On this day in 1805, Michael Doheny, Young Irelander, author, lawyer and founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in America, was born at Brookhill near Fethard.
Doheny, a farmer’s son, received a basic education from an itinerant scholar and in 1826 attended Maher’s classical academy near Emly for nine months before entering King’s Inns in Dublin in 1835 and being called to the bar in 1838.
In 1841, he joined Daniel O’Connell’s Loyal National Repeal Association who sought to peacefully repeal the 1801 Act of Union. Doheny became active in setting up town meetings and soon becoming a member of the Association’s general committee.
By 1842, Doheny became associated with the more militant younger generation of repealers gathering around Thomas Davis and he assisted in the launch of a nationalist newspaper, The Nation. Despite numerous of his articles appearing in that paper, he was a more impressive orator than writer and he regularly addressed repeal meetings and helped organise the ‘monster meeting’ in Cashel in 1843.
1n 1846, Doheny and other Young Irelanders broker with O’ Connell’s Repeal Association and founded the Irish Confederation. Doheny began setting up Confederate clubs in Tipperary and came around to the idea of armed insurrection. He was arrested for seditious speechmaking at Cashel in July 1848. Following the failure of the 1848 rebellion at Ballingarry, Doheny fled Ireland for New York.
While in America, Doheny became involved with the New York Irish militia. Along with John O’ Mahoney, he founded the Emmet Monument Association, which planned to mobilise an Irish-American force to invade Ireland- but which came to nothing. By 1859, Doheny and O’ Mahoney founded the Fenian Brotherhood which adopted the organisational structure set out by James Stephens when he established the IRB in 1858.
In latter-life Doheny continued to promote Fenian ideals on both sides of the Atlantic. In America, he founded another newspaper- The Phoenix. While on a visit to Ireland in 1861, he appears to have argued for using the excitement surrounding the funeral of nationalist Terence McManus to spark an insurrection in Dublin. This was foiled by James Stephens.
He died on 1 April 1862 in New York and is buried in Calvary cemetery.
Source: https://www.dib.ie/biography/doheny-michael-a2655
