William Gregory papers at Emory University, Georgia

[smcarberry]

William Gregory (1762 - 1840), owner of an estate named Coole in Galway and also several other properties in Ireland, served as Civil-Undersecretary of Ireland from 1812 to 1830; his office was in Dublin Castle. The Special Collections Department of Emory University's Woodruff Library, holds a collection of the Gregory papers designated as MS. 624. I will return and spend more time reading a lengthy description of the Gregory collection, which the librarian provided in a modern book not in the library's online catalog. I discontinued reading this when the librarian arrived with my selected box of MS. 624, kept in a closed area of the library. Having seen the extent of the manuscript papers, I need to read more to learn how this collection was brought into the U.S. and became the University's property. I did some Googling today and learned more about the Gregory family but did not see anything about a descendant who relocated to the U.S. Apparently the Undersecretary had two sons (Rev. William and Robert) as well as a daughter who apparently did not marry. Robert had one son, William H. who had one son, William R. who died in WWI unmarried. The only son that I saw attributed to Rev. William was known as H.C. Gregory, who lived in Kilkenny.

As a sidenote to the Gregory manuscript, I learned that the Undersecretary's grandson, William H., was age 65 when he married in 1880 a Galway woman thirty-five years his junior, Augusta Persse, who outlived him by many decades. Although the Gregory family was classically Anglican in perspective, they were Irish speakers, including Lady Gregory whose childhood nanny seems to be responsible for her Irish language learning. Lady Gregory experienced an evolution from a typical girl of aristocratic origin to a great proponent of Irish nationalism. She created literary works supporting nationalism, going so far as to appear in one play in the lead role, and she became a patron of the arts, including supporting and working with W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge. This activism is in sharp contrast to what I saw in MS. 624, the activities of her husband's grandfather, the Undersecretary, described further below.

Here is an outline of my Googling results (remember that online material can vary in accuracy and that my brief review was made only to locate something on a U.S. descendant, for further research and confirmation):

1. Gregory property in Galway as listed in the Landed Estates database of NUI:
"The Coole estate was purchased by Robert Gregory from the Martyns of Tullira in 1768 on his return from India and remained in the Gregory family until 1927. The Kinvara estate was purchased from the Frenches of Duras in 1769. In 1824 Richard Gregory is listed as a resident proprietor. Townlands in the parish of Kilcolgan are recorded as part of the Gregory estate in the 1830s. The agent for this estate was G. Crippage, Galway. A substantial portion of the Gregory estate was sold in the Encumbered Estates Court in the 1850s, including a townland in the parish and barony of Moycullen bought by James Henry Ryan and other substantial portions by Henry Comerford and Henry Hodgson. William Gregory was the owner of over 5000 acres in county Galway in the 1870s. In 1906 Walter R. Gregory held about 200 acres of untenanted demesne lands and a mansion house valued at £60 at Coole. An offer was accepted from the Congested Districts Board for over 3200 acres of tenanted land of the estate after 1909. In June 1927 the 'Tuam Herald' reported that the Land Commission had taken over the estate of Lady Margaret Gregory at Coole."
http://www.landedestates.ie/LandedEstat ... jsp?id=753

Landed Estates database's description of the Emory University manuscript:
Family papers & correspondence, 1775-1956. MSS 624.

Big house gone, out buildings are in use:
http://www.coolepark.ie

2. Holdings of the National Archives, Dublin, for this Gregory family:
http://www.nationalarchives.ie/PDF/HCGregory.pdf

p. 37 Statement (dated 1810) of Wm H.'s title to Galway property
p. 63 reference to Robert Gregory's death in Calcutta (India) 1814
p. 65 genealogies of Gregory family (not provided online, accessible in the NAI collection)

