The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

Charles H. Knox agreed to lease to the Brothers the
building and grounds of an old National School near the
Cornmarket. It was the same school Pat Gallagher’s sons
would attend decades later. His wife, Mary Sheridan, and
their daughters would have been taught by the nuns at the
Convent of Mercy.
Pat Gallagher knew his way around town, but he
wasn't always ready to embrace the latest technology to get
where he needed to go. Aunt Delia recalled one such
occasion. Her father was out walking when a neighbor
pulled up in a new motorcar and offered him a lift. “No
thanks,” our grandfather said. “I'm in a hurry.” Apparently,
walking was more reliable ... and often quicker. A little
impatience also may have led to a nickname our
grandfather had from his wife. She would worry about him
walking the narrow roads to neighboring towns and
frequently referred to him as “The Wrong of the Road.”
As our grandfather worked to provide for his
family, his wife would have had to work, work, work to
keep up a house filling with children. Cows needed milking,
butter needed churning, chickens and pigs needed feeding,
gardens tending, clothes mending, bread baking, meals
fixing ... and the washing was done by hand. Then there
were the men and the mud they tracked in. It’s no wonder
one fond memory from Uncle Tom was of his mother
having to hurry off to Mass at the last minute, “with her
shawl flowing behind her as she went over the wall and
through the fields toward church.”
THE NEXT GENERATION
For our grandparents, children started arriving in
1897 with the birth of Michael. A daughter, Mary, arrived
about a year and a half later, in 1899. Sadly, Mary died
almost immediately. Fortunately, our grandmother would
have had her mother-in-law, Bridget, to help console her.
She had suffered so much from the same experience with
the death of her first child as an infant. That emotional
support ended with Bridget Gallagher's death March 14,
1909, of bronchitis at age 69. When her husband, Peter,
died March 7, 1912, at age 81, our grandfather inherited the
farm and about 12 acres.
The new century brought 10 more children for Pat
and Mary Gallagher, beginning with Delia (1901), then
John (1903), Nora (1906), Peter (1908), Patrick (1909),
James (1911), Thomas (1914), Owen (1916), Ann (1921)
and, finally, a second Mary, born in 1922.
Over the course of about 20 years, the children
would live through World War I, the Easter Rising, the
Spanish Influenza, the Irish War of Independence, the
Construction began on the Convent of Mercy in
Ballinrobe in 1853. Over the years it would provide
employment for a number of Gallaghers, who lived a
short walk away. The building is now privately owned
after the relocation of the remaining nuns to Castlebar.
emergence of the Irish Free State and the Irish Civil War. It
was a time when the decades-long struggle for Ireland to
govern itself, known as Home Rule, concluded. The House
of Lords had vetoed Home Rule for years, but eventually
lost that power in 1911, an event that had some significance
to the Gallaghers. Uncle Jim told his son Pat that “you can
always remember the year I was born, because it was the
year the House of Lords lost the veto power.”
Implementation of Home Rule, which was granted
in 1914, was suspended with the outbreak of World War I.
Irish rebels interested in an independent republic soon lost
any patience they had and staged the Easter Rising in 1916,
the year Uncle Owen was born. The initial rising in Dublin
failed, but it was followed by the Irish War of Independence
(1919-1921), culminating with the establishment of the
Irish Free State through a Treaty negotiated with England.
Aunt Delia said her father favored the Home Rule efforts
and was a fan of Lloyd George, the British prime minister
from 1916 to 1922, who negotiated the Treaty. Controversy
over the Treaty resulted in the Irish Civil War (1922-23),
with the Free State side prevailing.
Aunt Delia was the first of Pat and Mary
Gallagher’s children to move to America, with five others
following and settling in the Philadelphia and Wilmington,
Del., areas. Aunt Nora married and died in Ballinrobe.
Uncle Owen, who died in 1999, lived out his years as a
bachelor in his home across the boreen from the old cottage.
Aunt Mary moved to Leeds, England. Before she died in
2006, she was the last surviving of the brothers and sisters.
The family may not have had much money, but
they were rich in other ways. They were not famous or
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