The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-03-09
"THE MEN OF 49,"

Sir: To decide friendly wager may l ask if
Mr.. Oswald Crawford whose very readable and in
structive articles appearing from week to
week in the Intermountain Catholic is an English
man. an Irishman or an American.
JAMES GAFFENY.
As Mr.. Gaffenys letter is addressed to the Edi-
tor we assume he intends it for publication and
expects an official answer We will make his in
quiry the text for an editorial on subject that is
very dear to us. Oswald Crawford is an Irishman,
the grandson of Naper Crawford one of the par
ties in the great distiIlery of Beemish & Craw-
ford Cork. There may yet be living in Utah,
Montana, Nevada or Colorado few South of
Ireland men readers of the Intermountan Cath
olic who remember the Beemish & Crawford firm,
which with the Wyses the largest distilling
house i'll Great Britain and Ireland The Craw-
fords settled in Ireland after the Norman invasion
and with the Fitzes, the Fitzgeralds, Fitzsimmons
and Fitzhughes became more Irish than the Irish
themselves" They intermarried with the daugh-
tiers of the Celtic chiefs and in time identified
themselves with the national and political life of
the Irish people. Many of the organizers and
leaders in nearly all the rebellions and "risings"
in Ireland for the last four hundred years were of
Hamilton Rowan. Napier Tandy, Waffle Tone and,
their mothers side, Robert and Thomas Adds
Emmett. John O'Connor Crawford, grand uncle
of Oswald Crawford, who is now contributing a
series of splendid and scholarly articles for this
paper, was "out" with William Smith OBrien in
the rebellion of AS and with $50 other "rebes" in
Guiding John Mitchell, was sentenced to transpor-
tation for fourteen years. He died on the convict
ship, Centaur when she was in the roadstead oppo-
site Cape Town, South Africa. He was buried in
Cape Colony but in 1854 the British government
permitted his bodysto be brought back to Ireland
and re-entered in the presence of 10000 people.
Darcy MCGEE says that 10000 men walked behind
the hearse to the graveyard at Bandon, where he
was buried. There is an interesting bit of history
associated with the convict ship Centaur, which
in 1849 sailed out of the Cove of Cork now
Queenstown, with the political prisoners for South
Africa. Seventy years ago the name of Botany
Bay, Van Dieman's Land, was as familiar to the
ears of our fathers and grandfathers as New York
is now to ours. 1t was then the great penal and
convict settlement to which the political prisoners
of Ireland and many CT the greatest ruffians of
England were sentenced Cardinal Moran in his
history of the Catholic Church in Australia de-
votes almost chapter to the vicissitudes of the
Irish exiles at Botany Bay About this time-70
years ago-the British government, in answer to
repeated protests from Australia and New Zea-
land, removed the convict to Cape Colony After
some time the white population of the cape de
nounced the government of Great Britain and Ire
land for fastening upon the Colony the stigma and
disgrace of penalism. They sent monster petit
ton to the home parliament, and while the petition
was on its way the Centaur anchored in the Cape
Town roadstead The colonists refused to allow
the captain to land his cargo of human freight In
those days it took nearly year to send and re-
ceive answer to letters mailed to England. The
captain was allowed to bury his dead shore and
supplies were furnished him pending the result of
the petition. In the meantime many of the Irish
exiles died on board the ship, and among them
Thomas O'Connor Crawford The Centaur was
ordered to Bermuda, and what is called Ire
land Island Bermuda, became for some years
convict settlement. John Mitchell here wrote the
rough sketch of his "Diary of the Convict" said
by Mr.. Gladstone to be the best work of its kind
published in the English language. 1t is great
pity that some patriotic Irishman does not do for
the men of AS what Madden did for those of '9S
when he wrote his vouminous History of the
United Irishmen." At no period in Irish history
did there appear more brilliant galaxy of bright
and talented men than during the troublesome days
of '48. Some day, we hope, full justice will be
done to their memory. their patriotism and excep-
tional abilities.