Fenian Devoy’s chair used when writing memoir is donated to the State
John Devoy, on right in black hat, welcomed by Minister for External Affairs Desmond FitzGerald on his first visit to Ireland in 45 years after arriving at Cobh on July 28, 1924.
A chair in which Fenian and Clan na Gael politician John Devoy sat while writing his memoirs in New York a century ago is being donated to the State.
Devoy, the Clan na Gael leader in the US, wrote the memoir at the age of 82 while living in an apartment with two Monaghan sisters, Alice Carragher Comiskey and Lily Carragher. The women’s grandnephew, Frank MacGabhann, is now donating the chair to the State, through Kildare County Council.
Devoy, who was originally from Naas, was one of the organisers of a jailbreak of six Fenian prisoners from a jail in Fremantle in Australia in 1876, resulting in the six travelling to the US on board a vessel called the Catalpa.
Five years earlier, he became an exile in the US, having being imprisoned for treason against Britain through his involvement with the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
He was involved in funding the Easter Rising and had liaised with Roger Casement about the shipment of arms on board the Aud, which was scuttled off Banna Strand on Good Friday 1916.
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He became a journalist with the and continued to lobby for Irish freedom from Britain. He died in 1928 and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, after his remains were returned to Cobh on board a liner called the Baltic.
Green Party senator Vincent P Martin says that the State now desires that the chair in which he penned his memoir be returned to Devoy’s birthplace in Kildare to mark the centenary of his final visit home from the US in 1924.
A statue of the revolutionary was unveiled in Naas in 2015.
“Official preparations for the 150th anniversary of the Catalpa jail escape are beginning in Australia,” Mr Martin said.
“Ideally, the two countries could do something together. One hundred years ago this year, in 1924, after many years in exile, the then elderly John Devoy returned to his beloved Kildare to visit friends and his childhood sweetheart, Mrs Kilmurry.
“She and the people received him with open arms. It was very well received by WT Cosgrave's Free State Government.
Minister of state for European affairs Peter Burke explained that his department was contacted regarding the chair.
“The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media received an inquiry regarding the possibility and offer of official assistance to facilitate the return of John Devoy’s chair from the US to Dublin,” he said.
“The chair is in the possession of Irish American community members in New York.”
He noted that planning to donate the chair to Ireland, for locating in Naas, has been underway since 2014.
“The department is currently engaged with both Kildare County Council and the Irish Consulate General in New York in relation to the transfer of the chair, which I understand is to take place in the coming weeks,” he said.
“Members may be aware of the planning currently underway in Kildare to commemorate the centenary of the final visit of John Devoy to Ireland, which I expect will be of interest not only to the local community but to many across Ireland and the United States.”
A series of events to mark the centenary of the 1924 visit will take place in Naas in September.
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