gallery of Ireland has the Desolation maquette for the Triple Cross. A centenary exhibition of his work is held at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. His widow dies in Dublin in 1974.
(From: “O’Connor, Andrew” by Lawrence William White and Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Carey enters the bookselling and printing business in 1775 and, at the age of seventeen, publishes a pamphlet criticizing dueling. He follows this with a work criticizing the severity of the Irish penal code, and another criticizing Parliament. As a result, the British House of Commons threatens him with prosecution. In 1781 he flees to Paris as a political refugee. There he meets Benjamin Franklin, the ambassador representing the American Revolutionary forces, which achieves independence that year. Franklin takes Carey to work in his printing office.
Carey works for Franklin for a year before returning to Ireland, where he edits two Irish nationalist newspapers, the Freeman’s Journal and The Volunteer’s Journal. He gains passage on a ship to emigrate to the newly independent United States in September 1784.
Upon Carey’s arrival in Philadelphia, he finds that Franklin has recommended him to Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, who gives him a $400 check to establish himself. He uses this money to set up a new publishing business and a book shop. He founds The Pennsylvania Herald (1785), Columbian Magazine (1786), and The American Museum (1787). None of these ventures proves very profitable. The American Museum is the first American periodical to treat American culture as rich and original, instead of a poor imitation of Great Britain’s. He prints the first American version of the Douay–Rheims Bible in 48 weekly installments, this Roman Catholic edition popularly known as the Carey Bible. It is the first Roman Catholic version of the Bible printed in the United States. He also prints numerous editions of the King James Version, fundamental to English-speaking peoples.
Carey frequently writes articles on various social topics, including events during the 1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic, which proves a crisis for the city. He reports on debates in the state legislature as well as providing political commentary in his essays. He is a Catholic and a founding member of the American Sunday-School Society, along with Quaker merchant Thomas P. Cope, Dr. Benjamin Rush and Episcopal bishop William White.
In 1822 Carey publishes Essays on Political Economy; or, The Most Certain Means of Promoting the Wealth, Power, Resources, and Happiness of Nations, Applied Particularly to the United States. This is one of the first treatises favoring Alexander Hamilton‘s protectionist economic policy.
During Carey’s lifetime, the publishing firm evolves to M. Carey & Son (1817–21), M. Carey & Sons (1821–24), and then to Carey & Lea (1824). He retires in 1825, leaving the publishing business to his son, Henry Charles Carey and son-in-law Isaac Lea. Lea and Henry Carey make the business economically successful and, for a time, it is one of the most prominent publishers in the country.
Upon arriving in America, Carey quickly develops political connections in the developing country. One of his most important supporters is John Adams, still a leading figure of the Federalist Party at the time. His passionate support for the establishment of an American Navy contributes significantly to his alliance with the Federalists.
Throughout his political career in America, Carey supports the development and maintenance of American naval strength, even after joining Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans in 1796. His political realignment occurs shortly before the American ratification of the Jay Treaty, primarily intended to ensure peace with Britain, while distancing America from France. His publishing in America channels his energy toward productive political objectives. His published works are credited with swaying public opinion toward the establishment of a powerful American navy.
Carey’s book Naval History of the United States, is meant to influence the public. Its conspicuous omission of naval activity during the American Quasi-War with France shows his political intentions. It helps direct political energy against the British, with which the U.S. is at war at the time of the book’s publication on May 6, 1813.
Focus on the British, known around the world for their naval power, makes an influential case for extending the reach of the American navy. Along with his publication of Naval History, Carey writes Olive Branch, published in 1814. He tries to eliminate competition between the two American political parties to create unity during the War of 1812. To many people, these efforts, and his early relationship with Franklin, make him the logical choice as Franklin’s political successor. Scholars believe that he contributed significantly by his books and publications to the establishment of the United States Whig Party.
Carey is elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in 1815. A significant portion of his business papers, as well as a very large number of original copies of works printed and/or published by him reside in the collections of the AAS.
