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Matty Maher: A Legend

14 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by Janet Maher in Famous Irish Individual, In Memoriam, Kilkenny Mahers, Matty Maher, McSorley's

≈ 2 Comments

“It’s not what you become in life but what you overcome.” (Matty Maher)

Bold in Danger, Cherished gift from a genealogy friend, ©2013 C.O’Donnell

The past year has been one of immense transition on levels beyond what any of us might have imagined. We continue to reel from the daily news in this ecological and political whirlwind. Many souls have left the planet before the fan regulating the health of humankind has been splattered beyond repair.

As my husband and I prepare to head north for the celebration of life for the passing of yet another dear longtime friend, I am grateful that my brother alerted me to the passing of one of the most legendary Mahers — Matty Maher (Matthew Dennis), owner of the 166 year old McSorley’s Old Ale House in New York City. New to Maher’s legend myself, articles immediately available from a quick search intrigued me, and Matty was easy to spot in photos via his undeniable Maher eyes! Learning about him has been a welcome distraction, and I cheer him from afar while his friends and family celebrate the great man at his funeral events today.

The story of Matty Maher brought back memories of the seventies and my first venture into New York City as a tentative adult with art peers on a field trip from college. In recommending places to visit, our teachers told us that by the end of the afternoon they could be found at a very cool Irish pub – McSorley’s – and we were welcome to stop by. Whether or not they knew that women were not yet (or only barely recently) welcome, at that point in time the mere thought was beyond possible for me. Shy as I was to even speak to my seemingly all powerful and quite intimidating male teachers in class, the odds of my showing up there were nil, bars not yet being part of my universe. The trip was wonderful, nonetheless, and through the years New York, and the world itself, became ever smaller and less terrifying to wander through as I have claimed various parts as homes along the way. The next time I’m in NYC I’ll be sure to have a pint in honor of this very important Maher at New York’s oldest bar (established in 1854). Maybe I’ll even get to meet and toast a Sláinte to one of his five daughters.

Several articles (linked here) round out the story of a man who was deeply loved over many decades and whose life was directed as if by the angels to immigrate from his Threecastles, Kilkenny, homeland and build a charmed life in America. (Of particular note is an essay from Kilkenny that includes a great photo of Matty Maher and a timeline history of McSorley’s.) Maher’s work from 1964 onward ultimately transformed a simple beer bar into a destination. His former employees shared loving memories of him, recalling his generosity of spirit. Michael Brannigan explained, “People’d always ask him, ‘You own the bar?’ ”…“He’d say, ‘No, you own the bar.’ The customers own it.”

My brother described McSorley’s as “a museum really…Every inch of the place is covered in pictures…and there’s only beer and only two choices—black or tan—and crackers and cheese and onions…that’s it…and shoes alleged of Joe Kennedy.” New York Times and New Yorker Magazine articles described a sawdusted floor and particulars among the treasure trove of memorabilia, including a collection of “holy relics” in the form of turkey wishbones left behind on an ancient chandelier by soldiers in World War I to safeguard their return before heading off to battle. According to Maher, the bones came to represent those who were lost in the war and thus treated reverentially. More were added in honor of individuals in relatively recent conflicts. For artists and writers in the fifties and sixties John McSorley’s “The Old House at Home” must have been akin to the Cedar Street Tavern, which was originally in Greenwich Village. John Sloan depicted a scene inside McSorley’s in a painting that had been exhibited in the Armory Show of 1913.

As the energy of this Matthew Maher, son of one other Patrick Maher, joins all that is good in the universe and those who knew him are filled with the joy of having shared his life, may the energy of our own friend, Noah Totten, find and join his like-energy, and may our world be strengthened by this powerful addition of spirit. “May it be its own force field / And dwell uniquely / Between the heart and the light.” (John O’Donohue)

[Update: 16 January 2020 — See @IrishTimesNews on Instagram for a great photograph by Lauren Crothers that captured the honor canopy of raised hurling sticks as pallbearers carried the great man’s coffin. The funeral of Matty Maher took place at Holy Trinity Church, Whitestone, New York.]

