Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
IRISH COWBOYS & SOLDIERS
-
20-06-2010 11:34pm#1Very few people know that Fossets Circus has a connection with Buffalo Bills (William Codys) Wild West Show that toured Europe in the Mid 1880s.
But many Cowboys were Irish and in between gold rushes and railroad building they were soldiers.
The most infamous are the St Patricios who fought for Mexico and their story is here as well as a list of the Irish Killed at Little Big HornTRAGIC STORY OF THE SAN PATRICIO BATTALIONNe’er-do-wells and deserters, these soldiers lived hard, fought hard— and died when they saw a flag go up
By FAIRFAX DOWNEY
In the 5th U.S. Infantry, stationed with General Zachary Taylor’s army on the Mexican border in 1846, Sergeant John Riley was rated a good soldier. Before his present duty he had served as a drillmaster for the Corps of Cadets at West Point which demanded high competence. Such was Riley’s ability that he was in line for a lieutenant’s commission, and rising from the ranks was rare at that period. He hail only one apparent fault, a grave one. He could enforce discipline but found it hard to take.
Soon after a reprimand from his captain for disobedience of orders, the smoldering Riley asked for a pass to attend Mass. He never reported back. The American Army had lost an able infantry sergeant. Mexico and General Santa Anna would gain a top artillery commander.
Riley joined the stream of deserters crossing over to the Mexicans, defections causing Zach Taylor considerable concern. They included others of the numerous foreign-born, many of them recent immigrants, who wore the blue—Irish, German, English, French, Polish. The Mexican Government had assiduously been urging all of doubtful loyalty or otherwise disaffected “to abandon their unholy cause and become peaceful Mexican citizens.” Bounties and land grants of 320 acres, rising with the deserter’s rank, were promised rewards. Impetus was added by harsh discipline in units of the U.S. Army where flogging was legal. Riley, like many other Irishmen, may well have been irked by the strong anti-Irish sentiment then prevalent in the United States.
But he and others who deserted before and alter the commencement of hostilities also met with contemptuous treatment in Mexico at first. This was wartime, and “peaceful Mexican citizens” were not desired. It was when the former sergeant organized his fellow turncoats into the San Patricio Battalion, ready to fight for their adopted country, that they began to win respect.
The San Patricios also were called the Colorados or “Red Company” because many of them were redheaded. Though they carried a banner blazoned on one side with a figure of St. Patrick and on the other with a harp and the arms of Mexico, only a proportion was Irish or Roman Catholic. They were composed of half a do/en nationalities, besides native Americans, and came from every branch of the service: infantry, cavalry, and artillery.
The last was Riley’s choice for the San Patricios. Equipped by Santa Anna’s order with heavy fieldpieces, he and the veteran artillerymen among the deserters trained the rest into crack gun crews.
The San Patricios manned Mexican guns in the stubborn defense of Monterrey whose storming cost the Americans heavy casualties. When the city yielded after a three-day battle, and the garrison marched out under the terms of capitulation, the deserters were recognized by former comrades and jeered and hissed. Silent and sullen, Riley and his men glared back. They would soon find an opportunity to take revenge for the scorn heaped upon them.
At Buena Vista on February 23, 1847, the San Patricios again stood prepared for action. Their 18and 24-pounders, emplaced to rake the plateau, formed part of General Santa Anna’s imposing array: other ready batteries, deep columns of infantry, long ranks of splendid lancers. General Taylor in nondescript civilian clothes lounged in the saddle of Old Whitey and watched out the spectacle before he gave the order to attack.
From the high ground the guns of the San Patricios opened, and battle flamed across the plateau. Lieutenant John Paul Jones O’Brien of Captain John M. Washington’s light battery—“D,” 4th Artillery—kept his “Bulldogs,” as he called his guns, barking. They hurled roundshot, then shifted to grape and canister to blast back charges by the Mexican lancers. Riley’s expert gunners retaliated by cutting up a squadron of the First Dragoons. The advantage of position and weight of metal lay with the Mexican guns, and the San Patricios, inflicting bloody losses on their former comrades, beat back the blue waves and concentrated on O’Brien. Most of his crews down around the smoking pieces, his horses killed, he stood and fought it out unsupported. His “Bulldogs” hung on until advancing enemy drove back survivors of the battery and captured its two guns not disabled.
Braxton Bragg’s flying battery, whirling up into action at a headlong gallop, began the turning of the tide. Obeying Zach Taylor’s command, “Double-shot your guns and give ‘em hell!” (let the shade of Old Rough and Ready stand absolved of the traditional, mild “A little more grape, Captain Bragg"), the artilleryman directed a hot and rapid fire that routed the Mexicans. Victory swept across the field. In Santa Anna’s retreat, the San Patricio Battalion carried off O’Brien’s two bronze 6-pounders.