Hoban is a Roman Catholic raised on the Desart Court estate belonging to the Earl of Desart near Callan, County Kilkenny. He works there as a wheelwright and carpenter until his early twenties, when he is given an “advanced student” place in the Dublin Society‘s Drawing School on Lower Grafton Street. He studies under Thomas Ivory. He excels in his studies and receives the prestigious Duke of Leinster‘s medal for drawings of “Brackets, Stairs, and Roofs” from the Dublin Society in 1780. He is an apprentice to Ivory, from 1779 to 1785.
Hoban is in South Carolina by April 1787, where he designs numerous buildings including the Charleston County Courthouse (1790–92), built on the ruins of the former South Carolina Statehouse, which was burned in 1788. PresidentGeorge Washington admires Hoban’s work on his Southern Tour and may have met with him in Charleston in May 1791. Washington summons the architect to Philadelphia, the temporary national capital, in June 1792.
In July 1792, Hoban is named winner of the design competition for the White House. His initial design has a 3-story facade, nine bays across, like the Charleston courthouse. Under Washington’s influence, he amends this to a 2-story facade, eleven bays across, and, at Washington’s insistence, the whole presidential mansion is faced with stone. It is unclear whether any of Hoban’s surviving drawings are actually from the competition.
It is known that Hoban owns at least three slaves who are employed as carpenters in the construction of the White House. Their names are recorded as “Ben, Daniel, and Peter” and appear in a James Hoban slave payroll.
Hoban is also one of the supervising architects who serves on the United States Capitol, carrying out the design of Dr. William Thornton, as well as with The Octagon House. He lives the rest of his life in Washington, D.C., where he works on other public buildings and government projects, including roads and bridges.
Local folklore has it that Hoban designed Rossenarra House near the village of Kilmoganny in County Kilkenny in 1824.
Hoban’s wife, Susanna “Susan” Sewall, is the sister of the prominent GeorgetownCity Tavern proprietor, Clement Sewall, who enlists as a sergeant at age 19 in the Maryland Line during the Revolutionary War, is promoted six months later to ensign and then severely wounded at the Battle of Germantown.
After the District of Columbia is granted limited home rule in 1802, Hoban serves on the twelve-member city council for most of the remainder of his life, except during the years he is rebuilding the White House. He is also involved in the development of Catholic institutions in the city, including Georgetown University, St. Patrick’s Parish, and the Georgetown Visitation Monastery founded by another Kilkenny native, Teresa Lalor of Ballyragget.
Young is invited to accompany President Ulysses S. Grant on Grant’s famous 1877-79 world tour, chronicled in Young’s book Around the World with General Grant. He impresses Grant, especially in China where he strikes up a friendship with Li Hongzhang. Grant persuades President Chester A. Arthur to appoint Young minister to China in 1882. In this position he distinguishes himself by mediating and settling disputes between the United States and China and France and China. Unlike many other diplomats, he opposes the policy of removing Korea from Chinese suzerainty.
In 1885 Young resumes working for the New York Herald in Europe. In 1890 he returns to Philadelphia. In 1897 President William McKinley appoints him Librarian of Congress, the first librarian confirmed by Congress. During his tenure, the library begins moving from its original home in the United States Capitol building to its own structure, an accomplishment largely the responsibility of his predecessor, Ainsworth Rand Spofford. Spofford serves as Chief Assistant Librarian under Young. Young holds the post of librarian until his death.
Young’s brother is Congressman James Rankin Young. His son is Brigadier General Gordon Russell Young, who is Engineer Commission of the District of Columbia from 1945-51 and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.
Some of the fifty people at the luncheon, most of them Irish American members of Congress, think Clinton might forgo a handshake because he is under tremendous pressure from Britain’s Prime MinisterJohn Major not to give Adams a warm embrace. But Clinton does not hesitate although the handshake comes after photographers have left the room.
