Comerford O’Malley, the priest who shaped DePaul University, Chicago

The Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991) … President and Chancellor of DePaul University, Chicago

Patrick Comerford

My explorations of former Comerford family homes in Co Clare and Co Galway during this summer’s ‘road trips’ have led to finding the interesting stories of more members of the Comerford family.

Earlier this week, I was recalling the interesting life of Judge Frank D Comerford (1879-1929), a judge in Chicago and a Democratic politician who was expelled from the Illinois State Senate, whose parents and elder siblings from Kinvara, Co Galway.

Judge Comerford was an uncle of the Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991), who was a professor, president and chancellor at DePaul University, Chicago, where he spent 47 years of his academic career until he retired in 1981.

Father Comerford O’Malley was born in 1902 in Chicago, a son of Austin O’Malley (1851-1932) and his wife Alice ‘Ella’ Comerford (1863-1941).

Alice Comerford was born in Kinvara, Co Galway, on 24 March 1863, a daughter of Isaac Comerford (1829-1900) and his wife Mary Jane Linnane (1841-1914). Isaac Comerford was a younger brother of Henry Comerford (1827-1861), a prominent Galway merchant and magistrate who lived at Merchant’s Road, Galway, and Ballykeel House, Kilfenora, Co Clare. Henry bought up the Gregory estate in Kinvara in the 1850s and his post-Famine efforts to impose exorbitant rent increases in the town brought financial ruin to Kinvara and brought the Comerford family to the brink of social and economic disaster.

Alice Comerford emigrated ca 1866 with her parents and siblings to Chicago, where more brothers and sisters were born, including Judge Frank Comerford.

On 29 November 1883, Alice married Austin John O’Malley (1850-1932) from Co Mayo. They had a large family of eight children, including three doctors, three priests and a nun: Dr John Gabriel O’Malley (1888-1935), of Columbus Hospital, Chicago; Sister Mary Paulina ‘Jennie’ O’Malley (1888-1942); Dr Austin J O’Malley (1894-1954); Dr Francis Xavier O’Malley (1895-1974), whose children included Judge Paul Augustine O’Malley (1927-2006); Charles Bernard O’Malley (1898-1974) of Tallahassee, Florida; Father George A O’Malley (1899-1960), a Vincentian priest and President of Saint Vincent’s Seminary and College, Cape Girardeau, Missouri; the Very Revd Professor Comerford Joseph O’Malley (1902-1991); and Father Paul T O’Malley (1904-1980).

Three of these brothers joined the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentian community that founded DePaul University as Saint Vincent’s College in 1898. It became DePaul University in 1907, and conferred an honorary LL.D. on Eamon de Valera in 1919, DePaul’s first honorary doctorate for an international figure.

Father Comerford Joseph O’Malley was the only member of this large family to continue the Comerford name, which was given as a first name at birth in 1902. After joining the Vincentians, he was ordained priest in 1928 and received the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1929 from the Colegio Angelico in Rome. He joined the faculty of De Paul University in 1934 as Professor of Philosophy, and two years later became the Dean of the College of Commerce (1936-1944).

He was elected the seventh President of DePaul University in 1944, and had the distinction of being the longest-serving president of the university, from 1944 to 1964.

While Comerford O’Malley was president of DePaul, the university saw tremendous growth, partly due to the GI Bill after World War II that sent many former soldiers to college. Enrolment ballooned to 11,500 by 1948.

During these years, DePaul acquired the Lewis Center and developed its Loop Campus. Father O’Malley also oversaw the building of Alumni Hall, which allowed sports to take a greater part in campus life.

But DePaul also faced some uncertainty in these years. The North Central Association, which accredits universities, recommended in 1947 that DePaul lose its accreditation, due in part to a poor library and a shortage of professors with PhDs.

DePaul, which had always seen itself as primarily a teaching and training university rather than a research university, initially balked at hiring more professors with doctorates who would then require research leave. However, these professors were soon hired, and the academic standards of the university rose. The library was also centralised and improved under one director.

Before Comerford O’Malley retired, he announced a $22 million 10-year ‘Programme for Greatness’ that would expand the Lincoln Park campus, including adding dormitories for the first time, and further improve academics.

When O’Malley began his presidency, enrolment was at about 8,000. During the beginning and middle of his tenure, it rose greatly, but when he retired there were fewer former soldiers to enrol. In 1960, enrolment was at around 9,000 students.

