Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/256

 O'GROWNEY

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O'HARA

O'Growney, Eugene, priest, patriot, and scholar, b. 25 AuKiist. lS(i3, .at Ball^-fallon, County Meath; d. at Los AiiRclcs, IS Oct.. 1890. Neither parent spoke Irisli and it was little used where he was born; in fact, he was ignorant of the existence of a language of Ire- laiul until a student at .St. Finian's seminary at Navan. His interest in the language begun there continued at MaynoDth. where from his entrance in 1S82 he de- voted hini.self to the study of the Iri.sh language, an- tiquities, and history. His holid.ays he spent in the Irish-sjieaking parts of the eoiuitry where ho acquired his knowledge of the sjioken language. Ordaineil in 18S.S. in IS'.H he was appointed professor of Irish at Maynoolh, and at about the same time became editor of the "(iaelic .lournal ". At the instance of the Arch- bishop of Dublin lie beg.an his series of "Simple Les- sons in Irish", tirst published in the "Weekly Free- man", whidi have done more than any other book in the last two centuries to f.amiliarize thousands of Irish with the language of their ancestors. He was one of the founders of the Gaelic League, organized in Dub- lin in 1893 "for the purpose of keeping the Irish lan- guage spoken in Ireland", and later became its vice- president, which po.sition he held until his death. In 1894, failing health .sent him to Arizona and California, where he died. Some years after, with the aid of the Irish in the Ignited States, his body was brought back to Ireland and buried at Maynooth. An earnest and tireless worker, his services to the Gaelic League out- weigh those of all his fellow- workers to the present day, not that his scholarship was above criticism, but because he came at the moment when a man of his kind was needed.

The memorials of Father O'Growney have been coUected by O'F.vRRELLT, Leabhar an Athar Eoghan (The O^Growney Memorial Volume), (Dubhn, 190-1).

Joseph Ddnn.

O'Hagan, John, lawj'er and man of letters, b. at Newry, County Down, Ireland, 19 March, l.S22;d.ncar Dubhn, 10 November, 1.S90. He was educated in the daj'-school of the Jesuit Fathers, Dublin, and in Trin- ity College, graduating in 1842. Though he made man}' friendships in Trinity, he was always an earnest advocate of Catholic university education. In this spirit he contributed to the "Dublin Review" (1847) an article which the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland has reprinted under the title "Trinity College No Place for Catholics". Later he contributed to the same Re\'iew a criticism of Thomas Carlyle's system of thought, which Carlj'le tells in his Diary "gave him food for reflection for several days". In 1842 he was called to the Bar and joined the Munster Circuit. In 1861 he was appointed a Commissioner of National Education, and in 1865 he became Q.C. The same year he married Frances, daughter of the first Lord O'Hagan. After Gladstone had passed his Irish Land Act, he chose Mr. O'Hagan as the first judicial head of the Irish Land Commission, making him for this pur- pose a judge of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice. This elevation was a tribute not only to his legal at- tainments and judicial standing but to the place he held in the esteem of his countrymen. He was an earnest Catholic, as is shown in many of his writings, such as "The Children's Ballad Rosary". In his earli- est manhood his poems, "Dear Land", "Our.selves Alone", etc., were among the most effective features of " The Nation " in its brilliant youth ; in his last years he published the first English translation of " La Chan- son de Roland", recognized as a success by the "Edin- burg Review" and all the critical journals. Longfellow WTOte to him: "The work seems to me admirably well done. "

The IrUh Monthly. XVIII; DcFFT. Four Years o{ Irish History.

Matthew Russell.

O'Hagan, Thomas, first Baron of Tullyhogue, b. at Belfast, 29 May, 1812; d. 1 February, 1885. CaUed to

the Irish Bar in 1836, he resided at Newry, and mar- ried Miss Teeling in 1836. Inchned to journahsm, he proved a brilliant editor of the "Newry Examiner" friini 1S3S 1o 1841. At the Bar he achieved distinc- tion for his defence of Charles Gavan DufTy, in 1842. Admitted to the inner Bar in 1849, and made a bencher of King's Inn in 1859, in 1860 he was ap- pointed Solicitor General for Ireland, and, in the fol- lowing year Attorney General, being also called to the Irish Privy Council. He sat as M.P. for Tralee from 1863 to 1865, when he became Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1868 he was made Lord Chancellor of Ire- land, the first Catholic in t he office since Chancellor Fit- ton under James II. Created Baron of Tullyhogue in 1870, two years later he married Miss Alice Mary Townley. His chancellorship expired with the Glad- stone Ministry in 1874. In 1880 he was re-appointed Lord Chancellor by Gladstone, but resigned in No- vember, 1881. A year later he was made a Knight of St. Patrick. He published: "Selected Essays and Speeches".

Diet, of Nat. Biog. (new cd., London, 1908-9); files of contem- porary newspapers.

W. H. Grattan-Flood.

O'Hanlon, John, b. at Stradbally, Queen's Co., Ireland, 1821; d. at Sandymount, Dublin, 1905. He entered Carlow College to study for the priesthood, but accompanied his parents to the United States where, completing his studies, he was ordained in 1847, obtaining a mission in the Diocese of St. Louis. In 18.53 he returned to Ireland, was affiliated to the Archdiocese of Dublin and appointed curate in the parish of Sts. Michael and John in the city, one of his fellow curates being the well-known historical scholar. Father Meehan. In 1880 he took charge of the parish of Sandymount and a few years later was made a member of the metropolitan chapter. Always inter- ested in Irish history, especially in Irish ecclesiastical history, while in America he wrote an "Abridgment of the History of Ireland" and an "Irish Emigrant's Guide to the United States", besides publishing in the "Boston Pilot " a series of learned papers on St. Mala- chy. Archbishop of Armagh. After his return to Dub- lin, he published biographies of St. Laurence O'Toole, St. Dympna, and St. Aengus the Culdee, a "Cate- chism of Irish History", "Devotions for Confession and Holy Communion", and "Irish American History of the LTnited States", edited Monk Mason's "History of the Irish ParUament ", and collected materials for a history of Queen's Co. His greatest work was his "Lives of the Irish Saints" (Dublin, 1875 — ), begun in 1846 and finished shortly before his death. Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, described him as a man who worked so hard at his pastoral duties that men wondered how he could have found time to write any- thing, and who wrote so much that men wondered how he could have done any missionary work. He never spared himself and was never dismayed by any difficulty; when, in 1898, the MS. of his Irish American History was destroyed, he cheerfully rewrote the vol- ume, an example of courage for a man nearing four score.

Freeman's Journal (16 May, 1905) ; O'Leary in Journal of County Kildare Archceol. Soc. (July, 190-5).

E. A. D'Alton.

O'Hara, Theodore, b. in Danville, Kentucky, U. S. A., 11 February, 1822; d. in Guerryton, Alabama, 6 June, 1867. The son of Kane O'Hara, an Irish politi- cal exile, who became a prominent educator in Ken- tucky, O'Hara graduated from St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, Kentucky, studied law, and in the Mexi- can War attained the brevet r.ank of major, after which he made several filibustering expeditions to Cuba and Central America. He edited various news- papers and was successfidly entrusted by the Govern- ment with some diplomatic missions. During the