“Gerry was concerned about the protocol of how he should go up to the President, but when he walked up, the President gave him a very big handshake,” says RepresentativePeter T. King, a Republican from Seaford, Long Island, who sits to the right of Adams at the lunch. After an awkward moment of silence, the room explodes with applause.
The President and the Sinn Féin leader speak for five minutes. Later Adams says, “The engagement was positive, was cordial.”
According to Rep. King, Clinton says he is committed to making the Irish peace effort succeed and, while talking to Adams, puts his fist in front of him and says, “This is going to work.” Adams says Clinton does not urge him to make sure the IRA disarms, something Major asked the President to do. Clinton invites Adams to a White House reception scheduled for the following day and, according to his aides, plans to speak to Major over the weekend in an effort to patch up their differences.
The tone at the luncheon is often light. Clinton jokes that finally he is at a place where people will not criticize him for taking a drink of Guinness. Also, Bruton hails Gingrich as an honorary Irishman, noting that his mother apparently descended from the Doherty clan of County Donegal.
Wearing a white carnation tinged with green, Gingrich gives the Taoiseach a bowl of Georgia peanuts and a book on the history of the United States Capitol. Telling Gingrich that he is not the first person to consider overhauling welfare, Bruton gives him an 1840’s book about welfare reform in Ireland.
As a boy Patterson performs with his local parish choir and is involved in maintaining the annual tradition of singing with the “Wrenboys.” He sings in the local St. Mary’s Choral Society and at a production of The Pirates of Penzance performed with both his parents. His interests extend beyond music and as a boy he represents Marlfield GAAhurling club, plays tennis at Hillview and golf at the Mountain Road course. He quits school at an early stage to work in the printing business of his mother’s family. He moves to Dublin in 1961 to enroll at the National Academy of Theatre and Allied Arts where he studies acting while at the same time receiving vocal training from Hans Waldemar Rosen. In 1964, he enters the Feis Ceoil, a nationwide music competition, in which he wins several sections including oratorio, lieder and the German Gold Cup.
Patterson gives classical recitals around Ireland and wins scholarships to study in London, Paris and in the Netherlands. While in Paris, he signs a contract with Philips Records and releases his first record, My Dear Native Land. He works with conductors and some of the most prestigious orchestras in Europe including the London Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris. He also gains a reputation as a singer of Handel, Mozart, and Bach oratorios and German, Italian and French song. He has a long-running programme on RTÉ titled For Your Pleasure.
Patterson is equally at home in more intimate settings. His singing in the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St. John Passion is given fine reviews. Further recordings follow, of Beethoven arrangements, Irish songs, Berlioz songs, Purcell songs and others, all on the Philips label.
Patterson performs sold-out concerts from London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall, and with his family he presents two concerts at the White House, for presidents Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1995. He records over thirty albums in six languages, wins silver, gold and platinum discs and is the first Irish singer to host his own show in Radio City Music Hall in New York.
Rising to greater prominence with the new popularity of Celtic music in the 1990s, Patterson sees many of his past recordings reissued for American audiences, and in 1998 he stars in the PBS special Ireland in Song. His last album outsells Pavarotti.
In 1999, Patterson learns he has a brain tumour. He has several operations in the following year and his condition appears to stabilise. He is diagnosed with a recurrence of his illness on May 7, 2000. He briefly recuperates and resumes performing. His last performance is on June 4, 2000, at Regis College in the Boston suburb of Weston, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter he is admitted to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York where he lapses into a coma and dies on June 10, 2000, at the age of 61.
Kennedy takes office following the November 1960 presidential election, in which he narrowly defeats Richard Nixon, the then–incumbent Vice President. In addition to being the first Catholic to become President, he also becomes the youngest person elected to the office.
His inaugural address encompasses the major themes of his campaign and defines his presidency during a time of economic prosperity, emerging social changes, and diplomatic challenges. This inauguration is the first in which a poet, Robert Frost, participates in the program. Frost, then 86 years old, recites his poem “The Gift Outright” at Kennedy’s request as an act of gratitude towards Frost for his help during the campaign.