All of these changes have affected the current academic program and student life of DePaul to a very large degree. In a way, O’Malley’s tenure formed the modern DePaul University.

When he retired as President, Comerford O’Malley became the first Chancellor of DePaul University in 1964. He died in Saint Joseph’s Hospital, Chicago, on 27 February 1991.

Comerford O’Malley … his tenure as President formed the modern DePaul University

De Valera’s old school on Charleville’s Main Street is still on the market

CBS Charleville, the former school of Eamon de Valera, has been on the market since early 2016 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

The former north Cork school that Eamon de Valera attended has been on the market for almost six years.

The former Christian Brothers School in Charleville has been on the market since early 2015, and even had its listing as a protected structure reversed to allow redevelopment, but it has still not sold.

As a teenage schoolboy, the future President Eamon de Valera (1882-1975) walked or cycled seven miles each day from Bruree, Co Limerick, to the school on Main Street, Charleville, for three years, from 1896 to 1898.

In his younger days, the future Fianna Fail leader attended Bruree National School in Co Limerick. At the age of 16, he went to Blackrock College, Co Dublin, on a scholarship.

The CBS school in Charleville dates from 1866. It closed in 1972, when a new school was built. At the end of 2014, Charleville community council and the town’s chamber of commerce sought to have the 8,000 sq ft property delisted, noting it had been remodelled in the 1920s.

The former school is on a 0.43 acre site, with good parking, street frontage, and a further 1,200 sq ft of other buildings.

A local estate agent, PJ O’Gorman, has been quoting a price of €300,000 for the old school, although the website now indicates ‘POA’ (price on application). The premises are close to the AIB bank branch and Dunne’s Stores, and Charleville is a major employment centre in food and engineering, with 3,000 jobs.

Eamon de Valera is one of the many former past pupils commemorated in plaques at the school gates (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Other past pupils at CBS Charleville who are commemorated in plaques on the wall of the former school include Archbishop Croke of Cashel, patron of the GAA, Archbishop Cardinal Daniel Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne, Bishop Daniel Foley of Ballarat, Bishop Henry Murphy of Limerick; the author and historian Dr Mannix Joyce, Professor Patrick Quinlan, UCC President Professor Michael Mortell; the writer Dan Binchy, Owen Binchy, former President of the Law Society; Tom O’Donnell, Fine Gael cabinet minister and MEP, Rory Kiely, Cathaoirleach of the Senate; RTÉ radio personalities Tim Lehane and Donnacha O Dulaing; and champion jockey Martin Moloney.

Cardinal Mannix was president of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, when de Valera held a temporary post there as a mathematics professor.

The selling agent’s suggested uses for Dev’s old school include a micro-brewery, a distillery, a retail or outlet centre, a hostel, a restaurant or cookery school, and industrial incubation units. But they are all subject to planning.

The selling agent has many imaginative suggestions for the site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The parish church in Bruree was built in the 1920s in the Hiberno-Romanesque style

The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree was built in 1922-1925 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Bruree in Co Limerick was one of the seats for the kings of Munster until the end of the 12th century, according to local lore, and Bruree was the place where Irish bards met twice a year until 1746.

Over the years, Bruree was a seat of the Dalcassians, the Uí Fidgeinte, the O’Briens and the Anglo-Normans. The de Lacys became the principal landowners ca 1290. However, Bruree is best-known as the childhood home of the former Taoiseach and President Eamon de Valera.

I had already visited the former Church of Ireland parish church in Bruree, Saint Munchin’s Church, Ballynoe, built in 1812 and closed in 1969. On my back from Kilmallock to Askeaton at the weekend, I stopped again in Bruree, this time to visit the Roman Catholic parish church.

Inside The Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, facing the liturgical east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1922-1925, when Father John Breen was the parish priest, and was officially opened on 26 April 1925.

The foundation stone to the left of the main door of the church was laid by Bishop Denis Hallinan of Limerick on 8 December 1922. The inscription says Samuel Francis Hynes from Cork was the architect and Jeremiah J Coffey from Midleton, Co Cork, was the builder.

The church is built in the Hiberno-Romanesque style, with limestone from nearby Tankardstown, in Kilmallock.