3. Online descriptions of the activities of the Undersecretary's grandson and his wife:
Description of William H Gregory
"William Gregory was born in Dublin...to the family of the British under-secretary but was educated in England...He entered politics in 1842 running as a conservative for the seat representing Dublin. His main role in the next few years was to protect the landed elite in Ireland from the chaos caused by the potato famine. He was unable to win reelection in 1847 and was appointed High Sheriff of Galaway. He suffered heavily from the potato famine but managed to return to Parliament in 1857 as a member of the Liberal-Conservative party representing the district of Galway. During his second term in Parliament he became a champion of the [American] Confederacy. Gregory’s support of the Confederacy can be explained by his opposition to rule by a democratic mob, which is what he thought the United States was. He believed that the breakup of the democratic mob was inevitable and that a Confederate victory would be in the interest of England and the world...Gregory later became Governor of Ceylon and served in that role for five years. After that he became a critic of government policy especially regarding the giving of land to peasants. Gregory died in London in 1892."
Written by a Dickinson University student seeking funding for study of Englishmen's support during Civil War as being different than usually described.
http://blogs.dickinson.edu/archive/?cat=1211&paged=3

Lady Gregory's early life and change in outlook:
"Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (15 March 1852 - 22 May 1932), born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime...
Lady Gregory was born the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish landlord family Persse in Roxborough, County Galway. Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to Standish Hayes O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000-acre...estate, the big house of which was later burnt down during the Irish Civil War. She was educated at home, and her future career was strongly influenced by the family nurse (i.e. nanny), Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker, who introduced the young Isabella Augusta Persse to the history and legends of the local area.
....
Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive reception of the editing of her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory turned her attention to another editorial project. She decided to prepare selections from Sir William Gregory's grandfather's correspondence for publication as Mr Gregory's Letter-Box 1813-30 (1898). This entailed researching Irish history of the period, and one outcome of this work was a shift in her own position from the 'soft' Unionism of her earlier writing on Home Rule to a definite support of Irish nationalism and Republicanism and what she was later to describe as "a dislike and distrust of England".
http://users.skynet.be/fa008211/22nd%20May.html

3. Online sources of publications on or by the Gregory family:

Lady Gregory's book with introduction by W.B.Yeats, online in its entirety
http://www.archive.org/stream/godsfight ... 7/mode/2up

Listing of merchandise by a Limerick bookstore:
Sir William Gregory of Coole: A Biography of an Anglo-Irishman
also books by and on Lady Gregory (nee Augusta Persse)
http://www.iol.ie/~celticbk/olc.htm

Mr. Gregory's Letter-Box - 1813-1830 by [grandson] William [H.] Gregory (elsewhere attributed to Lady Gregory)
books.google.com/books?isbn=1408609444...
Describes estate papers as being in faded ink, on thin copy paper, with early years in beautiful script and later years in cramped writing;
Describes the Under-Secretary's family as two sons and a daughter, with the daughter living in her father's home well into her adult years (thus likely unmarried);
Contents, including a lengthy introduction by William H.:
p. 1 sees no indication of a plot against the liberties of the people by his ancestor's involvement in distributing Secret Service money
pp 7-8 the Undersecretary's description of Clare gentry
pp 212-4 famine of 1822 with causes during preceding years


The five folders (of the eleven folders, total) from Box 17 which I reviewed completely, with notes taken, were :
Folder 2: Petitions and Memorials 1802, 1814, 1834, and one undated
Folder 3: Documents regarding the Roman Catholic Church 1800, 1804
Folder 4: Secret Service Oaths 1820, 1822 [no notes taken]
Folder 5: A civil list of Ireland listing state officers, civil servants, their salaries and tenure
Folder 6: Account of Social Service Money

The 1828 naturalization petition of Charles Bianconi, undersigned by numerous Grand Jurors of the Spring Assizes of Clonmel, was contained in Folder 2, apparently meant to be the one dated 1834. All the papers in Folder 2 seemed to be originals, with some being the type that would normally be filed in a government office. I saw nothing to explain why Gregory had such documents.