The oath of office for the President is administered to Kennedy by Chief Justice of the United StatesEarl Warren using a closed family Bible at 12:51 (ET) although he officially became president at the stroke of noon as defined by the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution. He does not wear an overcoat when taking the oath of office and delivering the inaugural address, despite the cold conditions of 22 °F (−6 °C) with windchill at 7 °F (−14 °C) at noon.
Kennedy’s 1366-word inaugural address, the first delivered to a televised audience in color, is considered among the best presidential inaugural speeches in American history. It includes the iconic line “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Born and initially educated in Ireland, Shields emigrates to the United States in 1826. He is briefly a sailor and spends time in Quebec before settling in Kaskaskia, Illinois, where he studies and practices law. In 1836, he is elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, and later as State Auditor. His work as auditor is criticized by a young Abraham Lincoln, who with his then fiancée, Mary Todd, publishes a series of inflammatory pseudonymous letters in a local paper. Shields challenges Lincoln to a duel, and the two nearly fight on September 22, 1842, before making peace and eventually becoming friends.
In 1848, Shields is appointed to and confirmed by the Senate as the first governor of the Oregon Territory, which he declines. After serving as Senator from Illinois, he moves to Minnesota and there founds the town of Shieldsville. He is then elected as Senator from Minnesota. He serves in the American Civil War and, at the Battle of Kernstown, his troops inflict the only tactical defeat of Stonewall Jackson in the war. He resigns his commission shortly thereafter. After moving multiple times, he settles in Missouri and serves again for three months in the Senate.
Shields dies unexpectedly in Ottumwa, Iowa on June 1, 1879, while on a lecture tour, after reportedly complaining of chest pains. His body is transferred to Carrollton, Missouri by train, where a funeral is held at the Catholic church, and his body escorted to St. Mary’s Cemetery by two companies of the Nineteenth Infantry, the Craig Rifles, and a twenty-piece brass band. His grave remains unmarked for 30 years, until the local government and the U.S. Congress fund a granite and bronze monument there in his honor.
In the 17th century, parliament settles at Chichester House, a town house in Hoggen Green (later College Green) formerly owned by Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster and Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, which had been built on the site of a nunnery disbanded by King Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Carew’s house, named Chichester House after its later owner Sir Arthur Chichester, is a building of sufficient importance to have become the temporary home of the Kingdom of Ireland’s law courts during the Michaelmas law term in 1605. Most famously, the legal documentation facilitating the Plantation of Ulster is signed there on November 16, 1612.
Chichester House is in a dilapidated state, allegedly haunted and unfit for official use. In 1727 parliament votes to spend £6,000 on a new building on the site. It is to be the world’s first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building.
The then ancient Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English before 1707 and, later, British Parliament, is a converted building. The House of Commons‘s odd seating arrangements is due to the chamber’s previous existence as a chapel. Hence MPs face each other from former pews.
The original, domed House of Commons chamber is destroyed by fire in the 1790s, and a less elaborate new chamber, without a dome, is rebuilt in the same location and opened in 1796, four years before the Parliament’s ultimate abolition.
Pearce’s designs come to be studied and copied both at home and abroad. The Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle imitate his top-lit corridors. The British Museum in Bloomsbury in London copies his colonnaded main entrance. His impact reaches Washington, D.C., where his building, and in particular his octagonal House of Commons chamber, is studied as plans are made for the United States Capitol building. While the shape of the chamber is not replicated, some of its decorative motifs are, with the ceiling structure in the Old Senate Chamber and old House of Representatives chamber (now the National Statuary Hall) bearing a striking resemblance to Pearce’s ceiling in the House of Commons.
(Pictured: Architectural drawing of the front of Parliament House by Peter Mazell based on the drawing by Rowland Omer, 1767)
seamus dubhghaill 