After General Winfield Scott bombarded Vera Cruz into surrender and pushed on into the interior, Colonel Ethan Alien Hitchcock recruited a counterforce to the San Patricios. At Puebla he found a weaver named Manuel Dominguez who, robbed by a Mexican officer, had left his trade to become a bandit chief. Hitchcock organized Dominguez and his band as the Spy Company, officered by Americans. Raffishly uniformed in green cavalry jackets and pantaloons, trimmed with red, and straw sombreros with red streamers, they proved extremely useful as scouts and in carrying messages through the lines and were often assigned to secret missions out of uniform. Paid $25 a month and furnished arms, rations, and clothing, they were guaranteed safe passage with their families to the United States or a neutral country after the war. As Scott’s army fought its way toward the capital, the Spy Company rode with it.
It was on the second day of the Battle of Padierna or Contreras, August 20, 1847, that the Americans again met O’Brien’s “Bulldogs.” After the costly repulse of an attempt to cross the lava bed on the 19th, a brilliant flanking movement around the enemy left brought a blue brigade, supported by Captain Simon Drum’s battery, 4th Artillery, down on the Mexican rear in an overwhelming attack. In a close-up duel with Mexican artillerymen, stubbornly standing to their guns, Drum recognized their two bronze pieces as O’Brien’s. Instantly he limbered up and signaled the gallop for a stirring, hell-for-leather charge. A volley of grapeshot swept the color-bearer out of his saddle, but the flag was caught as it fell by Lieutenant Calvin Benjamin. As the head of the column crashed into the position, Drum vaulted from his saddle to lay hands on the trophies.
Although the ensuing rout of the Mexican Army reached the proportions of a panic, a hard core of veterans rallied and at Churubusco later the same day barred the American advance. There the San Patricio made its last stand.
Churubusco, derived from an Aztec word meaning Place of the War God, justified its name that day. Riley’s gunners, mainstay of the defense of the bridgehead to the massive-walled Convent of San Pablo, served their pieces with verve and fury. Their cannon smashed back assault after assault and they only yielded the bridge and retired to the convent when infantry crossed the river to outflank them and artillery enfiladed their position. To the deadly fire of the deserters, who took particular satisfaction in spotting and picking off their former officers, was attributed a large part of the considerable American losses: 137 killed, 879 wounded and 40 missing.
During the storming of the convent, which Santa Anna ordered held to the last to cover his retreat, the San Patricios fought with the utmost desperation. There was no thought of surrender among men who could feel the hangman’s noose around their necks. At last Riley and his remaining men, their ammunition exhausted, were overpowered. Seventy-five survived out of a battalion of 260; the rest, except for some who escaped, lay dead in the uniform of Mexico.
The Mexican Government would angrily term their punishment an act of Gringo barbarism, “a cruel death or horrible torments, improper in a civilized age, and for a people who aspire to the title of illustrious and humane.” Yet they were tried with scrupulous fairness, though feeling against them ran hot, and their sentences were strictly in accordance with the rules of war and the enormity of their offense. Some were acquitted as having been legitimately captured and forced into the ranks but refusing to fight. Riley and others, who had deserted before the commencement of hostilities, were sentenced to lashing and branding. Fifty were condemned to be hanged as deserters in time of war.
Ex-Sergeant John Riley, bound to a post, took his fifty lashes without a moan. But when he was branded with a “D” for deserter on the cheek bone, according to regulations “near the eye but without jeopardizing the sight,” he cried out under the agony of the redhot iron, for he suffered it twice. Since the letter was seared on upside down the first time, it was righted in a second branding.
Riley would labor as a convict as long as the army remained in Mexico. Then, head shaven, buttons stripped from the uniform he had once worn with honor, he would be drummed out of camp to the derisive fifing of “The Rogue’s March.”
Meanwhile he was forced to dig graves for the comrades who were to be executed. One group, hands pinioned and nooses around their necks, were placed in carts, driven out from under long gallows at San Angel. High drama featured the carrying out of the death sentence for the remainder. At Mixcoac they were stationed on a scaffold affording a view of the final assault on Mexico City. As American troops stormed the ramparts, the deserters watched the eagle and snake banner of Mexico lowered from its staff on Chapultepec Castle and the Stars and Stripes rise in its place. Just before the traps were sprung, with their last breath in a shout that was heard across the valley they cheered the flag they had betrayed.
For an epilogue the story of Deserters vs. Spies offers an example of national ingratitude and an instance of supreme gall.
Manuel Dominguez, leader of the Spy Company, was moved to New Orleans with his family after the war, as promised. But there, unpensioned, his services forgotten, he was left to eke out a miserable existence. The presumptuous Riley, however, dared bring suit against the United States in Cincinnati in 1849 to recompense him for damages received in his flogging and branding. The jury ruled against him.
Combat officer in two wars, and author of numerous books, Fairfax Downey contributed “Yankee Gunners at Louisbourg” to the February, 1955, issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE.