CITATIONS:

Dan Barry, The New York Times, “Dust Is Gone Above the Bar, But A Legend Still Dangles,” April 6, 2011

Chang, Sophia, Gothamist, “Longtime McSorley’s Owner Has Died, Bar Will Stay In the Family, ” January 13, 2020

Sean Keen, Kilkenny People, “Matty Maher Passed Away This Morning With His Family By His Side, Wonderful Kilkenny man who owned McSorleys in New York has passed away, Kilkenny and Irish People in New York Lose A Great Friend,” January 11, 2020

Joseph Mitchell, The New Yorker, ‘The Old House at Home,” April 14, 1940

McSorley’s Old Ale House, https://mcsorleysoldalehouse.nyc/

New York Historical Society Museum & Library, “The Armory Show at 100,” McSorley’s Bar, 1912

Elizabeth Nix, History Stories, “Why Were American Soldiers in WWI Called Doughboys?,” September 28, 2018

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings, Doubleday, 2008, pg. 18

Rikki Reyna and Clayton Guse, New York Daily News, “‘He was an absolute legend’: Owner of 166-year-old McSorley’s Old Ale House dies at 80,” January 12, 2020

Sam Roberts, The New York Times, “Matty Maher, an Institution at an Institution, McSorley’s, Dies at 80,” January 13, 2020

Lori Zimmer, Art Nerd New York | Los Angeles, “Cedar Tavern,” July 31, 2013

©2020 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ni Mheachair

Ballyvaughan.4 – Wrapping Up

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by Janet Maher in Art in Ireland, Famous Irish Individual, Ireland Images

≈ 8 Comments

Graphite Drawings, Irish Lace ©2016 Janet Maher

Graphite Drawings, Irish Lace ©2016 Janet Maher

Time to say goodbye to my Ballyvaughan community and the Burren, taking so many grateful memories with me into the last leg of this Ireland journey. My very heavy return box is almost taped up to ship back tomorrow, packing having become a relatively simplified process after so much adventuring here.

Several works have come out of this stay: one completed (having brought the interior pieces with me to be reworked and torn into pages), a box for it to be made back home; one completed mock-up for another book to be made at home; one plan for another book to be made at home; images and recording for a video installation piece to be made at home; the continuation of an ongoing project (Mapping the Invisible) with more progress made; and — a new series begun from this experience. I include here a shot from the studio wall of two of three graphite drawings on vellum (of which there will be more) that will go through a process of wax transfer over photographs that I have taken throughout this stay. The photographs will be chosen from among the at least 100 versions of palimpsests of decaying/paint-peeling walls. Why I chose to draw Irish crochet lace has to do with many things. One is that it was a highly-skilled craft taught to young girls and women in order to provide some means of income during years of nineteenth century starvation.

Yesterday there was a lecture at the college by reknowned model, props and prosthetics maker for major international films — Mark Maher. His presentation and props were fascinating. Among the pieces he handed around for everyone to examine were an actual copy of a cast of David Bowie’s face and the severed head of a man that looked and felt all-too-queasingly-real. Amazing what can be achieved with silicone, paint and hours of painstaking creative labor!

Also yesterday, I received an email requesting me to enter a show that I did not get into last year, the person saying that she still remembers my pieces and recommends that I enter given that there is a different judge this year. One never knows, it may be another wasted entry fee, but it would be lovely to be able to show there…

Last adventure a few mornings ago, a visit to Dysert O’Dea, recommended to me by my new friend who returned to all things home last week. Well worth the trip. Clan O’Dea has been in continuous hold of this ancient well-restored castle in an area that includes a beautiful demolished church and round tower, high stone, ring forts and the gamet. Twenty-five remains are available to see as long as one’s hiking legs hold out.

Perhaps before the day is through I will visit dear Flaggy Shore one more time. Tonight I’ll also visit O’Lóclainn’s to say goodbye to Margaret and where I’ll meet my Johns Hopkins friend who will be back from her class’s field trip to Dublin and tell me all about it.

detailDysertODeasmcprt

Detail, Desert O’Dea Monastery ©2016 Janet Maher

©2016 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ni Mheachair

The Irish of Waterbury!

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Janet Maher in Connecticut, Connecticut Irish, Early Irish Catholics in Connecticut, Famous Irish Individual, Old Saint Joseph Cemetery, Waterbury

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Connecticut, Early Irish History, Irish Catholic History, Irish in Connecticut, Irish in Waterbury

flagB&Wcprt I am very happy to announce that I am writing a new book about the Irish of Waterbury! My partner will be John Wiehn, the director of the Prospect Library in Connecticut. Our work will be published by The History Press in their American Heritage series, with a proposed release date of Saint Patrick’s Day, next year. John and I will be doing a scanning session this coming Monday, May 6, at the Ancient Order of Hibernians Hall in Waterbury from 3 to 7 pm. Come to 91 Golden Hill Street between those hours if you are interested in being part of our project. We are seeking your great images and stories about your Irish and Irish-American ancestors who found their way to the former Brass Capital of the World and made their mark upon it!

