New Release - A Murderer's Country, Joyce Country, Galway during Ireland's Land War - 1879-1882

Available from Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.

My book, A Murderer’s Country, Joyce Country, Galway, during Ireland’s Land War, looks at a number of murders that took place in the West of Ireland, beginning with the assassination of the Earl of Leitrim in 1879. Leitrim’s murder was a harbinger of the violence that would descend on Galway during the Land War of 1879-1882.

As I stated in the  book, this is an on-going project, and in the months since it was first released, I have made a number of changes, most of which are a result of descendants of those involved contacting me. Here are a few updates:

Correction: The prosecution presented its case first, not the defense.

Correction: At the sentencing of Patrick Higgins, Justice O'Brien did not don the black cap. In doing so, he signaled to defense that they should petition the Lord Lieutenant for mercy, a petition that was denied.

Update: Bridget Higgins Flynn, the widow of Michael Flynn, who was convicted of the Huddy murders, moved to Minooka in 1887 with her six sons and one daughter. Daughter Catherine ("Kate") married Patrick Laffey, son of James Laffey and Margaret "Peggy" Mulroe, and died in 1959. Michael Flynn, Jr. married Mary Coyne and died in South Scranton in 1952. The other five Flynn children moved out of Minooka. Thomas Flynn settled in Youngstown, Ohio. I do not know what happened to the other four Flynn sons. Tragically, Bridget Higgins Flynn was killed in 1911 after sheltering from the rain under a freight car. When the train began to move, she was crushed in view of her daughter Kate.

Update: Thomas Higgins, who was convicted of the Huddy murders, was the brother of Bridget Higgins, wife of Michael Flynn. The two brothers-in-law conspired to kill bailiff Joseph Huddy.

Update: Patrick Sweeney, the herd for Lord Ardiluan, died in Galway sometime between 1901-1904. His son Patrick immigrated to Pittsburgh.

The Murder of William Sydney Clements, 3^rd Earl of Leitrim

Family Names: Fitzhenry, Joyce, Holleran, O’Neill, Spellman, Walsh
Locations: Milford, Donegal; Fanad Peninsula, Donegal; Maam Valley and Joyce Country, Galway

William Sydney Clements,
3rd Earl of Leitrim

If anyone made a case for the advancement of tenant rights in Ireland in the second half of the 19^th century, it was the 3^rd Earl of Leitrim, possibly the worst landlord in Ireland. Before the 1870 Land Act, an act that provided some tenant relief, those farmers who held their leases from Leitrim were without protection of any kind and subject to eviction with little notice. In order to keep his tenants in a perpetual state of unease, every eleven months, Leitrim’s tenants were served with notices to quit before new leases were signed.

When approached by a tenant to appeal an eviction, Leitrim’s favorite phrase was: “Go to hell or America.” This was a problem for many of our ancestors as Leitrim owned vast properties in Galway, including the Maam Valley, parts of the Rosshill estate near Clonbur, Claggan, Glenlusk, Boocaun, and Rusheen, to name a few. Shortly before his murder, Leitrim had signaled to his Galway tenants that it was his intention to “cast a rod on Lough Mask,” and while he was fishing, his bailiffs would be “evicting twenty tenants in the Maam Valley.” It is possible that Michael O’Neill, the father of the O’Neill brothers of baseball fame, was one of those tenants who was evicted by Leitrim’s successor as Michael left the Maam Valley in 1879 for Minooka. His family followed in 1880. It may be why my great-grandmother, Bridgit Walsh Lydon, went to America as well as her brother Richard Walsh and sister Mary Walsh Lydon, all settling in Minooka.

There was another reason for the exodus to Minooka. Between 1878 and 1880, a mini-famine struck Galway, and with fears of a recurrence of the Great Hunger, many chose to leave Galway forever. For those who stayed behind, there was real resentment that “landlordism” had resulted in emigration and starvation, and there were those who decided that violence was the only thing that would bring about change.

