Biography Posts

The histories of the less exalted in the right hands can make for fascinating reading. While much ink has been spilled writing of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Hitler, less is known about how those figures affected the lives of the many who followed o…

Sculptor Jerome Connor (1874 - 1943) was born in Coumduff near Anascaul in Kerry on February 23, 1874. At age 14, he emigrated with his family to Holyoke in Massachusetts. Jerome’s father, Patrick, appears to have worked as a stonecutter, and …

John Thomand O'Brien was born in Baltinglass, Wicklow, on the 24th of June 1786. He emigrated to Brazil in 1811 where he attempted to set up several businesses in Brazil and then Argentina. O'Brien's efforts in the commercial domain proved unsuccess…

Charles Algernon Parsons (1854 - 1931) was born in London, the youngest child of William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Ross. Like his remarkable father, who built the Leviathan Telescope at the family seat in Birr Castle, Charles decided to pursue a care…

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington c. 1920 Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, suffragette, nationalist and feminist was born Johanna Mary Sheehy into a nationalist family in Kanturk, Cork on May 24th, 1877. She was educated in Dublin receiving both a batchelors and m…

Oisín Kelly was born, Austin Ernest Kelly, into a protestant family on May 17th, 1915. His father, William Kelly, was a school teacher and the family lived on James Street in the heart of working class Dublin on the south side of the River Li…

Daniel Pollen, the 9th Premier of New Zealand, was born in Ringsend in Dublin on the 2nd of June, 1813. Little is known of his early life, although some accounts indicated he initially emigrated to the United States where his father worked on the co…

William Drennan (1754 - 1820) republican, polemicist, poet, and physician was born in Belfast on May 23, 1754. Inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, he was one of the primary movers in the United Irishma…