Folder 3 held a multi-page document written by one person, quite possibly Gregory. There was no heading, and the contents consisted entirely of descriptions of Catholic church offices/roles (such as curate) and procedures (i.e. requirements established by church canons). The format is very similar to study outlines produced by modern students when learning a subject. So, this seems to be Gregory's "cheat sheet" on Catholicism, for his personal use.

Folder 5 was a book with a paper cover of muted colors in a marblelized pattern and with a soft binding, holding pages of fairly thick paper of the same size as the front and back covers, very roughly
8x7 inches (not measured, just eyeballed). The text was all in handwriting, seemingly done by one person, in beautiful large script, with entries well-spaced on each page, as though prepared in order to be shown to other people, not as personal notes. Every area of Ireland seemed to be treated; the names of officers were provided as well as money amounts, likely their annual salaries. Here are a few noted:
1803 Constable to the Castle of Limerick: St. George Cuffe
1815 Deputy Clerk of the Crown: Thomas Bourchier
1821 Exchequer, Lord Chief: Rt. Hon. Standish O'Grady
1822 Kings Bench, Fourth Justice: Thomas B. Vandeleur
Customs Officers:
Galway: Edward Winder
Limerick: Rt. Hon. Sir William McMahon, Bt.

Folder 6 was a book very similar to the one in Folder 4, except the cover was a different color. The interior handwriting was entirely different, in very small, poor handwriting, of the type that a person uses when keeping the information to oneself, not meant to be legible to anyone unfamiliar with that particular handwriting. Each page had at least twenty entries, in which a monetary sum was given, a date noted, a purpose provided, and the name of at least one person receiving the money. I did not notice sums being given for social events, like dinner parties, as characterized by the grandson in Mr. Gregory's Letterbox. I did see many entries in which individuals received money for having provided “information” with no further elaboration. My very quick eyeballing of entries revealed a single one related to Clare:
20 [month omitted, my error] 1820: Rt. Hon. FitzGerald for William Dillon, for apprehension of Sullivan for the murder of a Girl on the Shannon. [£ or s.] 20

What occurs to me is that, aside from some anomalous documents like the Bianconi petition, the contents of MS. 624 consist of Gregory's personal copies of lists elsewhere maintained on file in a government office, with a few being the sort that an official needed to keep confidential, thus in his own custody when office staff could not be trusted to keep documents secure. The further question, beyond the propriety of Gregory's keeping these documents, is whether these now are the only ones of their type in existence after the destruction of so many government documents and files during Dublin events leading up to establishment of the republic.

Sharon Carberry
Georgia USA

[smcarberry]

For those wishing to read more on this family.

William, the Undersecretary:
"...William Gregory, was born in 1762, the son of Robert Gregory, Chairman of the East India Company and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was made Sheriff of Co. Galway in March 1799 and was Secretary to the Inland Navigation Board between 1801 and 1811. He was also returned as part
of the rearrangement of the Irish House of Commons immediately before the Act of Union and sat in Parliament for Portarlington for only the last six months of its existence. A fluent Irish speaker, he is best remembered, however, as one of the longest-serving Under-Secretaries in Dublin Castle, from 1812 to 1831, and as the trusted adviser of successive Viceroys and Chief Secretaries. Indeed, Gregory was described by Daniel O'Connell, at this time, as the real ruler of Ireland. Gregory's father had been the friend of famous men of a liberal persuasion such as Fox, Rockingham and Burke and there can be little doubt that the younger Gregory inherited these sympathies. He refused a baronetcy in 1827, retired from public life in 1831 and died in 1840."
British source for Gregory correspondance: Talbot/Gregory Papers of PRONI (No. Ireland)
"The collection comprises 139 letters, July 1819-July 1835, consisting of
correspondence between Sir Charles Chetwynd, second Earl Talbot of Hensol, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1817-1821, and William Gregory, long-serving Under-Secretary in Dublin Castle, 1812-1831."
http://www.proni.gov.uk/introduction__t ... _d4100.pdf

PRONI's description of the Talbot/Gregoy collection, closed to general access, prior request needed:
http://www.rascal.ac.uk/collection/?ff= ... =481&ff=no


