11/27/2025
Commemoration Oration at the Fenian Memorial,
Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, NY, Sunday, 16 November 2026
Oration by George McLaughlin founder & director of the Fenian Memorial Committee of America
Who were the Fenians?
We know that the Fenians were members of secret 19th century revolutionary organizations which sought the overthrow of English rule in Ireland. These organizations were formed–as the Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood–in two places, the USA and Éire, and part of the movement evolved into Clan na Gael. Eventually, the Fenians became the foundation for the rising of 1916, which ultimately (after many of its leaders were executed or imprisoned) had a partial success in the emancipation of 26 of 32 Irish counties. Many of its members and leaders spent long stretches in British prisons in Ireland, England and Australia, while others were killed in conflict or executed. A sizeable number of them fled to America, a country which they admired for being the first colony to cast off the yoke of the British crown and where they could openly espouse their revolutionary views. Most of the exiles died in America, unable to return to their homeland, many of them in unmarked graves or without anything to indicate the part they had played in the struggle for Irish freedom. Some of them, including John Breslin, William Foley, Michael Doheny, Thomas Hassett, Michael Harringon, and Thomas Francis Bourke are buried in this very cemetery. I represent the Fenian Memorial Committee of America, which honors Fenians and other Irish republican revolutionaries who have no gravestones nor markers indicating their role in fighting for Irish emancipation.
What has drawn us here today?
Some have been led here today by family history; some by republican ideology; some by faith in God’s ultimate justice for an ancient country; some by curiosity; and some because they have nothing better to do. Actually, the last of these motivations is the greatest because there is nothing better to do than to remember those who have gone before us with honor, courage and bravery for what is right—in this case, for making a break with a force that controlled a quarter of the world illegally and immorally, including its first conquered soil, Ireland. Perfidious Albion has incorporated into its murderous plunder of the land of our people and of our ancestors—as well as the scores of other lands that they have invaded and dominated, using their brutally evil methods which were tested in our homeland—a compulsive need to lie, to lie about history but especially their role in it—their own sins against often defenseless and vulnerable populations. We know only too well their vicious self-righteous torture of the Irish population, at least through neglect and at most through quasi-genocide, through
attempted annihilation of a language, of a religion, of an ancient culture, of an identity. After this plunder and persecution, the English have positioned themselves on a perch of vicious condescension, spouting falsities about historically benevolent care for the poor, inherently inferior people they campaigned into bloody submission and tried to destroy. Now, today, we remember the Fenians, who would not be duped by false promises, by revisions of past hegemony, by outright lies. A current example of their innate and unbounding self-righteous compulsion to lie is their 2017 addition to the campus of their state-owned broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation—a statue of George Orwell, with an accompanying wall containing Orwell’s words: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Well, there should be an addition to that inscription: “except for the English hierarchy and its propagandists.”
What is the Fenian Memorial Committee of America?
Twenty years ago, I received a call form a member of the modern version of the Clan na Gael in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During an aside in that conversation she said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a Fenian buried near you in Rhode Island.” I eventually discovered that James McNally Wilson, a Catalpa escapee from Fremantle Prison, was that man. After living most of his years in Central Falls, Rhode Island, he had died in the nearby Pawtucket home of the Little Sisters of the Poor and was buried by Fenians and other Irish republicans in 1921 in Saint Mary’s graveyard in Pawtucket, next to one of the oldest Catholic churches in the state. He would be the last surviving Fenian Catalpa escapee.
Teaching in the adjoining community of Central Falls, a working-class town of one-square mile and a population of 20,000, I formed a study group around the life of James Wilson, composed of the town librarian, a few Irish-Americans and some of my high school students—from Vietnam, Columbia, Spain, Peru and Brazil. After discovering his birth name as McNally, visiting Newry to get his baptismal cert and learning about his wife and his years of residence in Central Falls, we necessarily learned the story of the Catalpa Rescue and its planners, its rescuers and its escapees. Sadly, we also discovered that five of the six Fenians who had escaped had no tombstones at all. They could not be forgotten. We had become the Fenian Memorial Committee of America.
And so, The Fenian Memorial Committee of America has its roots in Central Falls, Rhode Island, two decades ago. Its development is intertwined with the story of the voyage of the Catalpa, the whaling vessel which sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts intent on rescuing a group of Fenians who had been sentenced to a life of penal servitude in the infamous Fremantle prison in Western Australia for treason against England, and arriving in Western Australia on the last sailing of the prison ship, the Hougoumont. Six men were indeed rescued
and brought to America, arriving in New York in 1876. With the help of supporters, they distributed themselves throughout the United States. Remaining faithful and committed Fenians to the end, they lived out their lives in their new home, unable to return to the place of their birth.
