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AWARD WINNING TOUR IN DUBLIN

EASTER RISING COACH TOUR

EASTER RISING COACH TOUR

ATTENTION COACH and TOUR OPERATORS

ATTENTION COACH and TOUR OPERATORS
Our friendly and excellent guides are available as Step On Guides for any visiting tour or coach operators who may like a unique, entertaining and educational tour of Irish History and the events of Easter Week 1916.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

THE STAR SPANGLED TRICOLOUR 1

For many when you mention the United States and the Easter Rising the first association is with Eamon DeValera. DeValera was the Commandant of the Boland’s Mill garrison and when court martialled by the British Crown was sentenced to death. It is assumed by most historians that this death sentence was commuted to life in prison due to the fact that DeValera had been born in 1882 in New York. But DeValera was not the only US citizen involved in the Easter Rising. Jeremiah Lynch also known as Diarmuid Lynch was born in County Cork in 1878 but moved to the United States in 1897 after a stint working for the British Civil Service in London eventually becoming a naturalised US citizen. In 1908 he retuned to Ireland and became involved in the nationalist movement. During the Easter Rising he was Aide de Camp to James Connolly in the GPO. He was arrested after the rising and was sentenced to death for his part. Following the direct intervention of US President Woodrow Wilson his death sentence was commuted and he was released with most of the other combatants of the Rising in 1917.
Another United States citizen jailed for his part in the Rising was James Mark Sullivan. Born in Killarney in 1872, his family moved to America when he was young. Educated at Yale, Sullivan became a lawyer in New York. At the age of forty he married twenty eight year old Limerick heiress Nell O’Mara. In August 1913 he was appointed US Ambassador to Santo Domingo (modern day Dominican Republic) but he resigned some months later following the emergence of fraud allegations. He returned he Ireland and took part in the Easter Rising eventually sentenced he served his time in Kilmainham and Arbour Hill. According to Pat Lavelle "My brother in law Dick Humphreys told me that Uncle Jim Sullivan was the life and soul of the prisoners up at Kilmainham gaol. Dick knew because he was one of them. He said that they were all feeling very gloomy, most of them sentenced to death or likely to be, and that Uncle Jim came in on them like a fresh breeze with his hearty laughter and his big voice and American wisecracks and without a tremor of fear; for who could touch an American citizen if all came to all", apparently he was under threat of execution "but not executed due to his American diplomatic passport". Sullivan was the founder of The Film Company of Ireland which produced a number of early silent movies starring Abbey Theatre actors but these films were destroyed during the British bombardment during the Rising. Sullivan died in August 1935.
Jim Sullivan c 1910

2 comments:

  1. another American involved in the Easter Rising was Clive Warman. Serving on the other side, having originally enlisted in the Canadian Army.

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  2. Of course, the most prominent American citizen in the Rising was actually executed - Tom Clarke.

    ReplyDelete