And the Irish who died with General Custer at Little Bighorn
Here are the names of the Irish men who fought and died either during or shortly after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Their details are displayed in the following format:
NAME - AGE - RANK - COMPANY - COUNTY - OCCUP - PERSONAL DETAILS
Atcheson, Thomas 41 Private F Antrim Unknown 5' 5¼" in height, hazel eyes, dark hair
Barry, John 27 Private I Waterford Laborer 5'7¾" in height, grey eyes, dark hair, ruddy complexion
Boyle, Owen 33 Private E Waterford Soldier 5'6" in height, grey eyes, dark hair, fair complexion
Bruce, Patrick 31 Private F Cork Unknown 5'7" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion
Bustard, James 30 Sergeant I Donegal Soldier 5'6½" in height, hazel eyes, light hair, fair complexion
Carney, James 33 Private F Westmeath Unknown 5'4¼" in height, grey eyes, black hair, dark complexion
Cashan, William 31 Sergeant L Queen's County Soldier 5'9" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Connor, Edward 30 Private E Clare Unknown 5'8½" in height, hazel eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion
Considine, Martin* 28 Sergeant G Clare Unknown 5'7½" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Cooney, David** 28 Private I Cork Laborer 5'5¾" in height, grey eyes, dark hair, fair complexion
(Promoted Sergeant on June 28th)
Downing, Thomas 24 Private I Limerick Laborer 5'8¼" in height, blue eyes, sandy hair, florid complexion
Drinan, James* 23 Private A Cork Laborer 5'7½" in height, grey eyes, light brown hair, dark complexion
Driscoll, Edward 25 Private I Waterford Laborer 5'6" in height, hazel eyes, light hair, light complexion
Eagan, Thomas 28 Corporal E Unknown Laborer 5'5½" in height, grey eyes, sandy hair, light complexion
Farrell, Richard 25 Private E Dublin Laborer 5'8¾" in height, grey eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Finley, Jeremiah 35 Sergeant C Tipperary Laborer 5'7" in height, grey eyes, brown hair, light complexion
(He made Custer's buckskin jacket.)
Golden, Patrick* 26 Private D Sligo Slater 5'9¼" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Graham, Charles 39 Private L Tyrone Unknown 5'6¾" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, florid complexion
Griffin, Patrick 28 Private C Kerry Unknown 5'9" in height, black eyes, dark hair, ruddy complexion
Henderson, John 37 Private E Cork Unknown 5'7¾" in height, grey eyes, light hair, fair complexion
Hughes, Robert H 36 Sergeant K Dublin Unknown 5'9" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
(Carried Custer's battle standard)
Kavanagh, Thomas G 31 Private L Dublin Farmer 5'11¼" in height, grey eyes, red hair, ruddy complexion
Kelly, Patrick 35 Private I Mayo Unknown 5'5" in height, grey eyes, sandy hair, fair complexion
Kenney, Michael 26 1st Sergeant F Galway Soldier 5'7¼" in height, grey eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Keogh, Myles W 36 Captain I Carlow Soldier The only Irishborn officer, 2nd-in-command to Custer
himself in the ill-fated battalion
Mahoney, Bartholomew 30 Private L Cork Teamster 5'10" in height, hazel eyes, dark hair, sallow complexion
Martin, James* 28 Corporal G Kildare Laborer 5'5" in height, grey eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
McElroy, Thomas 31 Trumpeter E Tipperary Musician 5'5½" in height, blue eyes, dark hair, ruddy complexion
McIlhargey, Archibald31 Private I Antrim Unknown 5'5" in height, brown eyes, black hair, dark complexion
Mitchell, John 34 Private I Galway Unknown 5'6¼" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion
O'Connell, David 32 Private L Cork Unknown 5'7½" in height, dark eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion
O'Connor, Patrick 25 Private E Longford Shoemaker 5'5½" in height, blue eyes, light hair, fair complexion
Shanahan, John* 23 Private G Unknown Laborer 5'7" in height, blue eyes, brown hair, fair complexion
Smith, James 34 Private E Tipperary Unknown 5'6" in height, hazel eyes, brown hair, ruddy complexion
Sullivan, John* 25 Private A Dublin Laborer 5'6¼" in height, grey eyes, brown hair, medium complexion
* Killed with Reno battalion
** Died later of wounds received in the battle2
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
old_aussie wrote: »Riley joined the stream of deserters
Is this an Irish military trait?
Australia was full
Where are our "Bushrangers" other than the obvious.0 -
Very few people know that Fossets Circus has a connection with Buffalo Bills (William Codys) Wild West Show that toured Europe in the Mid 1880s.
But many Cowboys were Irish and in between gold rushes and railroad building they were soldiers.
The most infamous are the St Patricios who fought for Mexico and their story is here as well as a list of the Irish Killed at Little Big Horn
And the Irish who died with General Custer at Little Bighorn
small men weren't they, not a six footer among them0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
didnt notice that it was cavalry
That earns you a Soupy Norman award -you being from Buttevant and all that.
Which being Cork -did you know that one of the most famous women pirates Anne Bonny* was from Kinsale.
http://www.geographia.com/bahamas/annebonny.htm
* Billy the Kids mothers maiden name was Bonny and he sometimes signed himself as William H Bonny.0 -
-
-
-
Almost a century before Patrick Pearse was executed you had Alexander Pearse who was hanged in Austrailia for his culinary tastes "human stew"
His head is somewhere in a Philadelphia museum as some medic bought it to study phrenology.
Here is alexanders version of bush tucker.
A journey through hell's gate
October 29 2002
Alexander Pearce fled one of Tasmania's worst penal hellholes, only to find himself living another nightmare, writes Paul Collins.
