Chance meeting with American tourist could answer mystery of skeletal remains
A chance meeting between an American tourist and a local historian in a small Limerick town could answer a 224-year mystery. Pictures: James O'Brien
A chance meeting between an American tourist and a local historian in a small Limerick town could answer a 224-year mystery.
Nebraska woman Lease Tannehill-Neumann is a seventh-generation descendant of Patrick ‘Staker’ Wallis, a United Irishman executed in 1798.
She came to Kilfinane to visit his birthplace and other landmarks associated with him.
She and her husband Andrew got chatting to a local man whose eyes lit up when he realised who she was.
He immediately called James O’Brien, a member of the Kilfinane Coshlea Historical Society.
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James has been campaigning to get bones found in the town square in 2006 analysed to see if any of them belong to Wallis, and to have them given a proper burial.
Where the chance encounter with Mrs Tannehill-Neumann is significant is that she has agreed to supply a sample of DNA, along with her aunt, who has researched the family's heritage.
“At the end of the day, even if the answer is ‘no’, the bones have nothing to do with Wallis, it won’t change what he was,” Mr O’Brien said.
“It has never been our sole aim in the historical society to just prove or disprove whose bones they are.
“But it would be great to see if any of the bones found are his.”
The National Museum of Ireland has given permission for bone samples from the remains — found by council workmen in 2006 — to be sent to the chrono unit at Queen’s University Belfast for carbon dating.
Carbon dating, while not an exact science, will confirm whether the bones found do at least come from within a century of when Wallis is understood to have been killed.
His gruesome death in the town came after he was accused of being part of a plot to kill a local landowner and the local sheriff, Captain Charles ‘Silver’ Oliver.
Once Wallis learned he was being sought in relation to the plot, he tried to escape but was captured by Oliver’s soldiers.
He was given the chance to live, on condition he named fellow United Irishmen involved in the plot.
But he refused and Captain Oliver ordered him to be flogged in a public marketplace, in the hope that his fellow United Irishmen would reveal themselves by attempting a rescue.
But they didn’t, or are not known to have, and he was hanged and then beheaded. Some accounts suggest he was hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Wallis’s head was put on a spike on top of the Market House, on Captain’s Lane, in the centre of the town for a few weeks.
This brutal act is believed to have led to him being named “staker”, although some sources suggest the name comes from his removing stakes landlords had set down to mark out fields, taking common grazing land out of public use.
According to historian Mannix Joyce, Wallis’s dismembered body was then dumped in a hole in front of Kilfinane jail.
His severed head, which is understood to have been returned to his wife and mother of his five children, Hanora, was subsequently buried in the family burial ground in Abbey near Ballyorgan.
As well as a statue in the town and various plaques — like the one at the site of the fair of Ballinvreena, one of the places where he is said to have been publicly flogged — he is remembered in song.
The GAA club in nearby Martinstown is also named after him.
Council workers preparing to lay down paving stones as part of urban renewal works in Kilfinane in 2006 spotted the bones in the ground, along with traces of lime.
Little or nothing had been done with the bones until recently by Limerick County Council, now known as Limerick City and County Council.
However, earlier this year, council archaeologist Sarah McCutcheon revealed an examination had finally taken place.
The bones are understood to belong to up to seven people, understood to have been aged from 25 years old to 45.
While Wallis is said by some historians to have been 65 when he died, he may have been younger — especially as the main source for his age is someone who have got his first name wrong.
In her 1909 , American Eunice Graham Brandt named Staker Wallis, William Wallis. Records for his sentence at the time and his tenure in jail all name him instead as Patrick Wallis.
“While it would be a nice ending to the story to discover the some of the bones belong to Staker Wallis, we must not forget that it will be important the remains get a proper burial, regardless of who they belong to,” Mr O’Brien said.
On the issue of DNA testing, a spokesperson for the council said: “Limerick City and County Council has always been open to the idea of carrying out DNA testing.
“No bone within the assemblage exhibits proof of being from an individual in excess of 60 years of age, therefore, there is no bone that can be said to belong to Staker Wallis, therefore we have nothing to check live DNA against.”
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