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