An irish Volunteer and former deputy mayor of New York

jamesdiver

This may be more relevant to the history section, but thought I'd try pick your brains first.


I'm reading up about Sean P. Keating, who fought in the 4th Cork Brigade before being interned. The wikipedia article is quite informative;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_P._Keating

My query is thus. I'm searching through the excellent Bureau of Military History witness statements.

www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie

Any search for 'keating' brings up a few mentions of others, but fails to find anything about Sean P. Keating. There also seems to be another Sean Keating who was mentioned as an artist. I am wondering if he could have used a different spelling, or Gaelic version, or perhaps he was simply forgotten during internment. I know he subsequently swithed to antitreaty during the civil war.

I'd love to find some first hand accounts of him during his service. So any help will be much appreciated.

tac foley

jamesdiver wrote: »

This may be more relevant to the history section, but thought I'd try pick your brains first.


I'm reading up about Sean P. Keating, who fought in the 4th Cork Brigade before being interned. The wikipedia article is quite informative;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_P._Keating

My query is thus. I'm searching through the excellent Bureau of Military History witness statements.

www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie

Any search for 'keating' brings up a few mentions of others, but fails to find anything about Sean P. Keating. There also seems to be another Sean Keating who was mentioned as an artist. I am wondering if he could have used a different spelling, or Gaelic version, or perhaps he was simply forgotten during internment. I know he subsequently swithed to antitreaty during the civil war.

I'd love to find some first hand accounts of him during his service. So any help will be much appreciated.

It is my understanding that the anti-treaty side kept no formal military records during the civil war. The only material I've ever read purtaining to that event from the anti-treaty POV is anecdotal, rather than archival. At that time, military activity per se was being carried out by the lawful government of the country against people who would now be called terrorists and/or rebels.

You might have to increase the area of the trawl into this area, rather than rely on any official source.

tac

jamesdiver

Thanks Tac. I'd hoped there might be something in it from before the civil war. Maybe even something about his beating and internment. Reading through the witness statements there are many mentions of similar situations. I thought even a name might pop up.

tac foley

Well, I tried using the correct spelling of his name - SeÁn - and got about 414,000 results.

Have you tried again?

tac

jamesdiver

Rookie question, but when I add the 'fada', the results switch to:

"Seán Keating",

becomes

"seán keating"

tac foley

Ah, the fada is built-in to my keyboard as a macro - maybe that is the deal-breaker here.

However, having second-thoughts, you DID actually post 'Seán', didn't you, or am I imagining it?

tac

jamesdiver

Thanks Tac. I tried Seán and Sean. I may just email the archive and ask them to look into it.
I think the problem is there was a second Seán Keating, who painted various war related pieces at the time and there is alot of references to him.