* * *

Murder of William Browne Montmorency, Lord Mountmorres

Family Names: Burke, Corbett, Fallon, Hennelly, Kearney, Mulroe, Murphy, Sweeney
Locations: Ebor Hall; Dooroy and Clonbur, Galway; Cong, Mayo

Lord Mountmorres

The second murder was that of William Browne Montmorency, Lord Mountmorres, who was assassinated near his home, Ebor Hall, near Dooroy on September 25, 1880. Mountmorres owned 300 acres near Tumneenaun Bay on the shores of Lough Corrib. His crime was not so much that he was a bad landlord—he only had ten tenants—but that he was a spy for the British Government and that he reported on Land League activities in the Clonbur area. The murder was planned at the publichouse of Patrick Kearney in the village of Clonbur and executed on the road between Clonbur, where Mountmorres had spent the evening in his role as magistrate, and Ebor Hall.

* * *

Bailiff Joseph Huddy and his grandson, John Huddy 

Family Names: Comer, Conroy, Coyne, Flynn, Higgins, Holleran, Joyce, Kerrigan, Laffey, Sharkey Lydon, Macken, Mannion, Moran, Mulroe, Walsh
Locations: Upper and Middle (America) Cloughbrack; Crumlin; Claggan

Arthur Guinness,
1st Lord Ardilaun

On the morning of January 3, 1882, Joseph Huddy, bailiff for Arthur Guinness, the 1^st Lord Ardilaun, and his grandson, went to the villages of Upper and Middle Cloughbrack on the shores of Lough Mask to serve eviction notices to twelve families. Two men, Michael Flynn and Thomas Higgins, followed the process servers into the yard of Mathias (Matthew) Kerrigan in Upper Cloughbrack. The elder Huddy was killed in Kerrigan’s yard, and the boy was pursued down a lane (called a boreen) and murdered. Their bodies were then thrown into Lough Mask. (The death of the Huddys became known as the “Lough Mask Murders.”). After a search of the surrounding area, a crew from the HMS Banterer dragged the lake, and three weeks after their murders, the bodies were recovered. In addition to Michael Flynn and Thomas Higgins, Patrick Higgins (Long) was charged with the Huddy murders, and Patrick Higgins (Sarah) was charged with being an accessory. A witness to the murders was Mathias Kerrigan’s daughter, Mary Kerrigan, who was the grandmother of Sharkey Lydon.

Police Hut housing Royal Irish Constabulary

Mathias Kerrigan and
 wife, Bridgit Kerrigan

These murders had a tremendous impact on all of Joyce Country. For ten months, police and Crown investigators interviewed and re-interviewed as many as 211 people, including children, in their efforts to find the murderers of the bailiff and his grandson. Due to a threat of further violence, a police hut was erected in Middle Cloughbrack (also known as America because so many people had emigrated to the States from the village). In order to protect witness Mathias Kerrigan (Sharkey Lydon’s great-grandfather), a second police hut was erected in Kerrigan’s yard and would remain there until his death in 1898.

Greenstreet Courthouse, Dublin
Site of Four Huddy Murder Trials

* * *

Murders of John Joyce; Bridgit Casey O’Brien Joyce, John’s wife; Margaret, John’s mother; Peggy, a daughter from John’s first marriage; and Michael, John’s son.

Families Names: Casey, , Cusick, Joyce, Philbin
Locations: Maamtrasna, Cappanachrea, and Bunachrick, Galway; Tourmakeady (Cappaduff) Mayo

On August 18, 1882, in the mountains of Maamtrasna, north of Lough Mask, five members of the John Joyce family were murdered in their home. Although attempts were made by the British government to tie the murders to the Land League, these killings were tribal rather than political. John Joyce, a known sheep thief, and his family, were victims of angry neighbors who wanted to be rid of a man who stole anything he set eyes on. The murders were particularly savage, and for many, confirmed that Ireland had become ungovernable.

In an act of revenge, three members of another Joyce family from a nearby village made up a story entirely out of whole cloth about witnessing the actual murders. Of the ten men named by the fabricating Joyces, only two were actually guilty of the crime, and their participation in the murders had been a matter of guesswork on the part of their accusers.

Myles Joyce, Executed; Tom Casey, Informer

As a result of the false testimony of the Joyce informers, two men, who had nothing to do with the murders, turned Queen’s evidence, naming five innocent men as participating in the murders. The names had been fed to the informers during their interrogations by Crown Prosecutor George Bolton. Four of those men, after pleading guilty on the advice of their priest, were found guilty of murder and were given sentences of twenty years of hard labor, and the fifth, Myles Joyce of Cappanachrea, was hanged, protesting his innocence with his last breath. The actual killers, members of the clan of Big John Casey of Bunachrick, went free.

