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    Founded in 1938 and re-established in 1969, Offaly History (Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society) aims to preserve and promote the rich heritage of County Offaly. Since 1993, the Society has occupied premises at Bury Quay, Tullamore offering a Bookshop, library, reading room, and lecture hall for researcher and members of the public.  Offaly History Centre is beside the new Aldi Supermarket and Old Warehouse restaurant), and best approached from Kilbride Street via Patrick Street or Main Street.

    The main objective of the society is the collection and sharing of research and memories. We do this in an organised way; through exhibitions, the publication of local interest books, weekly blog posts, monthly lectures, and more. The bookshop and reading rooms at Bury Quay are open to the public Monday to Friday, 9am-4:30pm. Regular updates can also be found at our website, www.Offalyhistory.com and on our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X.

    To promote Offaly History including community and family history

    What we do:

    • Promote all aspects of history in Co. Offaly.
    • Genealogy service for counties Laois and Offaly.
    • Photographic collections of County Offaly
    • Purchase and sale of Offaly interest books though the Society’s book store and website with over 3000 history books in our shop and up to 1000 online.
    • Publication of books under the Society’s publishing arm Esker Press.
    • The Society subscribes to almost all the premier historical journals in Ireland.
    • The Society manages the collections if Offaly Archives under the care of a professional archivist.

    Our Society covers a diverse range of Offaly Heritage:

    • Architectural heritage, historic monuments such as monastic and castle buildings.
    • Industrial and urban development of towns and villages.
    • Archaeological objects and artefacts.
    • Flora, fauna and bogs, wildlife habitats, geology and Natural History.
    • Landscapes, heritage gardens and parks, farming and inland waterways.
    • Local literary, social, economic, military, political, scientific and sports history.
    Offaly History is a non-profit community group with a growing membership of some 150 individuals. The Society focuses on enhancing educational opportunities, understanding and knowledge of the county heritage while fostering an inclusive approach and civic pride in local identity. We promote these objectives through:
    • The holding of monthly lectures, occasional seminars, exhibitions and social media. Organising tours during the summer months to places of shared historical interest.
    • The publication of an annual journal Offaly Heritage – to date twelve issues.
    • We play a unique role collecting and digitising original primary source materials, especially photographs and oral history recordings
    • Offaly History is the centre for Family History research in Counties Laois and Offaly.
    • The Society is linked to the renowned Irish Family Foundation website and Roots Ireland where some 1,000,000 records of Offaly/Laois interest can be accessed on a pay-per-view basis worldwide. Currently these websites have an estimated 20 million records of all Ireland interest.
    • A burgeoning library of books, CD-ROMs, videos, DVDs, oral and folklore recordings, manuscripts, newspapers and journals, maps, photographs and various artefacts (now over 25,000 items and a catalogue online)
    • OHAS Collections
    • OHAS Centre Facilities
    The financial activities of the Society are operated under the aegis of Offaly Heritage Centre c.l.g, a charitable company whose directors also serve on the Society’s elected committee. None of the Society’s directors receive remuneration or any kind. All the company’s assets are held in trust to promote the voluntary activities of the Society. Our facilities are largely free to the public or run purely on a costs-recovery basis.

    Acting as a policy advisory body –  Offaly History endeavors to ensure all government departments, local authorities, tourism agencies and key opinion formers prioritise heritage matters.

    Meet the current committee: Our Committee represents a broad range of backgrounds and interests. All share a common interest in collecting and promoting the heritage of the county and making it available to the wider community.

    2024 Committee
    • Helen Bracken (President)
    • Shaun Wrafter (Vice President)
    • Michael Byrne (Secretary)
    • Dorothee Bibby (Treasurer)
    • Charlie Finlay (Assistant Treasurer)
    • Niall Sweeney
    • Ciarán McCabe
    • Noel Guerin
    • Angela Kelly
    • Rory Masterson
    • Oliver Dunne
    • Frank Brennan
    • Pat Wynne
    • Laura Price
    Co-opted
    • Reneagh Bennett
    • Michael Scully
    • Jim Keating
    • Eamon Larkin
    If you would like to help with the work of the Society by coming on a sub-committee or in some other way please email us at [email protected] or let an existing member know.  
    +353-5793-21421 [email protected] Open 9am-4.30pm Mon-Fri

    Hugh Mahon

    Book  launch on 27 April 2017 at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore at 8pm on Hugh Mahon, Killurin, Killeigh parish native who made a name for himself in Australia

    This year marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Hugh Mahon, a native of County Offaly, who, after a difficult start in Ireland, found fame and fortune in Australia, where he rose to high political office, serving as a Labour member of the Australian parliament for two decades and as a government minister four times.

