John O'Mahony

John Francis O'Mahony (1815 – 7 February 1877) was an Irish scholar and the founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, a sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Despite coming from a reasonably wealthy family and being well educated, the primary pursuit of O'Mahony's life was that of Irish Independence from the United Kingdom, a calling that ultimately left him in poverty. O'Mahony fought in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 as well as the American Civil War, and was involved organisationally in the Fenian Rising of 1867 in Ireland and the Fenian Raids on Canada.

Early life

O'Mahony was born in 1815 in Kilbeheny, on the border between County Limerick and County Cork, into a family of minor Roman Catholic landed gentry who had managed to retain land following the Munster Plantation. O'Mahony came from a long line of Irish activists: Members of the family had been outspoken advocates for the rights of the native Irish during the Penal Laws period of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, while his father and uncle had been members of the United Irishmen and had taken part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Upon the death of an elder brother, O'Mahony inherited a property that yielded £300 per annum. However, he would later yield this inheritance to his sister in order to pursue his Fenian activities.

Education

O'Mahony was educated at Midleton College by Dr Hamblin. Despite being a Catholic, he later entered Trinity College, Dublin (nominally Catholics were forbidden from entering Trinity due to its ties to the Protestant Church of Ireland), where he studied Sanskrit, Hebrew and Irish. He became an accomplished Gaelic scholar, and later taught Greek and Latin, and contributed articles to Irish and French journals. He left Trinity without getting a degree.