Inside the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Bruree, facing the liturgical west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

This church is oriented on a north-south axis, instead of the traditional east-west liturgical axis. It has a fine interior with stained-glass windows, a well-carved timber roof and marble colonnades. These features add architectural significance to the church and are a testimony the skilled craftsmanship used in its construction.

This is a gable-fronted church, with a seven-bay nave and six-bay side aisles, two transepts, and gable-fronted porches that have chamfered corners, and a distinctive, square-plan three-stage tower at the front, to the right of the main door, with a battered base, a large open bell chamber and a short spire.

The snecked limestone walls have a stringcourse and an inscribed plaque at the front.

There are four, round-headed lancet windows above the double-leaf, timber battened front doors, with a stained-glass oculus above them. There are stained glass oculi in the nave too.

The windows above the High Altar in Bruree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Inside, the church has a lofty, open timber scissors brace roof. Polished granite columns support the tall rounded arches, with the arcades separating the nave and aisles.

Mr and Mrs Carroll from Fort East erected the High Altar. Miss Mary Dunworth donated the altar rails, part of which remains.

The stained-glass window above the High Altar depicts the Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart and Saint Joseph. Above these windows, an oculus or round stained-glass window depicts Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.

To the right of the High Altar is a statue of Saint Joseph and the Christ Child and an altar to the Virgin Mary. To the left, the side chapel now serves as the Baptistry.

The foundation stone names the architect Samuel Francis Hynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The church was built by the Cork architect Samuel Francis Hynes and the builder was Jeremiah J Coffey from Midleton, Co Cork.

Samuel Francis Hynes (1854-1931), who was a member of an old Cork family, was articled to William Atkins in Cork in 1869 and spent five years as his pupil. He travelled on Continental Europe before opening his independent practice in Cork in 1875.

The Irish Builder in 1877 published two of his designs: for the chapel of the Convent of Mercy in Bantry, Co Cork, and the de Vesci Memorial in Abbeyleix, Co Laois.

Hynes practised from a number of addresses in South Mall, Cork for over 40 years, working mainly on commissions from Catholic parishes and religious orders. He was elected a member of the RIAI in 1878 and a fellow in 1889, and was elected a follow of the RIBA in 1888.

His last works to be recorded in the Irish Builder date from 1921. The church in Bruree was one of his last works. He retired from practice in 1929 and died, unmarried, at the age of 77 on 28 June 1931.

The oculus above the High Altar depicts Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

This church is near the site of the earlier Roman Catholic parish church, Saint Munchin’s, beside John Moloney’s Bar. Saint Munchin’s, built in 1842, was later owned by Billy and Jim O’Connor of the Starlight Showband, who used it was a dancehall and for travelling theatre companies.

The old holy water font from this church is now in the Eamon de Valera Museum and Bruree Heritage Centre, and the former church is now owned by the HSE.

The tower has a large open bell chamber and a short spire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Four presidents and a funeral in Sneem

The National Memorial to President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh in Sneem, designed by the Cork sculptor Vivienne Roche and unveiled by President President Hillery in 1983 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Four Presidents have left their mark on Sneem, Co Kerry: Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, Patrick Hillery, Chaim Herzog and Charles de Gaulle. And one of them, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, is buried in Sneem.

Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh retired to Sneem when he retired as President of Ireland; Charles de Gaulle sought peace in Sneem and time away from the limelight after he resigned as President of France in 1969; and all four are connected through a series of modern sculptures that are part of the Sneem Sculpture Trail on the Ring of Kerry, which I stopped to visit last week.

Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh (1911-1978), was the fifth President of Ireland from December 1974 to October 1976. He had also been a Judge of the European Court of Justice, Chief Justice of Ireland, a Supreme Court judge, and had twice served as the Attorney General.

Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was born on 12 February 1911, in Bray, Co Wicklow, and later moved to No 15 Portobello Road, near ‘Little Jerusalem’ and the South Circular Road area in Dublin, where his childhood friends included the Chief Rabbi’s son, the future President of Israel, Chaim Herzog. He was educated at Saint Cronan’s Boys National School, CBS Synge Street, Dublin, and University College Dublin. At UCD, he was auditor of An Cumann Gaelach and of the Literary and Historical Society. He was a keen actor in his early years and a close friend of the actor Cyril Cusack. He also became Irish language editor of The Irish Press.

