Fr. Patrick Quaid

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Sduddy
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Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by Sduddy » Thu Feb 03, 2022 3:03 pm

This posting arises from a mention of an article on Fr. Quaid made by Sharon Carberry in the course of her reply on the subject of Carrigaholt registers: http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtop ... 262#p14262

Hi Sharon

I remember you mentioning that you were embarking on writing an article on Fr. Quaid and it’s good to hear that you now feel you have enough data for one. I think it is bound to be interesting, especially as he was so active in the 1850s, a decade we hear very little about. It is the cinderella decade in 19th century Ireland; the general histories skip right over it, going from Young Ireland, in the late 1840s, to the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the late 1850s. We need to get a bit more on the 1850s.
I’m guessing you have combed the Irish newspapers for any information they have to offer. I made a few notes from the Clare Journal when I was subscribing to the British Newspaper Archives last year, but I suspect that you have made the same notes yourself. The notes I made show him defending Frs. Conway and Ryan (The Queen v Conway and Ryan got huge coverage in the papers), and show his prominence in the Tenant League in Co. Clare, and show his support of the erection of a monument to Daniel O’Connell in Ennis.
Sharon, I don’t know why you feel you should compare Fr. Quaid to other priests, but Fr. Jeremiah Vaughan comes to mind as someone who would have been equally strong and active at that time, and very informed on current affairs, as this letter (only partially transcribed) shows:

Clare Journal, Mon 1 May 1854 (page 2)
Irish Tenant League. A general meeting of the council of the Irish Tenant League was held Tuesday at the Council Rooms, Beresford-place, Dublin, to hear the report of the tenant right members as to proceedings in parliament to take council with the friends of the cause throughout the country, and also to regulate the general business of the League. The usual members were in attendance including the Rev. P. Quaid, P.P. of O’Callaghan’s Mills in this county. A number of letters were read from persons in various parts of the country expressive of sympathy with the movement including one from the Rev. J. Vaughan, P.P. of Ruan, as follows:-
Ruan, Corofin, Co. Clare, April 24, 1854.
“My Dear Sir – I am in receipt of your communication of the last ten days, and would have attended the meeting tomorrow had I any assurance the leading members would adopt for the future a more vigorous course of tenant agitation. The present desultory system will not do. I stated to you already, at a meeting held last November, that the question should be weekly discussed, and in connection with it the wrongs of every day occurrence of the tenants on the plan of the Catholic and Repeal Associations.
I am greatly surprised that such able, deep-thinking men as Messrs. Lucas, Duffy, and Moore don’t see how evidently attributable to this is the failure of the tenant right agitation.
I have no hesitation in asserting that it would be vastly better for the interests of Ireland, religiously, socially, and politically, if these men had never entered the English senate, but had laboured at home to put a soul into Ireland. What are they with their few faithful adherents able to accomplish? They cannot protect the Catholic church from being daily and hourly assaulted. God will protect His church, no matter who is against her. [more]
J. Vaughan, P.P. Ruan and Dysart.
Sheila

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Thu Feb 03, 2022 6:04 pm

First, thanks for the observation and letter content regarding Fr. Vaughan.

As to why I am looking for material to round out the Quaid context, I want to be informative and also adhere to the usual historical requirement of showing how the target person fit into his community and era. With the articles I have on hand, I can outline his role within his parish and East Clare of the 1840s-1870s, but, not having studied Irish history as an academic subject, it is daunting to accurately place him in his clerical community and the activist/nationalist spectrum.

Nonetheless, in view of Fr. Q's larger-than-life presence in East Clare while walking a tightrope between exposing injustices of the system and yet socializing with well-to-do beneficiaries of that system, there is a need to start the discussion on what a priest could accomplish in that time period, and Fr/Rev. Q is a great example. There are some aspects of his life that we will never know, such as why he left his home county of Limerick and a nice position in Limerick city to labor in the wilds of East Clare. My article will at least show how he went about his mission and can preserve the outlines of a remarkable career. His celebrity in fact resulted in an embarrassing incident that apparently influenced him to seek absolute anonymity in his last years. The story is too good to lose and now I have enough of it to at least say something.