As a result of these murders, the area between Lough Mask and Lough Corrib, aka Joyce Country, became known as a Murderer’s Country.

If anyone has any information on any of these murders, I can be contacted at quailcreekpub@hotmail.com.

A Murderer’s Country is available on Kindle and in paperback from Amazon. I would suggest the paperback because of notes and footnotes, and there’s a bonus: more pictures.

Amazon Kindle ebook

Paperback on Amazon

1902 District Elections - J. J. Coyne v. Martin Judge - Melee Ensues

The Scranton Tribune, June 11, 1902

Collision Was a Violent One

No Fatalities Result but Many Injured

Class of Warring Factions in the Third Legislative District Convention

Necessitates the Summoning of the Police – Blood Flowed Freely and

One Arrest Results

The Democrats of the Third Legislative district held a convention yesterday afternoon at the St. Charles hotel. The complete list of the injured could not be ascertained as many were hurried away by their friends at the approach of the police. The most seriously injured were: William Burke, postmaster at Minooka: cut on temple and cheek lacerations; Michael Lydon of Minooka: face cut and knuckles skinned; James Nolan, Lackawanna: cut on chin.

The convention was called to elect two delegates to the state convention at Erie, June 25. The warring Minooka factions headed, respectively, by John J. Coyne and Martin Judge, each wanted to get control of the district, and when they failed to settle the matter according to the rules and regulations of the Democratic party of the Third Legislative district, the rules compiled and edited by the illustrious Marquis of Queensbury were substituted. There were insinuations after adjournment that even the substituted rules were violated.

Delegates Must Register – Under the district rules, all delegates must register the day prior to the convention, and contests must be filed before 10 o’clock a.m. of convention day.

A lot of the Judge delegates arrived at the convention yesterday afternoon bearing what seemed to be duly attested credentials, but when these were presented, Chairman W. W. Baylor found it necessary to ignore them as others had registered from their districts in due time and proper form, and 10 o’clock a.m. having come and gone, it was too late to enter contests.

The scene that followed the announcement of this ruling would not, if transferred to canvas, be hung among studies of still life.

The 12 x 14 hotel sample room, in which the convention was being conducted was crowded from the walls to the very edge of the round table in the center of the room at which Chairman Baylor and Secretary Edward Jordan had their seats. The chairman’s ruling brought every man in the room to his feet and drew them into a compact mass about the table.

Everybody started to talk at once. Most of them contented themselves with calling Mr. Baylor names and accusing him of trying “to run over the people like a bull.”

Martin Judge alleged that the John Coyne delegates’ credentials from Lackawanna were forged. Mr. Coyne, in measured, deliberate terms, called Mr. Judge a liar.

Tuke's Emigration Scheme - 1882-1885

Tuke’s Emigration Scheme

The following excerpts have been extracted from a memoir of James Hack Tuke (1819-1896) written by his friend, Sir Edward Fry, in 1909.

James Hack Tuke was born in York on September 13, 1819, the second son and seventh child of Quakers Samuel Tuke and Priscilla Hack. He was educated in York at a day school attended by North Country Quakers. When Tuke was nine years old, his mother died, and at the age of sixteen, he left school and joined his father at a counting-house, where his father was a senior partner in a firm of tea merchants.

“In August 1845, Tuke sailed for America. While on board the steamer, he met William Forster, the father of the future Chief Secretary of Ireland, William Edward ‘Buckshot’ Forster, a man who would have a major impact on Ireland during the years of the Land League.

“From New York, Tuke traveled by carriage to Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. He crossed into Canada and visited Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto. During his travels, he made notes of all the people and places he had visited, including Louisville, and noted the evils of slavery.

“After his return to England, Tuke learned of the disaster that was taking place in Ireland. He traveled to Ireland with the elder William Forster for the purpose of providing famine relief. In Donegal, they contacted the local gentry and ministers of various denominations for the purpose of establishing soup kitchens and visited the cottages of those in greatest distress.”

“In 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine, James again returned to Ireland, travelling throughout Connaught where ‘we saw enough of misery and wretchedness to dispel all other visions. He entered homes where the inhabitants were dying from the ‘fever’ that claimed so many.’ He wrote of entire villages devoid of all human habitation because the people who once lived there had been evicted, their roofs pulled down about their heads. He also visited feeding stations where the Poor Law officers attempted to feed the starving. He counted 300 people at one such station, many of them in various stages of fever, starvation, and nakedness. He was so moved by what he saw that he published a pamphlet in England describing the plight of the Irish.