Ó Dálaigh was a member of the Fianna Fáil national executive in the 1930s. He was Ireland’s youngest Attorney General in 1946-1948, when Éamon de Valera was Taoiseach, and was Attorney General again in 1951-1953. He was nominated by de Valera as the youngest-ever member of the Supreme Court by in 1953. Less than a decade later, he became Chief Justice on the nomination of Seán Lemass.

During the Vietnam War, he spoke out against US bombing of North Vietnam, and he was a life-long opponent of capital punishment.

When Ireland joined the EEC, Jack Lynch appointed Ó Dálaigh as Ireland’s judge on the European Court of Justice. When President Erskine Childers died suddenly in 1974, all parties agreed to nominate Ó Dálaigh to succeed him.

As President, Ó Dálaigh had a strained relationship with the government, particularly with the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, and with Conor Cruise O’Brien. His decision to refer the Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court in 1976 to test its constitutionality brought him into conflict with the Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

When the Supreme Court ruled the bill was constitutional, he signed it into law on 16 October 1976. On the same day, an IRA bomb killed Garda Michael Clerkin in Mountmellick. On the following day, the Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan, visiting a barracks in Mullingar to open a canteen, attacked the President for sending the bill to the Supreme Court, calling him a ‘thundering disgrace.’

As President, Ó Dálaigh was Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. He felt the relationship between the President and the Minister for Defence had been ‘irrevocably broken’ by the minister’s remarks before of the Chief of Staff and senior officers. Donegan offered his resignation, but Cosgrave refused to accept it. Ó Dálaigh resigned as President on 22 October 1976 ‘to protect the dignity and independence of the presidency as an institution.’ He was succeeded as President by Dr Patrick Hillery.

Ó Dálaigh retired to Sneem and died of a heart attack in 1978, less than two years after resigning. He was buried in Sneem after a state funeral in the village.

The National Memorial to Ó Dálaigh on the South Square Fair Green in Sneem was designed by the Cork sculptor Vivienne Roche and was unveiled by President Hillery on 5 June 1983.

The artist describes it as reminiscent of mountains and megalithic structures that were of particular interest to the late President.

The stainless steel tree sculpted by Israeli artist Tamara Rickman was presented by President Chaim Herzog in 1985 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A second sculpture in Sneem commemorating President Ó Dálaigh was presented as a gift to the people of Ireland by President Chaim Herzog (1918-1997) of Israel, who unveiled the sculpture on 19 June 1985.

They had been childhood friends, and when Ó Dálaigh was inaugurated as president in 1974, he started a tradition of presidents visiting Adelaide Road synagogue in Dublin.

The former Chief Rabbi Isaac Cohen once credited Ó Dálaigh with fashioning ‘unbreakable ties of affection, esteem and honour in the hearts of Jewish citizens in this country.’

A trilingual plaque in Hebrew, Irish and English (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The sculpture in the North Square Fair Green is in the form a stainless steel tree and was sculpted by Israeli artist Tamara Rickman. It is part of the Sneem Sculpture Trail.

Beside this sculpture, a trilingual dedicatory plaque is in Hebrew, Irish and English.

President Herzog’s father was Chief Rabbi of Ireland, and he went to school in Wesley College, Dublin. During that state visit to Ireland in 1985, he also opened the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin.

The Chinese panda is the work of the Chinese sculptor Liu Huanzhang (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The third memorial to President Ó Dálaigh is a white marble panda at the entrance to the Pier Road. It was donated in friendship by the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1986. The panda is the work of a leading Chinese sculptor Liu Huanzhang.

Cearbhaill Ó Dálaigh had visited China, was an early advocate of Chinese admission to the United Nations, and was the patron of the Irish Chinese Cultural Society.

The trilingual inscription in Chinese, Irish and English says: ‘May the friendships between the peoples of China and Ireland live for ever. Dedicated to the former President of Ireland, His Excellency the late Cearbhaill Ó Dálaigh, by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.’

The General Charles de Gaulle memorial is by the Valentia sculptor Alan Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

A memorial stone in the North Square in Sneem commemorates General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970). After he resigned as President of France in 1969, de Gaulle spent six weeks in Ireland, from 10 May to 19 June 1969, including two weeks in Sneem.

In an editorial, The Irish Times declared, ‘The presence of General de Gaulle in Sneem, Co Kerry, is almost as bizarre, in its first impact, as would be the announcement that Chairman Mao had arrived in Bangor, Co Down, to enjoy the amenities of Pickie Pool.’

