THE great-great granddaughter of writer and historian Daniel MacCarthy Glas has said he would ‘no doubt be delighted’ that his collection of research is coming home to Dunmanway Library.

Susan MacCarthy donated the collection to the Cork city and county archives service in 2017. In a speech read out on her behalf, she said that her great-great grandfather would be very happy to see locals gathering all these years later to remember his own visits, and his historical research in the Dunmanway area and further afield between the 1860s and 1880s.

She added that since 2017, she has visited Dunmanway on many occasions and told how she and her family have made so many friends in the town.

The MacCarthy Glas archive comprises 1,200 unique items and is of major historical importance, containing personal letters, manuscripts, photographs and drawings from Daniel and other family members. Members of his family were poets and writers, with some holding important positions reflecting the fact that they had married members of the British elite.

The complex process of repatriating the MacCarthy Glas archive began a number of years ago, and was eventually and successfully concluded by Dunmanway history consultant Michelle O’Mahony, Dr Mervyn O’Driscoll in UCC, Nigel McCarthy of the McCarthy DNA Project, and the archivists of the Cork city and county archives.

Speaking to The Southern Star Michelle O’Mahony said that what began as a ‘chance email’ to her in 2015 has turned into the repatriation to Ireland of one of the biggest treasure troves of information for historians, playwrights and much more.

‘It is a fascinating collection with wide ranging subject matter taking the researcher across Europe, Africa, India and America. However, closer to home it fills in many questions marks that historians like us have had about Dunmanway over the years,’ said Michelle.

Felix Meehan, archivist at the Cork city and county archives also spoke at the launch on Tuesday, while Padraig MacCarthaigh sang an old Irish song popular among the old medieval clans of Ireland.

‘Daniel’s letters remind us of the many characters he met in the 1860s and 1870s as he researched in Dunmanway’ said Michelle.

‘He captures the Dunmanway of a bygone era in places such as Togher Castle, Ballinacarriga and Ballymoney and Ballineen and the people, such as the various members of the MacCarthy families in the area who he mentions in his diaries and letters.’

Born to a wealthy Irish Catholic merchant family in London in 1807, Daniel had strong connections with Dunmanway as his grandfather had emigrated from there to London in 1763.

The family was directly descended from the princes of Carbery, the MacCarthy Reagh family and that of MacCarthy Glas based at Togher Castle, and other locations around Dunmanway. He died in 1884. The collection was donated in 2017 by their descendants Susan and Don MacCarthy.

Daniel took a major interest in his ancestry and in Irish history and went on to author two important books. He also contributed historical articles to The Nation Irish newspaper and various journals during the Irish historical awakening of the nineteenth century.

Much of his works involved painstaking research through State papers and other records in Ireland, Britain and France. Daniel was also in detailed correspondence with celebrated Cork historian Dr Richard Caulfield and a large circle of Irish scholars, antiquarians, archaeologists and poets.

A noted philanthropist, he also sponsored the education of students, assisted Catholic institutions and helped preserve historical buildings and monuments in West Cork.

The majority of the material within the collection dates from the 1700s and 1800s and, as with any large personal or family archive, the scope of the collection is immense, documenting a range of topics from the MacCarthy aristocratic lineage to nineteenth century poetry and historiography.

One document, the 1784 family pedigree of the Gaelic prince Jermiah MacCarthy (Diarmuid an Duna) has been identified as having immense cultural and historical significance. It was compiled by the famous poet John Collins of Myross, known as the last bard of Munster. Michelle explained the significance of this artefact.

‘This unique document written in a combination of both Irish and English, is one of the very few original manuscripts that we know of in existence from Collins or indeed any other Gaelic scholar from the period. Written on parchment, the pedigree bears a wax seal of John Butler, Catholic Bishop of Cork, who later became Baron Dunboyne.’

The Daniel MacCarthy Glas Collection, which has been running at the Cork city and county archives will be exhibited at Dunmanway Library until Friday February 13th, and a special mention also goes to library officer Lorraine Lynch and her staff for accommodating this important exhibition.

It is expected that the collection will be exhibited at Skibbereen Library at a later date.