Brother Allen Deposit (O’Connell Papers)

Identity Statement

Content & Structure

• Scope & Content: Jerry McCrohan Diarmuid Ua Mathgámhna John Burke Coppinger McMahon Morgan John O’Connell Isaac Butt ↴

  The scope of this collection is mixed and partial, but it relates to many aspects of Irish social and political history in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  U4/1, a 1777 letter from Jerry McCrohan to Maurice Connell, and including a copy of a legal letter relating to the O’Mahonys of Kilmichael, concerns both the butter trade and commercial and family connections with continental Europe. U4/2 also relates to this O’Mahony family.

  U4/3, a letter to Charles Bianconi from a poet seeking patronage, sheds some light both on his fame and his political outlook, while U4/4 documents the financial difficulties of his son.

  U4/5-7 are connected by reference to the Coppinger family and to property in Co Clare. Morgan John O’Connell inherited lands in Clare from his uncle William Coppinger, and these papers may have come to him with that inheritance.

  U4/8-10 relate to Morgan John O’Connell himself, and particularly to his bankruptcy in 1854. U4/8 relates to his removal from the office of Justice of the Peace for Co Kerry in 1844, perhaps owing to his declining circumstances. U4/9-10 illustrate the bankruptcy process of the time.

  U4/11, a letter to John O’Connell in France in 1848 from Charles Sugrue, Cork, contains fascinating references to the Young Ireland rebellion then underway and Sugrue’s views on it. O’Connell’s financial arrangements and difficulties are also discussed.

  U4/12, a letter from Isaac Butt in 1869 regarding a national meeting involving the Irish Tenant League on the Irish land question, is an important record of the beginning of joint agrarian and national political action in this period.

  Agrarian action, more particularly violence, provides the context for the final item present, a copy of the findings of the inquest into the death of John Twiss, hanged at Cork in 1895 for an agrarian murder. The views of the coroner and jurors reflect their political outlook and their attitude to the Crown’s handing of such cases.

  Many of the items in some measure relate to the O’Connells of Derrynane, Co Kerry, and will be of interest to students of that family and of Daniel O’Connell. The O’Mahony family material, relating to Lt Col Cornelius O’Mahony of the Spanish army, is also of genealogical interest. The records of Morgan John O’Connell and his Coppinger connections complement other Coppinger records held in CCCA. Bianconi, Butt, and Twiss are all figures of interest in different ways, each of them in a sense echoing political themes associated with O’Connell. The political and social interests of Irish Catholics, especially in Cork and Kerry, and their financial difficulties, are recurring themes throughout this varied and significant artificial collection.

• Appraisal Destruction ↴

  Permanent Retention

• Arrangement ↴

  The collection was originally arranged and numbered in 1975 following processing of the items in several accessions. It was reviewed in 2012, with the arrangement largely retained, with the following exceptions. Items 5-7, relating to Coppinger interests in Co Clare, were rearranged into chronological order. Items U4/8-10, relating to Morgan John O’Connell, were rearranged into chronological order. Items U4/12 and 13 were reversed in order, the present U4/13, the Twiss inquisition of 1895, being the latest nineteenth century item present.

  U4/1-2 O’Mahony, O’Connell, McCrohan items, 1776-7, 1952
  U4/3-4 Charles Bianconi items, 1843, 1863
  U4/5-7 Coppinger interests in Co Clare, 1772, 1810, 1827
  U4/8-10 Morgan John O’Connell items, 1844, 1854
  U4/11 Charles Sugrue Letter to John O’Connell, 1848
  U4/12 Isaac Butt letter, 1869
  U4/13 Inquisition findings on the death of John Twiss, 1895

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Allied Materials

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