1798 book tells story of emigration
BOOK LOOKS AT THE PLIGHT OF 1798 EXILES
A NEW book about Irish history takes a look at the story of the 1798 rebellion but from the perpsective of exiles forced to leave Ireland at that time.
‘United Irishmen: Emigres of Erin’, was written by Stephen McCracken and Colum Ó Ruairc, and is a fascinating account of what happened to people who were forced to leave as fugitives and forge a new life for themselves overseas.
Colum Ó Ruairc is the administrator of the Facebook page, 1798 Rebellion Casualty Database, and commenting on the book to this newspaper he said it’s the first of three volumes dedicated to those who experienced the Rebellion.
‘ This first volume focuses on those who fled, or were banished from Ireland, as a result of the Rebellion,’ said Colum.
Many of those people relocated to America, Canada and France and the book contains a lot of references to Wexford people.
Some of those mentioned include people like Michael
Powers, who was born in Co Wexford in 1769, into a farming background. A veteran insurgent of the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford, he emigrated to Boston in 1802, where he worked as a labourer.
The book tells how Powers actually returned briefly to Ireland in 1817, before returning to Boston with his second cousins. However, he was executed in Boston on May 25, 1820, for the murder of one of those same cousins.
Another person mentioned is John Corish Devereux, from the Leap. While not fully involved in the Rebellion, he was sympathetic to the United Irish cause.
His brother, James Devereux, was killed at the Battle of Vinegar Hill and another, Walter Devereux, fled to the West Indies. He himself, emigrated to the US in 1796 and made a fortune giving dance classes.
Nicholas Harper was another Wexford man who fought at Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798.
He was injured but escaped and fled to America. Two of his brothers died during the battle.
Nicholas served as a clerk in the US Treasury Department for 30 years and gave service in the US navy.
John D’Oyley was born in 1762, to James Monk D’Oyley and Eleanor Devereux, daughter of Wexford County Sheriff, John Devereux, of Kilrush.
Educated in France, D’oyley travelled to America in the early 1780s and was appointed a captain in the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment in 1783. However, he returned to Ireland and took an active part in the insurrection.
He fled back to America where he lived out the remainder of his life.
Colum said that volume 2 will focus on those sentenced to transportation to New South Wales and the Crown Forces, while Volume 3, ‘will be the big one’, documenting 1798 related casualties. Colum had wanted to compile a list of all those émigrés for some time but his primary research is to find casualties of the Rebellion, on all sides.
‘I have 3,600 listed so far,’ he said.
Antrim based historian, Stephen McCracken, had previously written about the Presbyterian input in the United Irishmen and the Antrim Rebellion, and the two men decided to compile exiles, fugitives and the banished of the 1790s, resulting in the new book.