©2014 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ni Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Janet Maher in Famous Irish Individual, History, Irish Potato Famine, New Haven Irish Catholic Immigrants

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Irish Catholic History, United Irishmen

When we seek to learn of our ancestors’ lives in Ireland, we need to particularly consider when they emigrated. Had they been able to choose to leave, to purchase their own passage and sail as one might today? Had they given up or sold off their holdings in Ireland to their landlord or to a relative, offering more stability for those they left behind? Had there only been enough property for one sibling to inherit, necessitating immigration or upwardly-mobile marriages for the rest? Had they been involved in some form of rebellious activity that caused them to keep low profiles and try to avoid arrest? Did they intentionally cover their tracks so as not to be found? Had they been forced to leave their homes, their counties, Ireland herself? Were they indentured servants, required to work for seven years to secure their freedom in America? Had they been part of the overcrowded “coffin ships” of the starvation years, or might they have stowed away secretly on a vessel that traveled across the ocean for another purpose? Had a party been held for them before they left, or had they quietly slipped away from their neighbors in the dead of night?

Until we learn any of these answers we may continue to wonder. Many of our ancestors seemed to simply appear at some point in time in some place, and it is only through the story of their descendents—us—that we begin to make our own hypotheses backwards in time.

There had been shortages of food in 1740-1741 Ireland (“the forgotten famine”) and crop failures in the latter part of the nineteenth century, including a “mini-famine” in 1879 (An Gorta Beag) that was concentrated on the west coast. Although these did not cause the vast number of deaths as had occurred between 1845-1847, they did cause families to relocate to more urban situations in Ireland and to emigrate in large numbers. Many had begun to leave in the 1840’s, if they could, and there was a deluge of immigrations in the 1850’s, of those who had survived the previous decade. The latter part of the nineteenth century seemed to have brought in another large wave of Irish immigrants to New Haven County, Connecticut, where there were many factory jobs to be had, a vast improvement upon the backbreaking labor that the immigrants of the 1820s provided.

For those Irish Catholics who arrived in Connecticut just before the most dire years of the potato blight, settling into established Congregationalist towns seemingly without difficulty, other sets of questions might be raised. Had some been middle-men favored enough to have been landlords themselves? Had the predominance of Anglo-Irish surnames in early nineteenth century New Haven, Waterbury and Naugatuck, Connecticut, pointed to some form of familial stability through fortuitous marriages that had occurred in Ireland? Had, for example, my great great grandmother Butler and her family made it financially possible for my great great grandfather Meagher to emigrate and for their youngest child to leave a fortune that is still awarded annually as a scholarship? While we may never learn the true answers to such questions, especially where records no longer exist, it may at least be assumed that ancestors who first appeared in the census of 1850 or later had likely survived starvation years in Ireland in some form.

Recently a particular book became helpful to me in considering the lives of the later Irish settlers in America. Several years back I had started reading Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa’s Rossa’s Recollections 1838 to 1898 Memoirs of an Irish Revolutionary, but I found it to be too disjointed to follow and had to put it down. I needed instead to do more research and better understand the times in which he lived and the events about which he spoke. Rossa’s Recollections began as a collection of articles he published in his newspaper, the United Irishmen, between 1896 and 1898, while living in New York. The book found me again when I could more fully appreciate it.

While this blog has been devoted to things Maher, behind the scenes I have also continually worked to flesh out the rest of my family and all our other 100% Irish surnames—including O’Donovan. This is what led me to my bookshelf to pick Rossa’s Recollections back up. So, although this first post of the year is about an O’Donovan, I feel that it could stand as a parallel example extending to the transplantations of the O’Meachairs from Ikerrin—and any number of old Irish families from their original sites—throughout other parts of Ireland and the world.

The overarching emigration story is, of course, equivalent to that of all immigrants, and the particulars in relation to Ireland are equivalent to that of so many other countries that have been aggressively colonized by others. That story continues to be played out globally, century after century. Although I don’t mean to dwell on history that others have long sought to put behind them, as a relative newcomer to an active awareness of my ancestors’ roots, I find that I cannot help but continue to pick at the scab in order to try to understand things better for myself.