The man standing in the dock of the Supreme Court of Van Diemens Land did not look like someone who was, as the Hobart Town Gazette put it on June 25, 1824, "laden with the weight of human blood, and believed to have banqueted on human flesh". In fact, he looked perfectly normal. He was 1.6 metres tall, slightly under medium height for the early 19th century, and his frame was wiry and strong. He was 34, but looked older.
There was nothing to distinguish the Irish-born Alexander Pearce from the procession of convicts who traipsed through the Hobart Town courts. Except for one thing - he was the first self-confessed cannibal to have appeared there.
Twenty months earlier, Pearce and seven other convicts had escaped from the prison settlement of Sarah Island, in Macquarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania, the most remote penal hellhole in the British Empire. In the jargon of the time, this was a place of secondary punishment, where recalcitrant convicts were sent when they repeatedly fell foul of the law while serving their original sentences. Pearce was the sole survivor of their nine-week escape through some of the world's most difficult wilderness terrain.
During their journey, five of his companions had been killed and eaten by their fellows. Two others died from exhaustion. Because cannibalism was unheard of among Europeans, Pearce's trial for murder created a sensation in Hobart Town, London, and even the United States.
Although Pearce was hanged in 1824, I keep meeting people who have heard of him. Perhaps it is the song about his exploits, A Tale They Won't Believe, by the group Weddings, Parties, Anything that has popularised him. He seems to be entering into popular consciousness, somewhat like Ned Kelly.");document.write(" [SIZE=-1]advertisement[/SIZE]</div>"); } } // -->
@media print {.nopr {display:none}} [SIZE=-1]advertisement[/SIZE]
Pearce originally had been sentenced at the County Armagh Lent assizes of 1819 to transportation for seven years. His crime was stealing six pairs of shoes, probably not his first offence. Only a professional thief would steal six pairs.
Pearce quickly distinguished himself as a troublesome malcontent. Between his arrival in Tasmania in February, 1821, and early August, 1822, when he was sent to Macquarie Harbour, he had absconded twice, received four floggings, one of 50 lashes for embezzling two turkeys and three ducks, one of 25 and another of 50 for being drunk and disorderly, and another 50 and six months working in chains for stealing a wheelbarrow.
In March, 1822, Pearce absconded again. After three months he was recaptured. By now the none-too-merciful magistrates of Hobart Town had had enough of him and he was sent to Macquarie Harbour for the remainder of his original sentence. He was there about six weeks when he bolted into the bush with seven others, beginning the extraordinary journey that has become famous in the history of penal Australia.
The whole area of the west coast then was separated from the settled districts in the centre of Tasmania by difficult and unexplored terrain.
Both guards and prisoners found Macquarie Harbour dreary and the weather appalling. The prisoners' main work was cutting and transporting the Huon pine logs and other fine timber, which grew abundantly in the area and were excellent for boat-building.
Today the area around Macquarie Harbour is valued precisely because of its isolation and is protected as one of the most spectacular wildernesses on Earth. This is a land of cool, temperate rainforests, the most extensive remnant of the extraordinary vegetation of the great southern supercontinent Gondwana.
These forests are of myrtle beech, celery-top and King Billy pine, and the most ancient of all conifers, Huon pine, which lives for up to 3000 years, and is found only in Tasmania.
On September 20, 1822, the convicts Alexander Pearce, Alexander Dalton, Thomas Bodenham, William Kennerly, Matthew Travers, Edward Brown, Robert Greenhill and John Mather were cutting Huon pine logs on the eastern side of Macquarie Harbour. Fed up with the rigid discipline, they planned to escape.
They intended to commandeer a whaleboat, sail north out of Macquarie Harbour, heading to freedom on a Pacific island, or even China. They easily overpowered their overseer, but they bungled the getaway. So they plunged impulsively into the rainforests and mountains surrounding the harbour. They headed east but they were utterly ill-equipped for what lay ahead on their 225-kilometre journey.
Nowadays this region is regarded as some of the toughest country in the world, visited only by experienced bushwalkers with good equipment. Eight days into their hellish journey and by now starving, the men realised that their only hope for survival was cannibalism. Almost impulsively, they killed and ate Alexander Dalton because, Pearce says, he had volunteered to be a flogger and such men were hated.
Next day, fearing that they might be the next victims, Brown and Kennerly decided to return to Sarah Island. Anything would be better than being killed and eaten by their fellows in the wilderness. They made it back to the coast of Macquarie Harbour, but died from exhaustion soon after.
The other five men continued, led by Greenhill, who had been a sailor. It was his navigational skills, using the sun and the stars, that enabled the party to travel for 42 days almost due-east towards the settled areas. It was an extraordinary feat.
As the journey continued, one by one, the weakest man was killed with an axe and butchered to provide food for the others. After five weeks of endless walking, only three men were left: Greenhill, Pearce and Travers. Most of the killing had been done by Greenhill, but Pearce and Travers had also participated. At first they cooked the flesh and innards, but eventually they just ate them raw. By this stage they had reached less rugged country, but with no knowledge of the bush they were unable to live off it.
Driven by extreme hunger, Greenhill finally faced the prospect of having to kill his injured friend Travers, who had been bitten on the foot by a venomous tiger snake. With Travers' foot now gangrenous, Greenhill and Pearce half-dragged and carried their injured companion for five days until Travers begged them to kill him. The only weapon left was the axe. They killed him in his sleep, and ate his flesh.
