Peter Howe Brown, second marquis of Sligo, was to pack an extraordinary amount into his 57 years on Earth. Born in 1788, some of his formative memories stemmed from the late summer of 1798, when French forces seized Westport House from his father and made it their base during the ill-fated rebellion of the United … Read more
This archive won’t appeal to the pedigree nuts but is a treasure trove for those who want to document the experiences and motivations of ancestors who fought for independence or who have served in the Irish Defence Forces. One of the problems in using this archive is that much of it concerns people born in … Read more
Through their wills, people rewarded friendships, ensured the financial stability of their children or spouses, or donated to the church for the sake of their souls. Ireland’s single surviving volume of medieval wills and testaments, the Register of wills and inventories of the Diocese of Dublin in the time of Archbishops Tregury and Walton, contains … Read more
There has always been indirect evidence in Dáil Éireann and trade union archives of republican infiltration, and recently released Military Service Pension applications show that a number of IRA and IRB activists were engaged in precisely this exercise. Some members of the group submitted identical statements with their applications that: ‘I was a member of … Read more
The historic meeting took place in Tristledermod, modern-day Castledermot, Co. Kildare. As a grand-nephew of a member of the anti-Treaty IRA Four Courts garrison of 1922, rediscovering an original manuscript of a contemporaneous record that is the earliest known documentary evidence of an assembly of state officials to call itself a parliament in Ireland seems … Read more