Sduddy
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by Sduddy » Sat Feb 05, 2022 12:30 pm

Hi Sharon

If I understand you rightly, you want to set the scene, but I would encourage you to allow your account of Fr. Quaid, itself, to set the scene. Just now, I looked at last year’s issue of The Other Clare (just one of the journals you might be considering), and read again an article entitled “Tom and Paddy Molohan Forgotten Pioneers of the GAA, ” by Jim Molohan, and saw that, apart from a scene-setting quotation at the beginning*, the writer plunges straight into the lives of the Molohan brothers. Then I looked at the 2020 issue and read two articles on individual people, one entitled “Maoileachlainn Ó Comhraí, Deartháir le hEoghan, c1788-1824,” by Eilís Ní Dheá; the other entitled “Cornelius McDermott, Cooraclare National School, 1846-1860,” by Marilyn Kelly, and, again, the writers do not try to set the scene to any great extent; instead, all three writers allow the story of the lives of their subjects to give us an idea of the times they lived through. In the last case, the opening line is “I first heard the name Conor McDermott when I finally managed to get to Ireland,” which I think is a very engaging first line (as Kingsley Amis once said, a good story begins with “a shot rang out”). The writer then tells us what her research has revealed about Cornelius’s life, and, in the course of that, she gives us just enough of the background history to make it intelligible.
I have a great weakness for writers who try to engage the general reader, but I acknowledge that writers must be themselves and not try to adopt the style of another writer. Whatever your style of writing, start writing - I, for one, am looking forward to reading your article.
*
'Four years ago five persons might have been seen playing what appeared to be an entirely new game on a Saturday afternoon on the Polo Ground, Phoenix Park, in the presence of half a dozen spectators … Out of so small a beginning did the Metropolitan Hurling Club grow; and out of the Metropolitan Hurling Club sprang the Gaelic Athletic Association, with a vigour that carried the national spirit by storm’ (The Flag of Ireland, 22 May 1886).
People (in general), who are interested in the Ireland of the 1850s, will find a good description in the last chapter of The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony 1845-1852, by Ciarán Ó Murchadha, entitled “The Murdered Sleeping Silently: Aftermath,” in which the writer gives a brief account of the post-famine rise of the Catholic Church in Ireland. On page 187, he writes of the new devotional orthodoxy emanating from Rome in the wake of the Synod of Thurles (1850): “Known to historians under the collective description of the Devotional Revolution, these developments were embraced by the laity with an enthusiasm that was startling even to their promoters. In parish after parish missions became the occasions of great celebration, and membership of the new devotional vehicles of confraternity and sodality enormously valued.” He explains that this new trend filled a void left by the tearing apart, by famine and emigration, of old religious customs and usages. He goes on to say “Not surprisingly in the immediate post-Famine period, the influence of the Catholic Church rose to unprecedented levels, the respect accorded to its clergy increasing to little short of veneration.”

Sheila

Edited to fix typo (date of Flag of Ireland piece was 1886 - not 1866)
Last edited by Sduddy on Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Sun Feb 06, 2022 9:18 am

Such good ideas, Sheila. Your willingness to reach into your considerable reading background and illustrate your thoughts with examples is exceptional and appreciated. Now I have some grasp of how others approach the task. Almost everyone else has more of a literary flair that I can hope to approximate (i.e., fake). My writing skills were developed to deliver concise, clear explanations of law to busy judges -- no room for literary flair or engaging a reader. While my work will be accurate, it likely will be dull. Leaves me in awe of those who can surpass that level and go on to be memorable. However, just talking about the project is helpful, and I will go forward with an ambition to deliver an article that will both inform and draw the reader into that era.

pwaldron
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by pwaldron » Mon Feb 07, 2022 2:53 am

Sharon

You do not appear to have mentioned Fr. Ignatius Murphy's monumental three-volume History of the Diocese of Killaloe, which I think provides the best background for any study of a 19th century priest of the diocese.

