John O'Mahony

John Francis O'Mahony (1815 – 7 February 1877) was an Irish scholar and the founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Despite coming from a reasonably wealthy family and being well educated, the primary pursuit of O'Mahony's life was that of Irish Independence from the United Kingdom, a calling that ultimately left him in poverty. O'Mahony fought in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 as well as the American Civil War, and was involved organisationally in the Fenian Rising of 1867 in Ireland and the Fenian Raids on Canada.

Early life O'Mahony was born in 1815 in Kilbeheny, on the border between County Limerick and County Cork, into a family of minor Roman Catholic landed gentry who had managed to retain land following the Munster Plantation. O'Mahony came from a long line of Irish activists: Members of the family had been outspoken advocates for the rights of the native Irish during the Penal Laws period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, while his father and uncle had been members of the United Irishmen and had taken part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Upon the death of an elder brother, O'Mahony inherited a property that yielded £300 per annum. However, he would later yield this inheritance to his sister in order to pursue his Fenian activities. Despite being a Catholic, he later entered Trinity College, Dublin (nominally Catholics were forbidden from entering Trinity due to its ties to the Protestant Church of Ireland), where he studied Sanskrit, Hebrew and Irish. He became an accomplished Gaelic scholar, and later taught Greek and Latin, and contributed articles to Irish and French journals. He left Trinity without getting a degree. In 1854, he learned that John Mitchel had escaped from the penal colony on Van Dieman's Land and made his way to New York City. O'Mahony managed to follow him there and thereafter took part in the Emigrant Aid Association, the Emmet Monument Association, and other Irish organisations. The object of the association was to secure the separation of Ireland. The name was probably derived the Fenian Cycle, a body of medieval Gaelic poems about a mythical pre-Christian Irish army.

Later years

He devoted the last years of his life to literary pursuits, but suffered from ill health struggled to secure the bare means for subsistence. When his poverty was discovered, he declined to receive assistance. and his remains were taken to Ireland aboard the Dakota and interred with the honors of a public funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

Posthumous legacy Given his links with Irish republicanism and the GAA a club in Dundalk was named after him called Sean O'Mahony's GFC. They play in black and amber and in men's and ladies teams. Apparently the source of the club's name has caused some controversy but its actual source is the first Principal of the Old Point Road Primary School, across the road from the present pitch. (Sourced by members of the Principal's family).