#austin stack

From 1915 Kerry was central to plans for the Rising. In autumn of that year Austin Stack, the leader of the Volunteers in Kerry and a member of the IRB was informed by Pádraig Pearse of the plans for the Rising. Arrangements were being made for an arms shipment from Germany to arrive in Tralee Bay on Easter Sunday 23 April 1916. Stack and the Kerry Volunteers were to receive and distribute the…

MR. MICHAEL COLLINS: Mr. Speaker, there is just a little matter to which I would like to refer before anything else is said. It is this. My private office was raided last night and important books and documents were taken. Is there any member here who accepts responsibility for that raid? PRESIDENT DE VALERA: As head of the Government here I must say I know nothing whatever about any such…

Born in Friarstown near Killerig, Co Carlow in 1890, her parents were Peter Connolly and Elizabeth Gaynor, the daughter of a nearby farmer in Grange. By 1911, the Connollys were living in Artane, Dublin and, according to local tradition, they may have been evicted from their home and farm in Friarstown. While no trace of the Connolly farmhouse remains, a field on the farm of Larry Byrne,…

“You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea… you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.” –Sean O’Casey Ashe was born in Lispole, a Gaeltacht village in Co Kerry in 1885 and at an early age became involved in nationalist politics. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and participated in the 1916 Rising fighting in Ashbourne where the Irish rebels…

#OTD in 1921 – In an extremely hostile environment over the Treaty debate, Michael Collins smells some dirty work and addresses the House.

MR. MICHAEL COLLINS: Mr. Speaker, there is just a little matter to which I would like to refer before anything else is said. It is this. My private office was raided last night and important books and documents were taken. Is there any member here who accepts responsibility for that raid? PRESIDENT DE VALERA: As head of the Government here I must say I know nothing whatever about any such…

#OTD in 1981 – Death of Bridget ‘Brede’ Connolly who played a pivotal role in the 1916 Rising by dispatching messages for James Connolly in the GPO.

Born in Friarstown near Killerig, Co Carlow in 1890, her parents were Peter Connolly and Elizabeth Gaynor, the daughter of a nearby farmer in Grange. By 1911, the Connollys were living in Artane, Dublin and, according to local tradition, they may have been evicted from their home and farm in Friarstown. While no trace of the Connolly farmhouse remains, a field on the farm of Larry Byrne,…

#OTD in 1917 – Thomas Ashe dies in the Mater Hospital in Dublin from the combined effects of a hunger strike and forced feeding at Mountjoy Jail.

“You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea… you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build.” –Sean O’Casey Ashe was born in Lispole, a Gaeltacht village in Co Kerry in 1885 and at an early age became involved in nationalist politics. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and participated in the 1916 Rising fighting in Ashbourne where the Irish rebels…

#OTD in 1921 – Dáil Éireann debated, resolved and finally on 11 March declared war on the British administration.

In January 1921, at his first Dáil meeting after his return to a country gripped by the War of Independence, de Valera introduced a motion calling on the IRA to desist from ambushes and other tactics that were allowing the British to successfully portray it as a terrorist group, and to take on the British forces with conventional military methods. This they strongly opposed, and de Valera…