Student hopes to shed light on prominent Ennis man

THE life of prominent Ennis townsman Thomas Stanislaus Cleary is the subject of a research project being carried out by a Clare student who is looking for any information or to make contact with any surviving relatives.

Oisín Moran, a history postgraduate student at the National University of Ireland in Galway has begun researching the career of TS Cleary (1851 – 1898), the proprietor and editor of The Clare Independent and Tipperary Catholic Times.
Oisín has already been put in touch with one of Cleary’s relatives by Blackrock College, however, he is hoping the people of Ennis will also be able to provide some valuable information.
Born in Dublin, Cleary moved to Clare in 1875. He was editor of The Clare Independent between 1876 and 1885, was a financial contributor to the Maid of Erin monument and was the main Land League organiser for County Clare. Cleary was a published author and he also contributed to other newspapers such as The Nation, United Ireland and The Freeman’s Journal. He sometimes wrote under pseudonyms including Tom Telephone and Denis O’Dunn.
Oisín explained he decided to research Cleary due to his interest in the land war. “I became interested in the land war during my undergraduate degree. I studied under Dr Laurence Marley who is now my supervisor for this research. A large amount of historical work done on the land war is concentrated on national leaders like Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt but there is not as much work done on the local organisation and local leaders of the Land League such as the organisation of the league in Clare.
TS Cleary was the main Land League organiser for County Clare and I chose this project to get a practical understanding of just how the land league went about organising a county,” he said.
“There are some very eminent historians that have mentioned Cleary in their work, historians such as Professor Paul Bew, Dr Marie Louise Legg and Dr Myles Dungan. However, Cleary has received only brief mentions, Professor Bew in regard to the land league saw him as a key provincial editor. Little was known about his early life or details concerning how he went about organising the Land League in County Clare but I do hope to change that.”
Oisín went on, “There is no biographic entry for Cleary in the Dictionary of Irish Biography but the British version, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, does include Cleary. Up until now, little was known about his early life other than that Cleary was born in Dublin in 1851.
It transpires that TS had at least one older brother, John, but they were orphaned in 1854. The Cleary brothers were among some of the first pupils to attend Blackrock College in the 1860s. Once Cleary finished school, he worked for The Dublin Evening Post before moving to Clare in 1875 and editing The Clare Freeman. In 1876, he set up his own newspaper The Clare Independent and Tipperary Catholic Times. It is incorrectly thought that Cleary had just two sons, in fact, he had 10 children most of whom were born in Ennis.”
Apart from Oisín’s interest in the Land League, it was Cleary’s writings that also appealed to him.
“Cleary also published two books a book of poetry Twitterings at Twilight (1883) and Songs of the Irish Land War (1888), which humorously capture episodes during the Plan of Campaign including a monster meeting in Ennis in 1887.
However, in 1882, Cleary wrote a play, one that was inspired by the industrial exhibition that was taking place in Dublin. The play was called Shin-Fain or Ourselves Alone a Drama for the Exhibition, this title is the first published use of the words Sinn Féin. This is an interesting side to Cleary; he appears to have been a cultural nationalist, a side that will be interesting to explore.”
Oisín explained his research is going well so far and he paid particular praise to the Local Studies Centre in Clare County Library.
“There is a lot of work still to cover but it would really be helped if I could make contact with any of TS Cleary’s relatives. I am hoping there are some of his relatives that still live or at least keep in touch with Clare. As he was such a productive writer, I am hoping he may have kept diaries that have survived through the generations.”
Anybody with information can contact Oisín on o.moran1@nuigalway.ie or by phone 087 6745680.