Patrick Moran’s lifetime spanned the period from 1859 to 1945. He was born a year before the outbreak of the American Civil War and died just as World War II was ending in Europe. In that lifetime, America had grown from a country bitterly divided North and South into the world’s foremost economic and military power. Much of this extraordinary growth had come about through the enormous energy and vitality of the constant stream of immigrants entering the country during most of that period. Many who came were Irish.
In 1841, the population of Ireland was 8,175,124. A normal rate of increase would have made it 9,018,799 by 1851. But the census of 1851 gave the population of Ireland as 6,552,385, or some 2,500,000 less than anticipated. About 1,500,000 emigrated during the years 1845-49, and almost one million died of starvation and disease as a result of the Great Potato Famine of ’45-’49. Patrick Moran was born into a country still recovering from the Famine, one of the great disasters of human history. During the first forty years of his life, the constant flow of immigrants, in pursuit of opportunities unavailable to the common people at home in Ireland, would further reduce the population to about 4,000,000 by the end of the century. Three of his daughters, Mary Ellen, Nora, and Delia, and his sons Paddy and John (for a very brief visit) would subsequently join the procession of immigrants to the United States. Paddy and John returned to Ireland to settle and raise their families while Mary Ellen, Nora, and Delia established the American branch of the Morans of Lavallyroe—the McLaughlins, the Harts, and the Fahys.
On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, 1858, the year before the birth of Patrick Moran, James Stephens and a few fellow conspirators met in Dublin and swore an oath renouncing allegiance to the Queen of England and vowed to take up arms and fight “to make Ireland an Independent Democratic Republic.” The society became known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the era of Fenianism in Ireland, and among many Irish in America, had begun. It would culminate in the 1916 Easter Rising and eventually in Irish Independence. From all accounts, the Fenian cause was always given a sympathetic ear, and its proponents a safe haven in the home of Pat Moran of Lavallyroe.
Fenianism was not the only manifestation of the Irish desire to gain independence from England that was at work during Pat Moran’s lifetime. In 1828, after a long struggle, Daniel O’Connell succeeded in obtaining the passage of The Catholic Emancipation Act in the English Parliament. This Act, in theory at least, removed the remnants of legal discrimination against Catholics surviving from the Penal Laws, which had denied them any rights. Now they could enter the professions and sit in Parliament without taking an oath abjuring certain fundamental Catholic beliefs. Parliament, of course, was the English Parliament, in which Ireland was given a number of seats following the abolition of the Irish Parliament by the Act of Union in 1800. These seats were filled by Irish Protestant Landlords, loyal to England, dedicated for the most part to the status quo, and known as The Ascendancy. O’Connell now turned his attention and his immense popularity with the common people of Ireland to the task of repealing the Act of Union and establishing Home Rule. Despite his almost universal popular support (one million people traveling on foot attended one of several great rallies on the Hill of Tara), O’Connell was unsuccessful in his quest for Home Rule by parliamentary and peaceful means and steadfastly opposed violent revolution as an alternative.
In 1875, when Patrick Moran was 16 years old, Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish Protestant Landlord, took up the cause of Home Rule. In his maiden speech in the English House of Commons, he made the point from which he never wavered until his death at 45 in 1891: “Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragment of England?” he asked. “Ireland is not a geographical fragment but a nation.” No man has ever disturbed the scene of British democratic politics so profoundly and for so long as Parnell. In the 1880s, he dominated British parliamentary life and helped bring about a great social revolution: the change in relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland. He also raised popular Irish national feeling to the most effective level it had achieved in a demand for Home Rule for all of Ireland. He would never achieve his goal. The scandal that brought his downfall, and his sudden death before he could fight back, surely changed the course of Irish history.
It is difficult today to understand the state of affairs in Ireland when Pat Moran was growing up in Lavallyroe. The Landlord was “the master.” He could raise rents at will, he could evict whether rent was paid or not; if the tenant improved his holding, he could be taxed for doing so—the rent was raised. The Landlord owned his tenant, his tenant’s land, and his tenant’s vote. Michael Davitt, who was also born in County Mayo, had reason to know these conditions well. At the age of 5, along with his father, mother, and two sisters, he was evicted from his small cabin home, and it was torn down before his eyes. The family, which had survived the famine, was able to get to Lancashire and again survived. Michael went to work as a boy in one of the mills, joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and ended up in prison. He was released in 1877, convinced that the land of Ireland belonged to the Irish people and that Landlordism should go forever. The time was right for what was to become known as the Land War, and almost certainly it touched the life of Patrick Moran, who was then 18.
During 1876-1879, famine again threatened Irish tenant farmers, but the rents were not reduced. The Landlords threatened eviction, and Parliament turned down attempt after attempt to amend the Land Laws. The Irish people grew restive. A land agent (working for an absentee Landlord) was shot at in County Cork. The notorious Lord Leitrim was shot in Donegal. Rack-renting (raising rent for land improved by the tenant) continued. Mayo was one of the worst counties in this regard, and it was there that the first organized assault on Landlordism was made. Walter Burke bought a small estate, doubled the rent, and put a fine of half a year’s rent on the tenants. The terms were: pay or get off the land. Davitt chose to open his campaign with this case, and a huge meeting was held at Irishtown, about four miles from Lavallyroe. Seven thousand people were present. It is quite likely that Pat Moran was one of them. The theme of the speeches was: “the land for the people.”