Other Clare priests that come to mind for their public campaigning and pastoral work around famine times include Fr. Timothy Kelly, Fr. Michael Meehan, Fr. Malachy Duggan and Fr. Thomas Moloney, all in the west of the county. Then there was Fr. Patrick White, a sympathiser with the Fenians at the time of the 1867 rising, and the many priests (and bishops) who were politically active during the 1916-23 period.

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Mon Feb 07, 2022 9:58 am

Excellent considerations and welcome suggestions, Paddy. As the outline of the article gels in my mind, I will have all these comments to draw upon. I want to produce something that is useful and don't want to leave the reader wondering if I had sufficiently thought out an aspect touched upon. Sometimes reading the footnotes is just as compelling (and helpful) as the main points in an article. Should be enough room to include references to context even if I can't fit everything into the main body of the text. Likewise, a suggested bibliography can be a nice addition to the subject. So keep those recommendations coming, even though you suspect that I have started down a specific path on this.

Some people plan for a "trip of a lifetime" but for me this will be the article of a lifetime.

Sduddy
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by Sduddy » Tue Feb 08, 2022 11:05 am

Hi Sharon

I looked at Fr. Patrick White’s history of Clare and at Chapter XXVIII (from 1851 to 1893). He gives only 15 pages to that period, which is very little, and he is sparing in his account of the various events. But I think it is interesting that he gives no space at all to the Tenant League: https://archive.org/details/historyofcl ... ew=theater - not even a passing mention.

Sharon, in your posting on the topic of the Carrigaholt Registers, you say that you now have enough data for your article on Rev Patrick Quaid, (before adding that you feel you don’t have a sense of how his level of activism compares to other priests), so I will probably be taking coals to Newcastle if I mention a posting I made in the course of the thread on Michael G. Considine, but here it is anyway:
I think that he [Considine] was probably a supporter of the Tenant Rights League when it was founded in 1850, and also of the Catholic Defence Association (often called the Brigade and sometimes called the “Pope’s Brigade"). The League and the Brigade found some common causes and, in order to promote those causes, formed a group of MPs called the Irish Independent party. I’ve been reading again Fr. Ignatius Murphy’s article, “Tenant Rights in County Clare in the 1850s”, in The Other Clare, Vol. 12 (1988). Murphy says that, between mid 1850 and early 1852, large meetings in favour of tenant right were held throughout Clare but particularly in the eastern half of the county. The first big meeting was held in Broadford at the end of June 1850 and Murphy quotes the Limerick Reporter and Tipperary Vindicator, 2 July 1850, as saying that the numbers attending reached ten thousand. He says that during the following two years similar meetings were held in Ennis, Feakle, Quin, Kilrush, Mountshannon and probably elsewhere as well. He describes the meeting of the Tenant League, which was held in the square in Ennis outside the old courthouse, in October 1850 (I feel quite sure that Michael Considine was there):

["]The scene in the Square at Ennis in front of the old court-house (on the site now occupied by the O’Connell Monument) was a colourful one. The banners of the victuallers, the shoemakers, the carpenters, the tailors and other tradesmen of Ennis were hanging on the walls behind the platform. The Square and adjoining streets were thronged with men while “numbers of the fair sex filled the windows of the adjoining houses, and were not the least attentive listeners to the eloquent speakers”. Finally, among those who took vantage points at the windows of the old court-house were some policemen, “sent there for the purpose of hearing and reporting if any illegal or treasonable doctrines were propounded”. Although there were some heavy showers during the speeches the crowd remained until the very end.
Stephen J. Meaney, one of the secretaries of the meeting, commented on the significance of the occasion: “To succeed for Ireland Irishmen must have a united will – a united purpose – a united determination. Already we can boast of a move in the right direction. Our platform today affords evidence of it. Side by side – embarked in the same great cause – taking one another by the hand in cordial brotherhood, we have here the Presbyterian Minister and the Catholic Priest. We have on the platform two Presbyterian Ministers from what we have been accustomed to designate the Black North; they have come to fraternise with you their countrymen in the Sunny South, and to do battle with you in the same ranks for Ireland. Give them [Rev. Mr. Black, Rev. Mr. Rentoul] the welcome they deserve….” (note 11: Limerick Reporter and Tipperary Vindicator, 1 Nov. 1850)["]

