Revolutionaries, trade unionists and New Zealand roots
More stories of Premier past in new Tipp Historical Journal
Bristling with 15 chapters on people, places and events countywide, the 2022 edition of the Tipperary Historical Journal is out now.
The chapter that will perhaps best captivate the interest of local readers is Danny Grace's second part of ‘John Hassett Gleeson: A Forgotten Tipperary Soldier and Fenian’. The towering, battle-hardened veteran of the American Civil War returned to his native Borrisoleigh in 1865 to foment revolution in Ireland. A fellow officer noted of Gleeson that there was not “a braver, truer nor more zealous worker in the cause of his native land” - the Borrisoleigh man longed “with a heartfelt enthusiasm for the day when he will have an opportunity of leading a few thousand of his countrymen into that bloody field where the liberty of Ireland shall be the object, and where he shall teach the Saxon to curse again and again his own laws”.
Mr Grace of Knigh, present Chairman of the County Tipperary Historical Society, looks at how the exploits of the US general and his brother Joseph failed at home; they were arrested and both spent time at Nenagh gaol before John returned to the States to become, briefly, the leader of the Fenian movement there. He was subsequently involved in the failed Fenian raid on Canada of 1870, and thereafter acquired a large farm in Virginia, though his life ended with a menial “government clerk” position in Washington. Gleeson died there in 1889, at the age of 51, and was buried in Arlington Cemetery. Having packed so much into his relatively short life, Mr Grace contends that the Borrisoleigh man “certainly deserves greater recognition not only in his adopted USA but also in his native County Tipperary.”
The theme of emigration is further teased in this year's Tipp Historical Journal. Ross Miller of New Zealand writes of his ancestral roots, which extend back to Roscrea and one Daniel Connolly, who was transported to Australia in 1838 for stealing money.
While he would like to know more about his forebears in Roscrea, Mr Miller writes with vim about Connolly's many descendants, stories of which range from encounters with the Ned Kelly Gang to service in the First World War to escapades over the Snowy Mountains.
SCRAPBOOK OF HISTORICAL INTEREST
Also sure to catch the eye of local readers is Ballinahinch native Frances Maxwell's synopsis of a scrapbook compiled by the Trant family of Dovea Estate, Bouladuff. John Trant was the landlord for whom John Ellis worked as farm manager before being famously murdered at Killaharra in 1857. The subsequent arrest, trial and hanging in Nenagh of the Cormack Brothers for Ellis' murder is one of the many events documented in the Trant scrapbook, which features over 500 pages of cuttings from local, national and international newspapers. A digital version of the Irish section of the large volume is available for research at Tipperary Studies, The Source, Thurles.
“Although collected as a family keepsake, the Trant Scrapbook is of significant wider historical interest,” Ms Maxwell concludes. “It illuminates the interests of a family in local and wider happenings during Ireland's troubled past, through famine times, land agitation, political controversies and religious upheaval. It reveals the artistic, literary, musical, sporting and social interests of Trant family members and is a valuable record of that family's history and legacy.”
Using the late Ger Lewis' ‘Loosening the Chains’ history of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union (ITGWU) Nenagh Branch as his cornerstone, trade union historian Francis Devine attempts to cast light on the wider story of the movement in County Tipperary. He explores in great detail the formation of the first ITGWU branches in Tipperary, their membership, structures and activity during the period 1918 to 1930, and beyond. Labour politics, including the involvement of Dan Morrissey and John Ryan of Nenagh, also features in the study presented by Mr Devine, himself a retired ITGWU/SIPTU official.
Despite the detail, the author is left wanting to know more about the local officers revealed in the ITGWU Annual Reports and the role they played in local life while attempting to improve, and often defending, the standards of Tipperary's working class.
ACCOUNTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTY
Among the other chapters in this year's Journal are ‘Modeshill Graveyard, Tipperary’ by Mary Casteleyn and Bernie Kirwan; ‘The historiography of Young Ireland, 1849 - 1996’ by William Nolan; ‘Background to Stanwix Hospital and Alms-houses, Thurles’ by George Bourke; while PhD researcher Margaret O'Sullivan of Nenagh studies the role of the rent warner at nineteenth century Lismore Estate, Clogheen.
‘Valentine Ryan: “A Beautiful Specimen of Tipperary Landlordism”’ is penned by Tom Plunkett; Denis G Marnane contributes ‘Trevor Lloyd Ashe: A Gothic Romance in the Glen of Aherlow’; then there's ‘Athletics, Land and Nationalism in Thurles, Moycarkey and Killenaule, 1871 - 1921’ by JM Tobin; ‘Lady Aberdeen Opens the Tuberculosis Exhibition at Cashel in 1908’ by Seamus J King; ‘Sheriff Thomas J Dunn - A Clonmel family in New York’ by Martin Phelan; ‘Thomas Aloysius Fitzgerald OFM (1862-1921): Irish-Australian Priest, Author and Gaeilgeoir’ by Jonathan Wooding and Kitty Barry, and ‘Seán Treacy's Sojourn in Longorchard House’, a note by Donal J O'Regan.
An authoritative source of new research on the history of County Tipperary, the Tipperary Historical Journal was first published in 1988. The new volume can be purchased online through www.tipperarystudies.ie (where many previous editions are also available) and in local bookshops.