“Many Irish fled Ireland for England, some ending up living on the doorstep of Samuel Tuke, James’s father, in York, who offered a small field near his own home for the erection of a wooden building to serve as a fever hospital. It was there that James caught the fever—the effects of which stayed with him for the rest of his life. When the mini-famine of 1877-79 appeared to be a repeat of Black ’47, Tuke devised a plan that would save thousands from their wretched existence.”

In 1879, the second year of the mini-famine, Tuke returned to Ireland. Although there was hunger and want, there was not starvation. But it was on that visit that he became “strongly impressed with the necessity of assisting families to emigrate in order to lessen the fearful crowding of those who were attempting to live on small patches of land.”

Emigration was not a new idea. Hundreds of thousands of Irish had fled to America during the Famine and post-Famine years. Many landlords horrified by the scenes taking place on their estates had paid the passage money for their tenants. Other landlords, for less altruistic reasons, saw emigration as a way of clearing the land of impoverished tenants, thus reducing the amount of poor rates they had to remit to the Government to support local workhouses. The cleared land was almost always turned into pastureland.

Murder of Peter King, February 1902

The Scranton Republican – February 17, 1902

Horrible Tragedy in Minooka

Constable Michael Davis [of Moosic] Shoots Peter King

Upon his Refusal to Quarrel with Him

Murderer in County Jail

“Peter King, 22, of Minooka, was shot by Michael Davis, 33, in the speakeasy of Patrick Sullivan, in that place, soon after 1 o’clock yesterday, and died a few minutes afterwards.

“The murder was cold blooded and has aroused most bitter feelings in that section. But for the prompt action of special officers who arrived a few moments after the affray. Lynching, it is said, would undoubtedly have been resorted to. Davis is now in the county jail. Sullivan’s speakeasy is but one mile from the city line on Main street, Minooka. The barroom is on the ground floor and at the time of the murder 14 men were present. All evening King had been in the place playing cards, but had not, it is said, taken a drop of liquor.

“From stories told by many eyewitnesses, the murder was precipitated by Davis’ remarks, which revived a feud of long standing. Two months ago, Davis subpoenaed King to appear as a witness in a case wherein Charles Deimuth was arrested on information of George Fassold, charged with selling liquor without a license.

“Davis’s reputation in that locality is bad, and King was a reluctant witness, knowing that Davis had investigated the case indirectly against Deimuth. The hearing was held before Alderman O’Neill of Minooka, and when King finally appeared, he refused to testify against Deimuth. The case was dismissed and the matter dropped.

“Davis, however, boasted of the manner in which he had forced King to accompany him to the alderman’s office. The boast was one of which he was evidently proud, as King is a man of remarkable physique, being 6 feet 3 inches in height and weighing 200 pounds. His strength was something unusual and he could easily have overcome the constable. Hence the proud boast of the latter.

“Saturday night, Davis, accompanied by a fellow officer, Harvey Decker of Moosic, visited this city and made the rounds of the saloons. According to Decker, Davis was not drunk when they left on an 11:40 D&H train for Minooka. Leaving the train, they proceeded to Sullivan’s place after stopping in two speakeasies on the way.”

Looking for Trouble

“Arriving at Sullivan’s place, they stood and chatted with several men in the barroom. King sat to one side quietly playing cards with a few friends.

“That Davis was looking for trouble was soon evident. Spying King, he remarked: ‘There’s that son _ _ ______ I arrested.’ King heard the remark, but made no reply. Advancing nearer, he repeated the sentence, adding other vile epithets.

“I could arrest him again if I had to,” said Davis.

“You or any other man wouldn’t arrest me, Davis, if I didn’t want to be,” said King, provoked at his insolence.

“The men became angrier. King remained in his chair while Davis swung his fist, threatening to attack John Ruane, who was standing at the bar… Sullivan, who stood behind the bar, told Davis to be quiet or he would put him out. This, however, added to the constable’s wrath.

“King, you’re a brute. You son _ _ ______. I could kill you. I’d blow your brains out,” shouted Davis as he placed his hand on his hip pocket. His move was a signal for an advance by the other men who rushed at him. Leaping aside and pulling his gun in a wild-west fashion, he backed to a corner and covered the crowd.