This article by Murphy gives a good account of the lead up to the formation of the Tenant League, the important parts played by Fr. Sheehy and Fr. Quaid and the events of the 1852 election, but only gives a short paragraph to the collapse of the movement.
It was this collapse that led to Ireland being described as dead (for instance, Ireland was described as the Skeleton at the Feast by Thomas Francis Meagher, in a speech in New York in 1855, and as the corpse on the dissecting table by Charles Gavan Duffy before he left for Australia in 1856). One historian who looks with some understanding on the reasons for the collapse is J. H. Whyte. He believes that underlying problems embedded deep in the structure of Irish politics at the time made the collapse inevitable. His article, “The Tenant League and Irish Politics in the eighteen-fifties”, No. 4 in the Irish History Series, published for the Dublin Historical Society in 1966, is not available online, so I have made my own summary of it and attached it here for anyone interested in this Cinderella period of Irish history (the early years of the 1850s).

Sheila
J. H. Whyte.doc
(46.5 KiB) Downloaded 485 times
Sharon, that pamphlet by Whyte, which I summarised as best I could
J. H. Whyte.doc
(46.5 KiB) Downloaded 436 times
, is such a dowdy little production it was a miracle that I found it in a second-hand bookshop.

Sheila

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Wed Feb 09, 2022 1:20 pm

Sheila, let me tweak your comment about my having said I have enough data on Fr. Q: I was referring to having enough to state accurately an outline of his career and life. I say that so that anyone else reading this understands, because you obviously do, as you went to provide more excellent observations and publications for my expressed dilemma (how to handle the context in which he acted as priest and activist). As in standard genealogy, negative results while researching are valid and significant in addition to positive results, so I appreciate your noting those. Needless to say, I will be duly crediting you for these contributions, in the article.

My other immediate reaction, in addition to gratitude for your generosity, is an overwhelming impression that you must have been a history major in university. I certainly hope you have plans for your own article or two or three.

Sduddy
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by Sduddy » Thu Feb 10, 2022 12:24 pm

No, Sharon, I won’t be writing any article – that would require discipline.

I am conscious that you are writing an article and not a book, plus I feel sure that there is more to Fr. Quaid than his participation in the Tenant League, so I’m not sure if I should recommend Ireland Since the Famine, by F.S.L. Lyons, Part I, Chapter 4 (ii) The quest for an independent party (pages 112-159 in the 1973 revised edition). Ireland Since the Famine, first published in 1971, remained required reading for about 30 years, and most writers referred to it. It is a very large book, but Lyons has a lovely flowing style that leads the reader on. There has been such an explosion of writing in the last 25 years, I don’t know if it is still referred to. Another book, The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848-1918, by Joseph Lee, published in 1973, is a shorter history and the style much more direct (I think it was Lee who called Lyons’s book “The Oxford History of Ireland”). The relevant chapter in Lee’s book is chapter 2: Land, Religion, Nationalism 1848-79.
Both of these books are picture-less. Today they look grey and a bit drab. Now every piece of writing has a picture, or some helpful visual clue, but getting permission to use a photo, or to reproduce a poster, or cartoon, or map, can take an age - it’s a good idea to set about that task as soon as possible.

