THE NATIONALIST AND LEINSTER LEADER OF 6TH OCTOBER 1928 REPORTS ON THE DEATH OF MR. JOHN DEVOY, THE GREAT FENIAN LEADER OF 1867.

 

 

 

The death is announced this week of Mr. John Devoy, of New York, the great Fenian Leader of 1867. He was the Editor of “The Gaelic American” newspaper. His ancestors belonged to Leix.  Michael Devoy, a grand uncle of the late Mr. John Devoy, wrote a history of Athy, which he sent to the “Irish Magazine” in March 1809. The volume of the “Irish Magazine” in which the article appears was picked up at Mendoza’s Old Book Store, at Anne Street, New York, by Mr. Frank Richardson, a native of Athy, and handed to the Editor of “The Gaelic American”. The full title of the publication iis “The Irish Magazine and Monthly Asylum for Neglected Biography” and the editor and publisher was the notorious Matty Cox.

The father of Michael Devoy, the writer of the history, was born in 1713 and died in 1815; so that he was alive six years after that article was written in 1809. He spoke no English until he was twenty-five years of age. His son, when writing the article had the benefit of his father’s long and intimate knowledge of the town of Athy, as well as access to books and manuscripts that are now extant. He was a Captain of the Rebels in the Kildare Insurrection of 1798, and had to leave the neighbourhood of Athy on that account. He settled in Kill in 1805, became a prosperous contractor, and superintended the construction of a large part of the Grand Canal. He died about 1841 or 1842.

Michael Devoy, the writer of the history was born at The Heath, a farm on the estate of the Duke of Leinster, and situated in the parish of Athy, but moved to Kill in the early part of the nineteenth century. Many families of the name resided in the neighbourhood of Athy for several generations after the Massacre of Mullaghmast, where the Chief of the Clan was butchered with Rory O’Moore and many others by the Earl of Essex, in 1578. The proper name for the family is O’Duibhidh. A history of the family is given in the late Canon O’Hanlon’s “History of the Queen’s County”