But the problem with human flesh is that, while rich in protein, it never really satisfies hunger because of the lack of carbohydrates, which provide energy. That is why the men had to kill so regularly. No matter how much they ate of their companions, it was not enough for the energy needed on their stamina-sapping journey.
Pearce and Greenhill struggled on for eight days, playing cat and mouse with each other, desperate to stay awake, fearing that the other would attack him if he closed his eyes and nodded off. It was Pearce who kept awake long enough to grab the axe and kill the sleeping Greenhill with a blow to the head.
The Irishman eventually made it to the settled districts, was befriended by a convict shepherd, and lived rough for several months, robbing farms and stealing sheep, before he was recaptured.
Incredibly, when Pearce gave an account to the authorities of the nightmare journey and the cannibalism involved, the examining magistrate and local parson, the Reverend Robert Knopwood, did not believe him, thinking that Pearce concocted the story to cover for his mates who were believed to be still at large. Pearce was returned in chains to Sarah Island, where his fellow convicts treated him as a hero.
Several months later he bolted again from a work party, this time heading north along the east coast of Macquarie Harbour with a young man named Thomas Cox, who had pestered Pearce to accompany him on an escape attempt.
When Pearce surrendered 11 days later near the mouth of the King River, just south of present-day Strahan, he had human flesh in his pocket.
Why he felt the need for cannibalism again is a mystery, since the guards found that he had other food with him. Pearce, who was clearly a psychopath, said that human flesh was by far preferable to ordinary food. Obviously he had acquired a taste for it, and for killing.
Pearce later admitted that he had murdered Cox in a rage, because he suddenly realised that the young man could not swim, and was going to be a continuing hindrance to him.
At Pearce's trial, witnesses said he had given himself up because he had no hope of ultimately escaping, and that he was horror-struck at his own inhuman conduct. This sounds like a sanitised account, but we know that he showed signs of repentance at the time of his execution.
It was very cold - there was heavy snow on Mount Wellington - in the court room on that winter day, June 20, 1824, when the cannibal stood trial for murder. The chief justice, John Lewes Pedder, presided at the trial for the murder of Thomas Cox. Pedder was a scrupulous judge, but he often hectored the condemned from the bench, telling them that they should not complain about harshness when penalties were well known to everyone.
The prosecutor was the attorney-general, Joseph Tice Gellibrand. Ironically, Gellibrand was to become lost in the bush near Melbourne in 1837, and was almost certainly killed by Aborigines.
Pearce had no defence counsel and there is no record that he said anything on his own behalf. The trial was brief and the inevitable verdict was handed down. The chief justice pronounced the death sentence and ordered that the body be delivered to the surgeons for dissection.
Thirty days later, after receiving the sacraments from the Catholic chaplain, Father Philip Conolly, Pearce was hanged in the yard of the Hobart Town jail at 9am on July 19, 1824.
Handing over the body for dissection was an uncommon addendum to the death sentence, but in the logic of 19th-century criminal justice it made eminent sense: the corpse of the cannibal was to be cannibalised for science. Thus ended one of the great Gothic horror stories of Australia's rich convict history.0 -
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
Two Irish Papists caught doing Burglary in Canada ”Early American Criminals: The Canadian Burglars
Early American Criminals: The Canadian Burglars [7:32m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download (7179)
On Friday, December 4, 1789, William Mooney Fitzgerald and John Clark were scheduled to appear before the court in St. John, New Brunswick. They were to learn their sentence after being tried and found guilty of burglary the day before. That morning, Rev. Charles William Milton entered their prison cell and later wrote that he found “two unhappy men, surrounded with chains, expecting every moment to have sentence of death pronounced on them,” which “together with the disagreeable stench which arose from them, so affected me, that I was speechless for some time.”
After meeting Fitzgerald and Clark, Milton accompanied the two convicts to the court, where at noon the Honorable Judge Upham pronounced a sentence of death on them and ordered that they be held in jail until their execution on December 18.
The Head of the White Boys
William Mooney Fitzgerald was born in June 1763 in the city of Limerick, Ireland. His parents were honest and creditable, but at the age of sixteen he joined the White Boy gang and became their leader.
The White Boys were a band of agrarian Irish-Catholic insurgents who committed violent offences starting around 1759 to protest enclosures of common land, evictions from rented land, and exorbitant tithes. They took their name from the white smocks they wore as uniforms, and they were accused of carrying out “dreadful barbarities” on people who did not follow their orders or join their gang:they cut out their tongues, amputated their noses or ears; they made them ride many miles in the night on horseback, naked or bare-backed; they buried them naked in graves lined with furze [a thorny bush with yellow flowers] up to their chins; they plundered and often burned houses; they houghed [i.e., cut the hamstring] and maimed cattle; they seized arms, and horses, which they rode about the country, and levied money, at times even in the day (Sir Richard Musgrave, Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland, From the Arrival of the English, 1802).During the first half of the 1780’s when Fitzgerald headed the gang, White Boy activity seemed to focus on protesting tithe collections, although the institution in general had already begun to decline by this time.