Sheila

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Fri Feb 11, 2022 10:00 am

Ah, Sheila, more useful observations. The thought of illustrating the article is beyond me entirely -- I am not the right person to do that. When I threw together a short survey of Kilkishen's history in the 1800s for its cultural centre's opening celebration, the publication's committee collected the accompanying images for my article. No, this new article will be what I can stretch to do on my own, and I must limit my objective to its being useful for readers seeking a bit of knowledge. Being entertaining and interesting is beyond my scope, unless additional inspiration and resources crop up along the way. Very legit for you to remark on what the usual such article displays nowadays.

Frankly, on this last day of my Internet subscription month, when my speed is throttled down to where it takes 5 minutes to access a website, just getting to a new residence where better Internet service exists is my prime objective, the stumbling block to progress on this article and so much else. My workaround on such poor home service had been to travel 22 miles to a library but then 2 years ago the pandemic changed that. Just 2 more months and I can put my current property on the market. Real world considerations...

Never say never -- you may yet find that one subject for which your own effort seems indispensable and thus worth it, however much you must overcome to produce a suitable result. As for me, one step at a time, with progress slow but sure. Thanks for helping.

Sduddy
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by Sduddy » Fri Feb 11, 2022 7:03 pm

Hi Sharon

That is a very frustrating situation – not having a good internet service when you need it. I hope everything works out for you – Fr Quaid can wait.

Sheila

kbarlow
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by kbarlow » Sat Feb 12, 2022 2:15 am

Hi Sharon, slow internet almost worse than no internet for researchers, so you are in our thoughts as you work towards a solution - sad it has to involve the upheaval of a house move. Good luck.

Kerry

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Sat Feb 12, 2022 11:02 am

Thanks, Kerry, for the words of commiseration and support. I remember the days of the 1990s when libraries were just getting online and used a service called Netscape, which was agonizingly slow too. I learned patience back then.

Here's the weird unspoken truth about American housing: houses are widely available that are built to a high specification but the services for utilities to a house, supplied by local government and commercial entities, vary widely in quality. In my last community before my current one, beautiful homes worth a half-million dollars were plagued by brown water coming through pubic supply pipes so homeowners were paying for useless (mandatory) monthly public water service, plus paying for their own private water supply. Ditto that scenario for Internet/television service, with real estate agents always claiming it exists for a house being sold, except the one or two "Internet by satellite" companies available actually only provide a weak signal or slow connection, for huge prices on a long contract. The federal government is trying to entice entities to do better by providing multi-million dollar grants for fiber construction, so my electric utility grabbed that money in 2019 but did not start fiber construction in my area until also lining up state and local grants, which just happened this past October, too close to winter's start to make any progress. We are being told that maybe in March actual connections can be expected. So my house goes on the market in April. Americans as a whole expect to "move house" every two to three years, and this kind of thing (plus job insecurity) is why.

kbarlow
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by kbarlow » Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:20 am

Sadly, many who wield the power in the USA do not make the connection between a decent lifestyle (affordable healthcare, affordable education, safe and reliable services) with a well-funded and uncorrupted public sector! Many in my country don't make that connection either, but, luckily enough citizens have experienced the benefits of our public health system (Medicare), public education and our public-funded national broadband project to fight to protect them. Unfortunately, the ravages of privatisation and corporatisation of our public sectors over several decades means the battle for the public fundamental services is constant (and exhausting!). Some parts of Oz also suffer from slow internet, and Aboriginal communities in particular suffer from poor health and water services. I'm sure Fr Quaid would be working amongst some of these communities if he was here today!!

Kerry

smcarberry
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Re: Fr. Patrick Quaid

Post by smcarberry » Sun Feb 13, 2022 9:32 am

Kerry, amen to that. Yes, exactly -- Fr. Q would be at the forefront of the vocal opposition to reducing the little bit of stability that people have in their lives. That's why this article I plan is timely, since such an effort needs to be constant and continual. Good luck with that in your end of the world.

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