For two short weeks in the winter of his years, de Gaulle found a haven of peace and tranquillity in Sneem. At the time, it was said his wife’s nanny was from Sneem, and he took four rooms at the Heron Cove Hotel just outside the village. He wrote on 18 June 1969, ‘At this solemn moment of my long life here I have found what I am looking for: to be facing myself. Ireland has extended it to me in the most delicate, the most friendly manner.’

On the 25th anniversary of his visit, the people of Sneem commissioned a work of art by the Valentia sculptor, Alan Hall. This consists of a bronze plaque of de Gaulle mounted on a large boulder of local stone, inscribed with de Gaulle’s verdict on his sojourn in Sneem: En ce moment grave de ma longue vie, j’ai trouvéici ce ue je cherchais: être en lace de moi même L’Irlande me l’a offert de laç la plus délicate, la plus amicale.

Vivienne Roche says the Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh memorial are reminiscent of mountains and megalithic structures (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Did the village seem brighter without the ‘dark weight of his heavy cloak’?

Darkness envelops Bruree and cloaks the River Maigue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

After visiting the Éamon de Valera Cottage outside Bruree late on Saturday afternoon, darkness had enveloped the Co Limerick countryside as I returned through the village of Bruree.

In his poem ‘Returning to de Valera’s Cottage’ in The Sorrow Garden (London: Anvil, 1981), the Cappoquin-born poet Thomas McCarthy writes about the ‘dark weight’ he imagines this cottage and Dev’s intense presence cast over Bruree:

Coming down the hill we could see the summer
village, mill-wheel and stream
churning up the wet sunlight.
The village seemed brighter
then without the dark weight
of his heavy cloak or a threat
of his sword-cane over their
votes. Their great child had been dead for years.

So that ordinary children came back onto the street
while adults gossiped lightly
unafraid of the official cars –
not that he was held in awe,
but the walking evidence of
so intense a life frightened
the whole village and kept them from serious thought.

In finding his cottage we found a life that was
inside ourselves. A small
moment of sorrow. A tear
riding down the glass of
our eyes like blood fall-
ing from a bullet wound.
We kicked the heap of weeds
with our heels and cursed the narrowness of the path.

As we returned from Knockmore and Dev’s cottage, we felt we had left a place that many people respect as a holy site, even though ‘their great child had been dead for years.’

We found now that Bruree was darker, there were few cars, no children on the street, and no adults to be seen gossiping lightly. But it was a dark winter evening, and I can imagine Bruree today is little different from the Cappoquin that the poet and I knew growing up at the same time in West Waterford rather than east Limerick.

Two of us stopped at the bridge to admire the reflections of the last, remaining Christmas lights of Bruree on the River Maigue as it flows on towards Adare and the Shannon Estuary, and looked up at the shadowy profiles of the tower house and the former Church of Ireland parish church on a ridge above the bridge and the river bank.

Bruree takes its name from an ancient royal fortress once built here and in the High Middle Ages it was known as Dún Eochair Maigue or the Fortress on the Bank of the Maigue. Brúgh Rí literally means the Fort of the King.

As if the associations with Éamon de Valera did not provide enough sense of pride and history, local lore and legends claim Bruree was once a seat and alternative capital of the ancient Kings of Munster, and that this place once was a royal capital until the late 12th century.

After the Anglo-Normans arrived, Samuel Lewis claims, that the Knights Templars built the castle in the 12th century, but there is no other record to support his claim. The area later belonged to the de Lacey family, who built the tower house in the 15th century. This tower house was seized during the Cromwellian confiscations of the 1650s and fell into disrepair.

Beside the tower house, the Church of Ireland parish church, Saint Munchin’s Church, Ballynoe, was built in 1812, with funding from the Board of First Fruits. The church cost £800 to build and stands on the site of an older church, surrounding by an old churchyard.

This three-bay, single-storey church has a nave and a square-plan, stepped, three-stage crenellated tower at the west end, with an octagonal limestone spire. The details include the ball finial on the tower, ogee-headed and trefoil openings and the limestone copings.

A sign on the pathway leading up the ruined castle and former parish church tells visitors, even though the church has been closed for years, ‘This is a holy place – please respect it.’