The Fenian Memorial Committee of America has placed markers and tombstones at the graves of 11 Fenians in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts. They include the Catalpa Six—Michael Harrington and Thomas Hassett, from Co. Cork (buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY), James McNally Wilson, from Co. Down (buried in Rhode Island), Martin Hogan, from Co. Limerick (buried in Illinois), Thomas Darragh, from Co. Wicklow and Robert Cranston, from Co. Tyrone (both buried in Pennsylvania) as well as Father Patrick McCabe, from Co. Cavan (who aided the prisoners in their escape, buried in Minnesota), Frank and Mary Byrne, from Co. Dublin (Invincible Fenians who died in exile in the U.S., buried in Rhode Island), John Goff, from Co. Wexford (on the planning committee and the chief fundraiser for the Catalpa rescue, buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY) and Denis Cashman, Co. Waterford (Fenian transported to Australia in 1867 on the Hougoumont, buried in Massachusetts).
Our next project is a collaborative one with the National Graves Association, Dublin: placing a cenotaph in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, Ireland, honoring Catalpa planners, rescuers and escapees, during the 150th Anniversary year of the Catalpa Six arrival in New York. We hope to follow with gravestones for Katherine Hughes, an Irish Canadian republican buried in St. Raymond’s in the Bronx, NY and William Foley, from Co. Tipperary, a former Fremantle Fenian prisoner buried in Calvary Cemetery, in Queens, NY. After being granted a “ticket of leave” from prison, Foley aided John Breslin in the planning of the Australian side of the Catalpa escape. He was in New York for the arrival of the Catalpa and the ensuing celebration. Tragically, he died shortly afterwards. His pallbearers were the Catalpa Six, and his burial plot was paid for by the great Fenian, John Devoy. Foley, and all the others, had begun their revolutionary adventure by taking this oath (or a similar one) and never betraying it:
“In the presence of Almighty God, I do solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and that I will do my very utmost, at every risk, while life lasts, to defend its independence and integrity; and, finally, that I will yield implicit obedience in all things, not contrary to the laws of God, to the commands of my superior officers. So, help me God! Amen.”
Our oath today is that the brave Fenians should never be forgotten.
The Fenian Memorial Committee of America is committed to resurrecting dormant or vanished memories of the Irish men and women who fought for Ireland, fled to the United States and died on American soil. They are part of a centuries-old tradition of resistance to English rule in Ireland, and Irish Americans are innately tied to them, to their effort and to their sacrifice. Remembering them, and indeed memorializing them, is our duty. This work helps us to remember where we have come from and where Ireland is headed in its continuing journey towards reunification and independence.
Please be aware that the Fenian Memorial Committee of America is not affiliated with any group with a similar name. It is an independent and voluntary organization which does not represent any American or Irish political parties or groups. As stated in our charter, although we welcome support from all of good will, in order to maintain our independent voice, no representatives of political parties—Irish, American or otherwise—are allowed on our Board or to speak at our commemorations.
Due to events over the last quarter century, the vision of an Irish republic devoid of all English interference—never mind rule—has been covered with rhetorical and submissive cataracts. Many of us cannot seem to see clearly what we have fought for—for so long. We cannot see a future for our dream, for the dream of our mothers and fathers and their ancestors. As Fulton Sheen once said,
“Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right. Freedom does not mean that we have the right to do whatever we please, but rather to do as we ought.”
So, as believers in Irish freedom and reunification, what ought we do? Well, I am convinced that sometimes the way to go forward is to go back, back to the foundations of our vision. The surgery we need to restore that clear and profound vision lies with the Fenians. Read their words, study their lives and commemorate their sacrifice, just as we do today. If we do, the scales on our Irish eyes will slowly but surely fall and every day of our lives we will once again be able to say: “Bold Fenian men, Tiocfaidh ar la!”
It is fitting that I close today with the exhortation found at the ending of every Fenian Memorial Committee of America call for support, a quote from the great Fenian acolyte of Tom Clarke and a 1916 martyr himself, Seán MacDiarmada,
"We bleed that the nation may live. I die so that the nation may live. Damn your concessions England, we want our country."
Go raibh maith agat, a chairdre aris. Tiocfaidh ar la!