William H. Gregory, husband of Lady Augusta, son of Robert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Gregory

Being Ireland: Lady Gregory in Catherine Ni Houlihan
master's thesis by Catherine O'Malley Bell, drama student
etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Bell%20Caehlin.pdf?osu1211912530

North Caroline (USA) university's professor's article, reproduced in Aughty publication:
see p. 4 for exchanges between members of the Ladies' Land League;
Lady G was middle of 16 children, plain in appearance and raised to be self-effacing, yet became an actress and author, plus patron of the arts
http://www.aughty.org/pdf/emigrants_notebook.pdf

[smcarberry]

In my return visit to the Woodruff Library yesterday, I obtained from the manuscripts collection librarian a photocopy of an article by Ronald Schuchard for a 1986 edition of "Ex Libris" circulated to an organization named Friends of the Emory University Libraries. The article is entitled "The Lady Gregory-Yeats Collections at Emory University" and provides the provenance of the William Gregory papers that I had viewed in August. It appears that the larger collection known as the William Gregory papers was acquired by Emory in order to have original materials of Yeats, such as the many first editions of his works that he gave to his benefactor Lady Gregory. In literary circles, this is highly desirable and well worth the purchase price. This type of material is the subject of continual searches that are part of the duties of special collections librarians, as indicated in this article, p.14:

"A vigilant staff at the Robert W. Woodruff Library daily keep an eye on catalogues and auction announcements for desiderata [things that are desired]..."

In particular, page one of the article describes the hunt for Yeats material:

"...in that year [1979], the library vigorously began the mission by acquiring the personal collection of Richard Ellmann (who is now Woodruff Professor of English at Emory) and much of Lady Gregory's personal collection of books and manuscripts presented to her by Yeats."

The footnote to that sentence states that many of the items described in the Schuchard article were purchased at auction, as further described in a particular auction house's catalogue named Sotheby's Catalogue of Valuable Autograph letters, Literary Manuscripts and Historical Documents.

So, the focus of the Emory University's acquisition was Yeats material and the originals of Irish governmental records are not considered half as valuable. That was also evident when I took a few photographs yesterday, as the librarian informed me that the papers I wished to shoot were all right but the Lady Gregory material was off limits.

posted by Sharon Carberry

[smcarberry]

Re:
(1) Charles Bianconi request for Irish naturalization, apparently made 1828 although the William Gregory collection indexes this as 1832
and
(2) William Vesey Fitzgerald correspondence

(1):
I did my very best with my digital camera, a Kodak purchased this year. I cannot post my two images (front and back of the paper) here due to my Kodak software's using the wrong kind of e-file for it. My images in their current state do not show individual words, although some magnification software might do that. My JPEG files provide some idea of what the Bianconi naturalization petition looks like. The group of signatures at the bottom of the second page are the Tipperary residents attesting to advisability of granting citizenship to Bianconi based on their personal knowledge of him for many years. Only one of those signatures, that of James Scully, was legible to my eyes.

(2):
I also viewed some letters from William Vesey Fitzgerald, likely the Clare estate owner, to William Gregory in the year 1814.
The Emory U. collection has many boxes of such correspondence from a half-dozen such men, all likely men of great influence at the time. I guess it is a plus that one of them was someone with Clare roots and knowledge, so that Gregory had input bearing on Clare life (Gregory being the in-situ de facto ruler of Ireland) although what I could read seems like the two men discussed anything but local circumstances. Unfortunately, there is no indexing of the boxes to show which contain the Fitzgerald letters. I happened across the 1814 ones very quickly but found Fitzgerald's handwriting to be illegible except for an occasional word. I have JPEG images of two pages of one such letter, which I can provide to anyone with a real interest in this correspondence. The images are even less legible.

I can send my photo files directly to anyone wishing to view those; just let me know by private message via this Forum (go the the members section, first page, and click on my name).

Sharon Carberry