    A new book, Hugh Mahon: Patriot, Pressman, Politician tells the fascinating life-story of this son of the county, whose relations still live in and around Tullamore. The book will be launched at Offaly History Centre, Bury Quay, Tullamore on Thursday 27 April 2017 at a lecture to be given by the book’s author Australian historian Jeff Kildea.

    Mahon family reunion at Charleville Demesne, Tullamore in 1922. Hugh Mahon circled.

    In Australia, Mahon is best known for having been expelled from the Australian parliament, the only person to have suffered that fate. This happened in 1920 after he made a speech critical of British rule in Ireland, leading the prime minister Billy Hughes to accuse him of “seditious and disloyal utterances”.

    But, as Dr Kildea tells it, there is much more to this intriguing Offaly man than that singular, spectacular event. In his day Mahon was both revered and reviled. One contemporary wrote, ‘He may be acclaimed as one among the best newspaper men in the Commonwealth’. Another declared, ‘He must have been nourished in his infancy on the venom of a squid’.

     

    Born at Killurin in 1857

    Born at Killurin in 1857, Hugh was the 13th of 14 children of James and Anna Mahon (née McEvoy). The Mahons of Offaly were originally from the ancient kingdom of Oriel in the north of Ireland and there are at least two versions of how and when the family arrived in the county.

    Whatever the correct version, the family were well settled in the district by the 19th century, with James being a tenant farmer on a substantial holding at Killurin. The land was part of the Geashill Estate owned by Lord Digby of Dorset in England, who employed as his estate manager the efficient but often ruthless William Steuart Trench.

    In 1869 James, Anna and eight of their children, including young Hugh, gave up their farm and emigrated to America, first to Ontario, Canada and then to Albany, the capital of New York state, where Hugh trained as a printer and newspaperman. Unfortunately their American dream failed and in 1880 the family returned to Ireland, where Hugh’s brother Patrick held a remnant of the family farm. Patrick’s descendants still live there today.

    For Hugh, the American experience had not been pleasant. In 1929 he wrote to a niece who had moved to America, “For goodness sake, don’t become a slave to these Yankee bloodsuckers. Having suffered from them myself I am qualified to sympathise with you. They worked me – a child of 13 – 59 hours a week, from 7am to 6pm & I had to walk 3 miles each way from home to the printing office”.

    But the newspaper trade was not all Hugh learnt in America. At the time, Albany was the country’s most Irish city. It had an Irish Catholic mayor years before Boston or New York. It was also a fenian stronghold. On Hugh’s return he soon found employment in County Wexford as editor and manager of the New Ross Standard and a reporter for the Wexford People. Both newspapers were owned by Edward Walsh, a prominent Irish nationalist, who in the late 1880s served three prison terms for his newspapers’ outspoken opposition to landlords.

    Like his employer, Hugh was an activist as well as a journalist, using his newspaper to support the tenants during the Land War of 1879-82. He also used his printing press to print leaflets calling for boycotts of landlords. These activities brought him under police notice. Sub-Inspector Wilson reported to the government, ‘Mahon is by occupation a reporter and by inclination a rebel’.

    When a landlord’s son was murdered in an ambush near New Ross, Mahon organised a defence fund to help the two men charged with the crime and used his newspaper to criticise the police and prosecution authorities, whom he accused of intimidation and sharp practices. He was also an important witness at the trial, providing an alibi for one of the accused, both of whom were acquitted.

    Hugh Mahon biography, vol.i, 1857-1901 (probably the first Offaly man to get a two-vol biography)

    Mahon arrested in crackdown on Land League

    In October 1881 Mahon was arrested and interned without trial during the government’s crackdown on the Land League. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol with Parnell. After two months he was released on health grounds following a diagnosis of tuberculosis. He immediately returned to his Land League activities but after being threatened with re-arrest he took his doctor’s advice and emigrated to Australia.