As a result, the rents were reduced by twenty-five percent and the Land Act of 1881, reluctantly agreed to by Parnell because it granted too little relief, reduced the rents a further forty percent. Parnell appeared at another meeting in Westport, Co Mayo and urged the tenants to: “hold a firm grip on your homesteads.” The phrase became a rallying cry. The pressure was on. More meetings followed. Davitt founded the national Land League at Castlebar in October 1879 and persuaded Parnell to become its president. Process servers were prevented from serving their eviction notices. Funds were set up to support the evicted. New tenants were not forthcoming to work the land from which others were evicted, and the League decided to fight individual cases in the English courts, thus piling up expenses to the landlord. The term “boycott” now entered the English language, so called after one Captain Boycott, agent for Lord Erne, who lived near Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, where Paddy and Betty Moran now live. The crops were ripening, and no one came forward to reap them. In fact, no one would do anything for Captain Boycott, and his effort to import fifty laborers from the north accompanied by two thousand soldiers turned into a fiasco because none of the local people would cooperate.
While England tried to suppress the activities of the League, boycotting went on effectively, and eventually, Parliament had to take notice. In 1881, the Gladstone Land Act was passed granting some concessions. In 1887, when Patrick Moran and Ellen Murphy were married at Bekan, Co Mayo, a more liberal Land Act was enacted. Eventually, through a series of Acts of Parliament culminating in the Land Purchase Act of 1909, the landlords were compensated for their lands, and their Irish tenants, like Pat Moran, were allowed to apply their rents to the purchase of their land. The Land War, which began in County Mayo, had achieved its goal.
Many other significant events of Irish history occurred during Pat Moran’s lifetime. After many attempts, a Home Rule Bill for Ireland finally passed the English Parliament in September 1914 but was not to go into effect until the conclusion of the Great War. The Northern Ireland Unionists strongly and vocally opposed it and threatened force in opposition. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB, later the IRA) had little hope that the Act would ever go into effect and decided on armed rebellion. In 1916, the short-lived Easter Rising took place in Dublin. It had little public support at first, but as the leaders were executed one by one, public opinion was swayed, and in the Parliamentary elections of December 1918, Sinn Féin defeated the Parliamentary Party of Ireland and, as promised, met as Dáil Éireann in Dublin in January of 1919. In March of 1920, the first Black and Tan members of the Royal Irish Constabulary arrived to suppress the Irish Republican Army, which was by now carrying on a kind of guerrilla war to establish an Irish Republic in support of Sinn Féin’s policy of an Independent Irish Dáil or Parliament. The ‘Troubles” were in full swing.
In a supplement to the original Moran Book, Duane Peterson has given an important insight into how this turbulent era touched the Moran family, through an interview with Jim Moran. A copy of that interview should be in the possession of all who received the original book, so I will not repeat it here. In July 1921, the King opened the Parliament of Northern Ireland in Belfast. In December, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, and the Partition of Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, which remained a province of England, had begun. A majority in the Irish Free State approved the treaty in a June 1922 election, but it was opposed by the IRA, and the ensuing Civil War was almost inevitable. For a year, Irish men and women fought each other until the IRA decided to ‘dump arms’ and work toward their goal of a united Irish Republic through political means.
In 1926, De Valera founded the Fianna Fáil party and, in the General Election of 1932, received a majority. For the next six years, an ‘Economic War’ over the payment of Land Annuities was conducted with Britain. In economic terms, this was much more costly for Ireland. England was the best and closest market for Irish agricultural goods and cattle, and now that market was closed. The resultant glut hurt the cattle business badly and caused much hardship for the Morans who were involved in it. In 1938, the ‘Economic War’ ended, and Britain gave up military and naval rights to Irish ports, which she had claimed since the Treaty.
The final six years of Pat Moran’s life were the years of World War II in Europe and, although Ireland remained neutral, they were years of hardship. Rationing of almost everything was in effect. A new emigration had begun and continued for many years as Irish men and women sought employment opportunities in England. He died in 1945, and I still have a very clear memory of his funeral as his three sons, Paddy, John, and Jim, and his grandson Jack carried his coffin on their shoulders up the steep hill to the ruins of the ancient Parish Church where he is buried. He had seen great changes in Ireland during his 86 years.
Almost at the same moment that Pat Moran’s funeral procession wended its way up the hill of Kiltullagh, his oldest granddaughter, Helen McLaughlin, walked down the aisle to marry John McCormick three thousand miles away in New Jersey. A new generation of Irish American descendants of Pat and Ellen Moran was about to begin. This update of the Morans of Lavallyroe is an effort to keep up with their ever-growing numbers as they make their unique impression on what has become an international society. They have distinguished themselves in most fields of human endeavor and seem to have a common thirst and aptitude for further education. Many have earned graduate degrees, including several Doctorates, and there is every indication that this trend will continue in future generations.
In line with these accomplishments, it is a pleasure to note that the only son of the oldest of the three Moran sisters who emigrated to the United States, Brother Terence McLaughlin, was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humanities by St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota, in recognition of his contributions to education over his amazing 66-year career.
*** As written by James Patrick (Seamus) Healy, 2013