The spire of Saint Munchin’s, the former Church of Ireland parish church, and the ruins of the de Lacy castle in silhouettes on a ridge above the banks of the River Maigue in Bruree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

How did George de Valero, born in New York, become Éamon de Valera in Bruree?

The Éamon de Valera homestead north of Bruree, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

On the way back from Charleville in north Co Cork to Askeaton on Saturday afternoon, I stopped at Bruree to visit de Valera’s Cottage in Bruree, Co Limerick, the childhood home of Éamon de Valera (1882-1975), the rebel leader in 1916 who went on to became Taoiseach and President of Ireland.

My memories of de Valera stretch back to a childhood near Capproquin, Co Waterford, when ‘Dev’ spoke out against the Fethard-on-Sea boycott – which was spoken of in hushed tones in every household in the south-east in the 1950s – and to schooldays when one of his grandsons sat in a desk in front of mine in the study hall in my boarding school.

Little did I realise then that I would spend many late nights as a young journalist staying up late and working into the early morning on late shifts in The Irish Times, waiting for the former president to die. I still remember how boring it was, waiting, watching, and going home as the summer dawn broke.

Éamon de Valera died on 29 August 1975, aged 92, at the Linden nursing home in Dublin. It was just before noon and one of my day’s off, which seemed to frustrate the reason behind working all those late nights and early morning shifts that marked out that first summer in Dublin after joining The Irish Times from the Wexford People a few months earlier. The obituary supplement that I had been involved in preparing went to press without my presence.

A year later, though, that supplement was published as a book edited by Peter Tynan O’Mahony, and my small meagre contribution was included – a pen and ink sketch and short description of de Valera’s coat-of-arms, which celebrated his assumed Spanish ancestry and heritage. The book was launched in Kilmainham Jail, and at the age of 24 I found unexpectedly that for the first time I had contributed to a published book.

As dusk was beginning to turn to darkness late last Saturday afternoon [5 January 2019], I eventually found the de Valera Cottage, 1 km north of Bruree. For such a large giant on the landscape of Irish history, this is a very humble homestead. The house is a labourer’s cottage, built in 1885 by Kilmallock Poor Law Union, and it still tells of the humble origins of a family could never have realised the greatness that was going to be thrust on them in the century that followed.

The small house is a detached three-bay single-storey labourer’s cottage, built around 1885, with a pitched slate roof, rendered chimneystacks and rendered walls. The sash windows and timber battened half-door help to conserve the original character of the cottage. It retains its original form and structure and is now a rare example of houses like this.

But Éamon de Valera was not born here. Rather, he was born in New York City on 14 October 1882, and while he was later known as Edward, then as Eddie, and finally as Éamon de Valera, he was first known as George and was registered at birth as George de Valero.

The child was brought to Ireland by his uncle Ned in 1885, following the death of his father, named as Juan Vivion de Valera, while his mother, Catherine Coll, stayed on in New York.

He would spend the rest of his childhood days in this cottage, even after his mother remarried. Here he lived with his widowed grandmother, Elizabeth Coll, his uncle son Patrick Coll and his aunt Hannie Coll.

As a child, the young Dev worked hard on the family’s small holding of half an acre, going to school first in a school in Bruree founded in 1862, and then to the Christian Brothers’ school in Charleville. The family could not afford a bicycle, and it must have been a tough 11 km walk each morning and evening for the boy.

Later, a scholarship gave him a place Blackrock College at the age 16, and he would spend much of the rest of his life in Dublin.

The de Valera cottage in Bruree, Co Limerick … but where are his ancestral roots to be found (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

I wondered at the weekend why the wording on the plaque at the ‘de Valera cottage’ does not name his mother, his father, his grandmother, his uncle, his aunt, or anyone other family who might have lived there.

Indeed, a marriage certificate has never been found for Éamon de Valera’s parents, and throughout his life he was long troubled by its absence and by the absence of any evidence of their wedding – or of his father’s identity. Nor is there any verifiable evidence of the supposed death of his father, Vivion de Valera, in any of the places where his mother said he had died, including Denver and New Mexico. In fact, there is little historical evidence that Juan Vivion de Valero or Vivian de Valera ever existed.

Catherine (Kate) Coll was born 21 December 1856, almost 30 years before the de Valera Cottage was built, so it is stretching history a little to say that this is his ancestral home. She emigrated to the US in 1879, still nine years before the cottage was built, and she first took a job with a wealthy French family in Manhattan.

