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    Five Clare Families: A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessys, Killeens, Cahills and Lawlors of County Clare
    Five Clare Families: A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessys, Killeens, Cahills and Lawlors of County Clare
    Five Clare Families: A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessys, Killeens, Cahills and Lawlors of County Clare
    Ebook49 pages43 minutes

    Five Clare Families: A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessys, Killeens, Cahills and Lawlors of County Clare

    By Justin Cahill

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This is a short account of five families that lived in and around the Newmarket-on-Fergus district in County Clare from the 1880s to the 1930s. It is an attempt to provide a short account of modern Irish history from the perspective of ordinary people in the aftermath of the Famine and during the Great War, the Rebellion and the Civil War. It will be of interest to local historians and those tracing their family history in County Clare.

    While researching family history in Ireland presents some challenges, it is not as difficult as is often made out. This work provides a practical guide to the available sources and example of how to present the results of your research.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJustin Cahill
    Release dateOct 19, 2014
    ISBN9781311381125
    Five Clare Families: A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessys, Killeens, Cahills and Lawlors of County Clare
    Author

    Justin Cahill

    Welcome to my Smashwords profile. I am a New Zealand-born writer, based in Sydney. My main interests are nature and history. My thesis was on the negotiations between the British and Chinese governments over the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It was used as a source in Dr John Wong's Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, the standard work on that conflict. I wrote a column on the natural history of the Wolli Creek Valley for the Earlwood News (sadly, now defunct) between 1992 and 1998. My short biography of the leading Australian ornithologist, Alfred North (1855-1917), was published in 1998. I write regular reviews on books about history for my blog,' Justin Cahill Reviews' and Booktopia. I'm also a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Heckler' column. My current projects include completing the first history of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand told from the perspective of ordinary people and a study of the extinction of Sydney's native birds. After much thought, I decided to make my work available on Smashwords. Australia and New Zealand both have reasonably healthy print publishing industries. But, like it or not, the future lies with digital publishing. So I'm grateful to Mark Coker for having the vision to establish Smashwords and for the opportunity to distribute my work on it.

    Read more from Justin Cahill

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      Book preview

      Five Clare Families - Justin Cahill

      Five Clare Families

      A Memoir of the McMahons, Hennessy, Killeens, Cahills and

      Lawlors of County Clare

      Justin Cahill

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 Justin Cahill

      Discover other titles by Justin Cahill at Smashwords.com

      Please direct all inquiries to Justin Cahill at

      PO Box 108, Lindfield, 2070

      New South Wales, Australia.

      or e-mail to: [email protected]

      Cover: Photograph of the former Cahill family home near Grays Cross at the top of the Hill Road, near Bunratty, taken in 2000.

      Introduction

      i

      This is a short history of my father’s family. He came from the southern part of County Clare, near the confluence of the Shannon and Fergus Rivers. If you were to sail there from the Atlantic, you would come up the Shannon, pass the town of Kilrush and continue on to Rineanna, near where the airport is. From there, the Fergus goes north, past the town of Newmarket-on-Fergus and on through Ennis. The Shannon continues east, past Bunratty and to Limerick.

      History seeps through the land like water through a sponge. People began to arrive there after the end of the last Ice Age. They built the famous Poulnabrone dolmen at the Burren about 5800 years ago. By the time of the earliest surviving written records, from the 500s, they spoke Celtic. They left Ireland "…a heritage of beauty in decorative art and in lyric poetry, of incandescent imagination in literature, of devotion to ideals rather than to material gain, of vitality and the will to survive."

      From the 430s, Palladius, St Patrick and other missionaries began converting these ideals into the Christian faith. During the Dark Ages that followed, their successors helped preserve Europe’s cultural legacy, with Ireland becoming known as the 'Land of Saints and Scholars'.

      For all these achievements, the Irish remained politically divided. Eventually, the land was split into several independent kingdoms. The land along the River Shannon in Clare and Limerick lay within the kingdom of Thomond, ruled by the O’Brien family.

      Disunity brought civil wars and invasions. In 1014 Brian Boru, King of Thomond and High King of Ireland, blocked further Viking settlement. Then came the Normans, including Richard de Clare. They were followed by the Henry II of England. Most of the Irish kings submitted to him in 1171. But the O’Briens gradually regained power, leaving the Normans in only nominal control.

      During the Reformation, Henry VIII broke England away from the Catholic Church. Fearing the Catholic states would allay against him, he invaded Ireland. Ultimately Murrough O’Brien, the last King of Thomond, was forced to submit. Henry VIII made him Earl of Thomond and Baron Inchiquin and allowed him to retain the family’s seat, Dromoland Castle, and its estates at Ballynacragga. Dromoland Castle is still there, although it is now a hotel and conference centre rather than a place of government.

      From this time, the English set out to colonise Ireland. James I dispatched settlers for the ‘plantation’ of Ulster. They took most of the land, divided it into large estates and reduced most of the Irish to landless labourers. That, and Cromwell’s brutal invasion, left a legacy of hatred and bitterness that lasts to this day.

      Charles II returned some of the land granted to the settlers. But the Irish hoped to throw them out altogether, only to be defeated in 1691. It was not until Daniel O’Connell secured Catholic Emancipation in 1829 that Irish Catholics became full citizens of their own country.

      While the English took control of Ireland, they were indifferent to the fate of its people. During the reigns of

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