While a member of the White Boys, Fitzgerald carried out several capital crimes. At the age of 19 he was condemned to death for committing rape, but for some reason was pardoned. In 1785 at the age of 22, he and six others broke into the home of Rev. Buckner and stole an astonishing 15,000 guineas without being detected. Justice finally caught up with Fitzgerald when that same year he was caught and sentenced to death under the White Boy Act, but he was reprieved on condition of being transported to Botany Bay.
Fitzgerald boarded a ship with 138 other convicts, but instead of proceeding down the coast of Africa and west towards Australia, the captain headed in the opposite direction. He sailed towards Nova Scotia with the intention of selling the convicts as indentured servants. The captain’s scheme was easily discovered, so he dumped his shipload of convicts near Little River in Massachusetts (which later became part of the state of Maine).
Fitzgerald committed two thefts while in Massachusetts before fleeing to St. John in New Brunswick, where he met up with some of his fellow convicts from the ship. They committed several thefts together before Fitzgerald and Clark teamed up and were arrested for the burglary of William Knutten’s house.
An Unusual Pardon
John Clark was also born in Ireland around the same time as Fitzgerald. After displeasing his father through his conduct and actions, Clark joined the army, but then deserted it and became a thief. He rejoined the army, but before he could desert again, he was shipped off to America to fight in the American Revolution. Clark was discharged after the war, but he re-enlisted in another regiment, only to be discharged again after being tried by court martial for thefts and misdemeanors.
In 1786, Clark and two others were tried and sentenced to death for burglary in Halifax. But Clark received a pardon on condition that he carry out the execution of the two other burglars, which he did with their consent. Despite this near miss, Clark continued to commit even more thefts in Nova Scotia.
On October 18, 1788, Clark traveled to St. John, where he met one of the women from Fitzgerald’s convict ship. She and another woman convinced Clark to carry out with Fitzgerald the burglary that led to their arrest.
Regular Visits in Prison
As Fitzgerald and Clark came out of the court room after their sentencing, Rev. Milton handed them a Bible. He later discovered that Fitzgerald not only was brought up as a “rigid papist,” but that he was illiterate, so Clark volunteered to read to his partner. Milton visited the two prisoners every day to discuss the Gospel. On the fourth day, Milton was advised to limit his visits so as to avoid offending the public, but after some reflection he “without hesitation, rejected the advice, as coming from the father of lies.”
On the Sunday before their execution at three o’clock in the afternoon, Milton preached in front of the jail. The convicts stood on a snow bank and Clark on top of a table, and despite the extreme cold, a large group of people turned out to hear his sermon and gawk at the prisoners. Before Milton began his speech, Clark asked permission to read a confession to the public, which was granted. Many tears were shed during the sermon, and afterward the “prisoners appeared very much resigned.”
On Wednesday, the judge ordered Fitzgerald and Clark to hear their death warrant read aloud, and by their own request their coffins were delivered into their jail cell. Milton wrote that the sight of them lying in their coffins was one “which no feeling mind could behold without being affected.”
While in prison, Fitzgerald supplied to the authorities a list of seventeen convicts he knew from the ship that transported him, along with their crimes. Eight of the convicts were transported for shoplifting or theft, and four committed animal theft. Others were banished for highway robbery, coining, and rape.
Milton’s regular visits must have had their effect, because on the day of their execution he found Fitzgerald and Clark “as much composed as if they were about going a pleasant journey.” The two walked to their place of execution on each side of the Reverend, who took leave of them after they ascended the ladder of the gallows. While moving up the rungs, Milton heard Clark observe that “every step he took was a step nearer to God.”
The two were executed at half past noon. “More solemnity,” Milton wrote, “was perhaps never observed at any execution before.
http://www.earlyamericancrime.com/criminals/canadian-burglars0 -
-
-
Here is a bit more on the origans of the Irish in New England, cowboys were Irish - whats more they were first organised by a puritan who recognised their abilities.Irish Cowboys and Hobby HorsesYoung John Pynchon had inherited his father’s knack for details and organization. Furthermore he had Peter Swank’s knowledge regarding the buccaneer feed lot operation. Yet both men realized this new venture was going to call for a specialized type of labor force. Pynchon had an inspiration.
He recruited Irish cowboys.
Though often overlooked in history books, there were many Irish emigrants in New England by the mid-seventeenth century. Some had arrived as indentured servants. Others had fled Ireland of their own free will, willing to risk life and limb in an often savage new world, rather than live under the ruthless dictatorship inflicted on their homeland by the English conqueror Oliver Cromwell.
These Irish emigrants arrived with not only an ancient equestrian history but even brought a well-known Irish word with them. Their country had already been a center for beef and dairy production for more than five hundred years. As early as 1,000 AD Irish minstrels were recording songs about “the cowboy.” Medieval poems such as “The Triads” spoke of Irish men rounding up cattle from horseback. The Irish horse was as famous as the men who rode it. These natural pacers, imported into England as early as 1350, were favored mounts of squires, merchants and other gentry. The solid little Irish horse had a gait “as comfortable as a rocking chair on the hob.” The warm, flat area in front of the fireplace known as the hob was the most restful place in the house. The legend of the gently rocking “hobby horse” thus arose from this Irish pacer.
