Celebrate the Mayo-French Connections at Mayo Day 2017
As part of Mayo Day 2017, Castlebar is celebrating its Mayo-French Connections. The L’arbre de la Liberté conference at GMIT on April 27 and 28 explores the subject of Republicanism and its establishment in France, Ireland and beyond and also the influence of the events of 1798 in shaping our nation.
The story of Mayo man John Moore, First President of the Republic of Connaught, is one of the most compelling aspects of our Mayo French connections.
On February 27, 1960, Jim Troy, caretaker at Ballygunner Temple cemetery near Waterford City, made an accidental discovery. At a neglected grave in the lonely hilltop cemetery, he uncovered an inscription that read “Here lies the body of John Moore Esq of Ashbrook in the county of Mayo who died in the city of Waterford on the 6th day of December 1799 aged 36 years.” 161 years after his death, John Moore, the first President of The Republic of Connaught was about begin his trip back home to Mayo to his final resting place on the Mall in Castlebar.
John Moore was born in Alicante, Spain on March 16, 1768, to George Moore of Ashbrook, Straide and Catherine de Kilkelly. George had success in the wine trade in Spain and in the manufacture of iodine. In the early 1790’s George Moore sold his business for a reputed £250,000 and began building Moore Hall on the shores of Lough Carra in 1792.
John was studying Arts at the University of Paris. He joined his younger brother George in London to study law and then arrived in Dublin with the intention of studying at the Irish Bar, but quickly abandoned his studies.
John was at Moore Hall in August 1798 when General Humbert and his troops arrived in Castlebar. True to the the Moore family motto, “He who proceeds with courage shall not fail,” he rushed to Castlebar to join with Humbert’s Franco-Irish Forces, and General Humbert convinced him to stay. He became known to the French as “Citizen John Moore.”
Humbert must have seen something that led him to appoint John as the First President of the Government of the Province of Connaught later that month. Described as a “broad-shouldered, broad-faced, yellow haired man who stood six feet tall,” John was a Catholic, a lawyer and a patriotic landowner, with a French education and fluency in the language.
One week after his appointment, John was captured by the British and imprisoned in Castlebar, where he awaited a rebel’s fate of the hangman’s rope. For most of the next year, a gravely ill John Moore was held in various jails throughout the country.
In November 1799, Moore was finally charged, but his death sentence was commuted to a life sentence and he was sent to New Geneva in Wexford. Thin, pallid and feeble, he was conveyed to Duncannon Fort to await the ship which was to take him to exile. Unable to walk un-aided, he was helped everywhere by his military escort.
John Moore never boarded the vessel, due to ill health. He died a solitary death under armed guard at the Royal Oak Tavern on 6 December, 1799 and was buried two days later at Ballygunner Temple cemetery.
On 11th August, 1961, John’s remains were exhumed and placed in a casket of polished oak. The casket was carried shoulder high by Irish soldiers to a military truck. The first steps of Moore’s final journey passed by a few onlookers and proceeded down a country boreen.
Thousands of mourners lined the streets of Waterford City; queues of people filed past the coffin in the cathedral to pay their last respects. A plaque presented by Bord Fáilte and erected on the wall of the Savoy Bar, was unveiled by Dr. John M. Langan,
Chairman of the Castlebar Memorial Committee; the inscription read “John Moore, First President of Connaught died here in 1799.” The next morning, the cortége left Waterford for Castlebar, receiving military salutes in Limerick and Galway.
After laying overnight in Castlebar’s Church of the Holy Rosary, the coffin, with a guard of honour and marching bands, was conveyed on a gun carriage through the flag-strewn streets of the town, before being re-interred with full military honours in the Mall near the 1798 memorial.
Attendees included President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, an Taoiseach Seán Lemass, several TDs, the ambassadors of Spain and France, and John Moore’s living descendants, including Maurice Moore of California who later erected a memorial plaque to his great granduncle at Moore Hall.
The President delivered a graveside oration. Dr. John M. Langan spoke of “...gratitude to God in that He has granted it to us to see, as it were, the full circle and to witness the triumphant return to Castlebar of him who was once driven from the town in chains. We do not hold commemorations as this to re-awaken old animosities nor to brood over past wrongs.God Forbid.
Far better if we never held them were they to have such an effect as that. No, no. We hold them simply to honour those men of our nation who by their deeds and sacrifices merited commemoration and by recalling to mind, the lessons of their own duty as it behoves us should the necessity ever rise. ” The event was covered by British Pathé and coverage can be viewed at the British Pathé Historical Archive under the title “Castlebar: President Re-Buried”.
http://www.britishpathe.com
Based on an original article by Mayo historian Stephen Dunford.