The official story says that in this household in Manhattan she met a young Spanish man, Juan Vivion de Valero or Vivion de Valera, a former sculptor who turned to teaching music after his eye was damaged by a chip of marble. Some accounts said he was born in Spain in 1854; others said he was born in 1853 in Matanzas, Cuba, the son of Juan Manuel de Valera, and had come to the home of her employers to give music lessons to their children.

She would say they were married in 1881. According to de Valera’s biographers, Lord Longford Thomas P O’Neill (London: Hutchinson, 1970), the couple were married in Saint Patrick’s Church in Greenville, New Jersey, on 19 September 1881. But parish records show no record of any Coll-de Valera wedding, either at Saint Patrick’s or in any other church, nor is any such marriage recorded in civil records in the area in the period 1875-1887.

Her son – George, or Edward – was born the following year. The New York State records contain two de Valera birth certificates. The first, dated 10 November 1882, gives his name as George de Valero. The second is a ‘corrected certificate’ dated 30 June 1910. This second certificate, issued almost 28 years after he was born, now gives his first name as Edward and his surname as de Valera, and so George de Valero became Edward de Valera.

Kate would later say that Vivion de Valera was always in poor health, that he left his young family behind and travelled to Denver, Colorado, hoping healthier air would help him, but that he dies a few months later. Once again, however, is no relevant death certificate anywhere in the US.

Forced to work full time as a nurse, Kate sent her infant child back to her home in Co Limerick to be cared for by her mother, brother and sister.

Indeed, no record survives of Kate Coll’s marriage, there is no independent evidence in Spain or the US that the man she named as her husband ever lived, apart from the birth and baptism certificates that first named the child as George de Valero and his father as Juan Vivian de Valero.

With her young son back in Co Limerick, Kate Coll married Charles Wheelwright (1857-1929), an English-born coachman, in Saint Francie Xavier Church, Manhattan, on 7 May 1888. Without any supporting documents, the officiating priest took her at her word that she had been married before and that her first husband had died, leaving her a widow.

The church required a dispensation for the marriage, but Charles later became a Roman Catholic. The family moved to Rochester, New York, and they were the parents of a daughter Ann (1889-1897) and a son, Thomas Wheelwright (1890-1946), who was ordained a Redemptorist priest in 1916.

Charles Wheelwright died in 1929, and Kate died on 12 June 1932. They are buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester. Later in life, Éamon de Valera would say that as he child he had occasional visits from a ‘woman in black’ he believed to have been his mother.

In later life, Éamon de Valera regularly visited the cottage in Bruree, and in 1972 he opened the de Valera Museum in his former school in Bruree. The Office of Public Works restored his childhood cottage on the outskirts of Bruree in the 1980s. President Mary Robinson officially opened the refurbished de Valera Museum and Bruree Heritage Centre in his former school in 1997.

Over the years, Dev asked many people, including his half-brother, his cousin, church authorities in the US and Spain, and the Irish minister in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, to help him in this search. Proof of the marriage would silence persistent whispers about his legitimacy and prove that his mother had been telling the truth about his parentage.

But no such proof was ever found by family members, historians, biographers or genealogists.

The questions about Éamon de Valera’s ancestry are no reflection on the man’s honesty, integrity, pariotism or political acumen. His decision to lead his supporters into Dail Eireann in 1927, and the peaceful handover after the 1932 election show his commitment to a democratic transition in the new Irish state; his 1937 Constitution, if read in its time rather than by today standards, is a strong guarantee of democracy with its separation of powers at a time when Fascism was on the march throughout Europe; and his public stand brought an end to the Fethard-on-Sea boycott.

It is sad that in the Ireland of his day he felt he had to hide his background because of the prevailing prejudice and judgmentalism.

His biographer Tim Pat Coogan speculated that questions surrounding de Valera’s legitimacy may have prevented him from seeking ordination to the priesthood.

But did the questions about his father and his parents’ marriage and doubts about his ancestry also cause de Valera to become ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’?

And did the plight of a mother who felt she had to protect her son against what would have been inevitable consequences, cause him to write the articles in the Constitution that the primary place of a woman place was in the home?

Sunset at the de Valera cottage north of Bruree, Co Limerick, last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)