By the fall of 1654 John Pynchon and Peter Swank knew where they could find horses and the men to ride them for America’s first roundup.The Puritan RoundupAmong the Irish cow punchers Pynchon recruited was John Daley. In addition he purchased an indentured Scottish prisoner of war named John Stewart who became the resident blacksmith.
With his cowhands lined up, John Pynchon, America’s first cattle baron, was almost ready.
Like all ranch hands, first they needed horses.
When the Puritans arrived in America, they had originally been weak horsemen. A widespread belief was that horses were a luxury “belonging to the gentry.” Cattle, pigs and sheep had more uses to these sturdy yeomen. Not only could these animals be eaten, they provided essential by-products such as milk, hides, butter, etc. But the horse had little value after its death. English heritage had a strong bias against using horseflesh for human food. An exception to this was the winter of 1610 when the Jamestown colonists ate their seven horses rather than starve. It is not surprising then to discover the fleet that brought the Puritans to Salem in 1628 for example carried 110 cattle but only thirteen horses. The need for pack ponies and dependable riding mounts was soon evident. By 1640 there were an estimated 200 horses in New England, with more arriving on every ship. Many of these were Irish “hobbies.”
In 1647 the number of horses in Massachusetts had increased so quickly that the General Court passed a branding law. All animals were doubly branded: first with the symbol of the township in which it was located and secondly with the registered brand of its owner.
The Puritan cowboys needed this equestrian advantage. It was routine practice to let cattle roam free on commonly owned ground. The small Devon and Durham cattle were anything but docile, maybe not longhorn mean but tough, spooky and belligerent. Once they mounted, Pynchon, Swank, Daley and the others started America’s first cattle round up during the fall of 1654. The cattle were brought in, branded and then herded into newly built corrals.
That winter the majority of Pynchon’s neighbors' cattle roamed through the woods and common meadows trying not to starve during the brutal New England storms. Meanwhile Pynchon’s Devon and Durham stock were being quietly tended in their corrals. Several sheds protected the cattle from the worst of the elements. Wheat straw and cornstalks strewn across the floor served as both bedding and a dietary supplement. Every day or two for the next five or six months the cowboys brought them dried corn-on-the-cob, cured hay, vegetable scraps from the family table and pulp from the cider mill.
By February the technique of the buccaneers had been proved a success. The cattle left to forage by his neighbors were rail-thin and as wild as hawks. Pynchon’s stall-fed cattle were plump, gentle and friendly.
Old Fort Pynchon was where the first cattle-drive began in 1655.
“Head ‘Em Up – Move ‘Em Out !”On a crisp spring morning in 1655 John Pynchon looked at the crew of mounted men waiting before him. There were no artists present to record the rig these cowboys wore. Like the Texans who rode a cow trail hundreds of years later, they must have dressed functionally in durable work clothes. Jackets and vests stitched from moose-hide or deerskins were common Puritan garments. Homespun shirts, buckskin breeches, fur caps and leather boots shiny with bear grease would have graced many a young rider. During the three week trip ahead of them, heavy dark wool capes would keep them warm during the day and serve as blankets at night.
One other thing they shared with the cowboys yet to be born. Though they came from diverse backgrounds and different countries, though some were slaves, some indentured servants, some free men, they all shared a common love of adventure and horses. They were America’s first cowboys about to ride into history.
John Pynchon gave the signal to “head ‘em up ..... move ‘em out.” His cowhands swung into action and the herd of stall-fattened Devon and Durham cattle began moving down the Old Bay Path from Springfield, Connecticut towards distant Boston, Massachusetts.
At first the deep grass-covered valley where they lived presented little problem. The rocky countryside between Springfield and Boston was soon in evidence though. The chuck wagon would not be invented by Charles Goodnight for a couple more centuries. The trail was too thin to allow wheeled traffic anyway. Pynchon probably solved the problem of feeding his cow hands by packing supplies along on a string of pack ponies.
Once they swung into the saddle we lose track of them. They ride into the sunset like an ancient equestrian puzzle.
No one has ever solved the record of their daily progress. The local Native Americans, Nipmucks, Nonotucks and Agawams left them alone. Many of the daily events encountered by America’s first cowboys may be locked away in a three hundred year old document A series of records kept by Pynchon - in a system of shorthand he invented - has never been deciphered.
Could the details of North America's first cattle-drive, an event which included Irish cowboys and African-Americans, be hidden in John Pynchon's still undeciphered records?It is known that the herd arrived at Boston Common almost a month later, mostly intact, and yielded Pynchon a handsome profit. This was the first long drive on record of fat-cattle to a city market anywhere in the present boundaries of the United States.
While we may lack the daily details of what those early cowboys did on the cattle drive, we do know that things were never the same in old New England.
In 1675 John Pynchon led his horsemen into battle during King Philip’s War. Several of them made daredevil style rides, delivering messages as heroically as any Pony Express rider. By 1700 the horse trade between New England and the Caribbean was so important that sailing ships were designed with built-in deck pens to hold 150 to 200 horses. These small ships took the Scottish nickname “jockeys.”