O’Donovan Rossa and his family survived what he refused to call The Great Famine and he, like so many early families with old Gaelic roots, held a hatred for the “plunderers of his land and race” throughout his lifetime. His book left no holes barred in these regards. Rossa was thirteen in 1845, the first year of the potato blight in which the Irish were forced to continue to supply England with the harvests they raised, even as their own source of sustenance vanished. Rossa’s uncle and family had sold their property and left for America four years earlier, and they gradually brought the rest of the family over beginning in 1847, after Rossa’s father had died and his family had been evicted from their home. Within a year one brother was taken in by his aunt’s family in another area of Ireland; another brother, already in America, sent for his mother, brother, and sister to emigrate there, and Rossa remained alone in Skibbereen, where he lived with another family in one of the poorest parishes in southern Ireland.

A living link between old Ireland and individuals he knew and to whom he was related in America, Rossa filled his Recollections with first-hand memories of a pivotal period, when the hearts of families were equally stretched between both shores of the Atlantic Ocean. He recalled the mourning and wailing that accompanied the goodbyes when a family member spent their last night in Ireland before emigration, particularly on the day of his own family’s departure. While the children could begin new lives in a new world, Rossa explained that for the elders it was much more difficult away from anyone they knew, akin to trying to transplant a fully grown tree and expecting it to thrive. We should keep this in mind regarding our own oldest ancestors, many of whom may not have been able to read, write or even speak English.

Rossa held distain for the Irish who gave up their (and England’s) native religion in order to survive and prosper. Rossa’s family, also like so many others, took pride in not having “taken the soup,” and were assured by their parish priest that there was honor in giving up all that one owned rather than giving up one’s faith. The family losses, like premature deaths, experienced through emigration were also felt by mothers who lost their sons to soldiers who came into the towns to take young Irish boys as recruits for the English army. Others joined American armies and famously populated many of the regiments during America’s own colonization efforts, her fight with England, and during her Civil War. Rossa’s brother was in the Sixty-Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment; another served on a warship; and his brother-in-law was in the Sixty-Ninth Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Rossa took a different route—he became one of the first members of the most famous of the historic secret societies formed with the intention of freeing Ireland from English rule. He recalled his own contribution of the name, the Phoenix National and Literary Society, that began about 1856 and had about forty members. (Rossa liked the association with the mythical bird that would rise from the ashes of a previous one.) Two years later, James Stephens arrived in Skibbereen to recruit Phoenix Society members into his own Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. He carried a letter of introduction from James O’Mahoney to one of the members, and Stephens first initiated Dan McCartie. McCartie initiated Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa the next day, who then initiated Morty Moynahan, and on the movement grew, spreading throughout Ireland and into America as the Fenians.

While there is more to say about this vein of the recollections, I would rather turn to another aspect that I found to be very interesting—genealogy. The great Irish scholar of Irish language and professor at Trinity College, John O’Donovan, helped O’Donovan Rossa untangle some of his own family history. Originally from Rossmore, the parish of Clonoulty, in south Tipperary, Rossa’s family’s lands were taken and the family had to move several times until they finally found a place in which they could settle. This was in Ross Carberry, County Cork. His great grandfather, Donacha Rossa, had six sons, and these six family lines extended far and wide throughout southern Ireland and into America. Several of Rossa’s stories underscoring his own family connections struck home to me, as I continue to seek linkages between various extended points of my own research to others’ and between people who settled in the same places through what I perceive as wave migrations. (I understand this phrase to mean the continual bringing over of people that they knew and were related to in Ireland, to settle in the same vicinity that they did, initially.) Many of us very likely have relatives now in disparate places who live by surnames about which we have no knowledge, but whose ancestry derives from the same set of roots in Ireland.

Forbidden by copyright to quote from Rossa’s book, which would lead me to writing much more, I can only recommend that others read it, and I now have happily added it to my Pinterest board of recommended Novels and Memoirs About Ireland. Rossa’s Recollections may be read online through Open Library and on Google Books and purchased through several venues, including Amazon. My copy was published by the Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press, 2004.

His book. O’Donovan Rossa’s Prison Life: Six Years in Six English Prisons, may be read online on Internet Archive and as a Google Ebook.

For more information about Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa see the following links:

• New York Times Obituary, June 30, 1915

• Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin

• Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

• Patrick Pearse’s Graveside Oration of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

• Oration at the graveside of O’Donovan Rossa by P.H. Pearse

• Fenian Brotherhood and O’Donovan Rossa

• 88 Years Ago: O’Donovan Rossa, uncompromising Fenian, dies in New York

• The United Irishmen and the Convention of 1880

• Photo from O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral

• Republican Sinn Féin Cork City and County

• O’Donovan Rossa GAC Magherafelt

©2014 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ni Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

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