    On arriving in Melbourne in May 1882 Mahon was employed by the Australian branch of the Land League and travelled extensively in the sister colony of New South Wales raising funds to send back to the league in Ireland. When John and William Redmond visited Australia in 1883 to promote the league, Mahon helped to organise their tour.

    He then resumed his calling in journalism as a reporter, editor and ultimately newspaper owner. In 1886 Mahon joined Sydney’s Daily Telegraph as a political reporter, rising to become chief of the Telegraph’s parliamentary staff.

    Through his political contacts Mahon was appointed secretary of the Rabbit Royal Commission, set up in 1888 to administer a world-wide competition to find a cure for the rabbit plague then sweeping Australia and threatening its sheep industry. This put him at the centre of an international political storm as supporters of the German bio-chemist Robert Koch attempted to undermine the entry put forward on behalf of the Frenchman Louis Pasteur. That year Mahon married Mary Alice L’Estrange of Melbourne. They had four children.

    From Land League to Parliamentarian

    In 1891 Mahon attempted to enter the New South Wales parliament, but his ambition was thwarted by the skulduggery of his Free Trade faction which led to another candidate being nominated in his place. Following his disappointment he moved to Melbourne with his family, where he took a job with the Australian Mining Standard, a newspaper providing news and comment concerning mining.

    There he met James MacCallum Smith, with whom he formed an investment syndicate after Smith moved to the newly-discovered goldfields of Western Australia. In 1895 the fortunes of the Mining Standard turned for the worse and Mahon left for WA at the invitation of Smith who had acquired newspapers in the goldfields.

    In partnership with Smith, Mahon established the Menzies Miner in the new boom town of Menzies, 160 km north of Kalgoorlie. During his time in Menzies Mahon was elected to the inaugural town council and in 1897 unsuccessfully stood for election to the WA parliament for the seat of North Coolgardie. But he also became embroiled in a libel action in which Henry Gregory, the popular Mayor of Menzies, sued him for £5000.

    Mahon as editor of the Sun

    In 1898, Mahon was appointed editor of the Kalgoorlie Sun. It was a Sunday newspaper which aimed to reach the masses, to be critical of society, to expose social abuses and to promote contemporary literature by publishing reading matter of a high literary standard. Mahon quickly fitted into the role, often attacking the government of Sir John Forrest. With headlines such as “In the Clutches of Corruption/Land of Forrests, Fakes and Frauds/Some Instances of Robbery and Jobbery”, he soon gained a reputation amongst his fellow journalists as a pugnacious and racy editor.

    A contemporary later wrote, “Mahon could put more venom into a stick of type than any man I ever knew. Mahon’s headlines were masterpieces of alliteration and venom”. During Mahon’s twenty months as editor of the Sun he successfully defended five libel actions, four of them prosecutions for criminal libel. But he also exposed corruption in the government railways.

    Mahon’s career as a journalist effectively ended in 1901 when he was elected to the first parliament of the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia. Initially representing the seat of Coolgardie, he became the member for Kalgoorlie in 1913 following a redistribution of electoral boundaries.

    During his time in parliament Mahon was an early advocate of Aboriginal rights. He served as a minister in four Labor ministries, including Postmaster-General in the first Labor government in 1904 and Minister for External Affairs during World War I. After the war his passionate campaigning in support of Irish self-determination during the War of Independence led to his expulsion from parliament.

    Family photo in Charleville in 1922

    In 1922 Hugh visited Ireland for the first and last time since his exile 50 years before, attending a large family reunion at Charleville Castle. On returning to Australia, he saw out the rest of his life as managing director of the Catholic Church Property Insurance Co., which he had established in 1911 at the request of the Australian bishops. He died in 1931 and his buried in Melbourne.

    Book and Author details: Professor Jeff Kildea

    Hugh Mahon: Patriot, Pressman, Politician, Volume 1: the years from 1857 to 1901 (ISBN 9780992467180) is published by Anchor Books Australia, Melbourne (Webpage: anchorbooksaustralia.com.au).

    Dr Jeff Kildea, is an adjunct professor in Irish Studies at the University of New South Wales and was Keith Cameron Professor of Australian History at University College Dublin in 2014. He is the author of  Tearing the Fabric: Sectarianism in Australia 1910-1925 (2002), Anzacs and Ireland (2007) and Wartime Australians: Billy Hughes (2008). (Webpage: jeffkildea.com)

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