By 1750 cattle drives of more than two thousand horses and cattle, guarded by whip cracking cowboys, were a common sight along the cart roads connecting Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and Boston. These drives created the first through roads linking the northern and southern colonies.
Finally, by the time of the Revolutionary War in 1776, the term “cowboy” was commonly used from Maine to Georgia to describe illiterate roughnecks herding cattle in the back country. It grew to have such a derogatory reputation that cattle herdsmen in the East adopted the English term drover instead. The word cowboy would not be popular for a hundred more years, out in some obscure little place called Texas.
The full article
http://www.lrgaf.org/articles/irish-cowboys.htm0 -
Advertisement
-
-
Funnily enough Mayo does not celebrate their famous son.Frank Carter Born 1881 (1881)
County Mayo, Ireland Died June 24, 1927 (1927-06-25)
Lincoln, Nebraska Alias(es) Patrick Murphy Conviction(s) Two counts, First degree murder Penalty Execution Status dead Frank Carter (1881 – 1927) was a notorious sniper murderer in Omaha, Nebraska. Tried for two murders, Carter claimed to have murdered forty-three victims. He was known as the Omaha Sniper, Phantom Sniper, and the Sniper Bandit.
Crimes
Carter was born in County Mayo, Ireland as Patrick Murphy. At the beginning of February 1926 a mechanic was murdered with a .22 caliber pistol with a silencer attached. Soon after a doctor was murdered, and then a railroad detective was shot six times in neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa.[1] On February 15 Omaha's newspapers recommended the city blackout all lights after an expose on previous murders showed the victims were standing in their windows at home when they were shot.[2] During daylight hours, the sniper shot another in the face and fired through more than a dozen lighted windows. Businesses in Omaha came to a standstill, streets emptied and the city's entertainment venues emptied for more than a week.[3] Other crimes included shooting indiscriminately into a Downtown Omaha drug store.[4][5]
More than two weeks after his first murder Carter was captured in Iowa, 30 miles south of Council Bluffs at Bartlett in Fremont County, Iowa. After readily admitting his crimes,[6] he was convicted on two charges of murder, one for killing mechanic William McDevitt and the other for killing Dr. A.D. Searles.[7] After his conviction Carter admitted to being a parole breaker. He was released from the Iowa State Penitentiary in 1925 after serving time for killing cattle.[8]
After a month-long trial where Carter's lawyers plead insanity,[9] Carter was found guilty. He was executed by electrocution on June 24, 1927 at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, Nebraska. Carter was quoted as saying, "Let the juice flow" just before he died
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Frank_Carter
The last executed prisoner to be buried here was Frank Carter, #9277, a notorious sniper serial killer who committed his murders in Omaha, Nebraska. He was also known as the Omaha Sniper, Phantom Sniper, and Sniper Bandit. He claimed to have murdered 43 people. He was born Patrick Murphy in County Mayo, Ireland in 1881 and started his killing spree in February 1926. He used the aliases of F. Louis Clark, Frank Louis, and Frank Wilson. Just by calling up his name on the internet you can find an array of websites with information on Frank. Of particular interest are Wikipedia.org and http://www.serialkillerdatabase.net. He was featured in the New York Times and Time Magazine. When in the electric chair he is quoted as saying “Shoot the juice”.0 -
-
A relative of mine Ricard O'Sullivan Burke, Confederate Colonel in the American Civil War, have a book on him somewhere in the attic:
" Ricard (no 'h') O'Sullivan Burke was about 18 when he deserted from the Cork militia - ........ - went to New York, then Central and South America, then California (gold mining), then Chile (joined the cavalry), then back to New York just in time for the civil war. He enlisted in the union army and fought at Bull Run, Yorktown, Fredericksburg, and Petersburg, among other places, and was eventually discharged in 1865 with the rank of brevet colonel, "having gone through the war without a scratch". In his spare time, he organized the Fenian Brotherhood in the Army of the Potomac, preparing himself for peacetime, when he was sent to England to buy guns for the Irish Republican Brotherhood."
http://irishbiography.blogspot.com/2010/03/fenian-colonel-hapless-explorer.html
he also appears to have been a key figure in the IRB in his 30's and was involved in the " Fenian Dynamite Campaign"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_dynamite_campaign
Bit more on his role in the failed uprising in Waterford in 1867 here
Seems like the lad liked a fight!
Amazing. What a full life he lived!
Incidentally, he was not a Confederate Colonel. I think you may have upset him by writing that 0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
The most dangerous man in the West was James J.Dolan born in Loughrea.Check the recently published 'The Lincoln County War'by Paul O'Brien.Then you'll also find out that the Governor of New Mexico was right in not pardoning Henry McCarty aka Billy the Kid recently.
...and there was that Jewish-Irish pistolero Chaim 'Jim' Levy...born in Dublin...he plugged a guy that disliked him because he was Irish,not Jewish...
Welome to the history forum Caledone.
If there were ever two fellahs deservin of gittin biographied here it was these fellahs who bravely tackled low down yellah bellied scum( i am a bit biased) .......but lay it on me
Do you have any more detail or links to these Caledone.0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
:D:D 
");document.write(" [SIZE=-1]
Advertisement