Mostrar 26 resultados

James Pearse was born in London on 8 December 1839. A gifted sculptor, he came to Ireland in about 1860. In the early 1870s he formed a partnership with Patrick J. O’Neill specialising in monumental works which had its workshop on Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin. This partnership was dissolved in about 1878. Between 1880 and 1891 Pearse worked in partnership with his foreman Edward Sharp (who was also from England). Following the dissolution of this partnership, Pearse ran his own monumental sculpture business in the Irish capital. Pearse married twice. By his second wife, Margaret Brady, whom he married in October 1877, he had two daughters and two sons. Pearse was largely self-educated. As a bibliophile, he was an avid reader and embraced rationalist thinking and scientific method. Although Pearse was nominally a Catholic (he converted to the religion in about 1869), evidence suggests that he was an atheist. He was an avid supporter of the radical English politician and atheist propagandist Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) and wrote several tracts for various secularist publications under the pseudonym ‘Humanitas’. Influenced by the strongly nationalist opinions of his wife, Pearse was also a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He died suddenly on 5 September 1900 in Birmingham while on a visit to relations. After his death, the family business was carried on for a few years under the name James Pearse & Sons by his younger son, the sculptor William Pearse (1881-1916), with some help from his elder son, Patrick Pearse (1879-1916). Both were executed for their part in the 1916 Rising. The collection includes correspondence (including letters to James Pearse from Charles Bradlaugh, Annie Besant and other prominent secularist and atheist activists) and financial and photographic records relating to his monumental sculpture business.

This section contains a small of collection of letters to Patrick Pearse. Many of the letters relate to Pearse’s fundraising trip to the United States from March to June 1914. The purpose of the visit was to raise funds for St. Enda’s School in Dublin and many of the letters are from potential donors and Irish Americans sympathetic to Pearse’s cultural nationalism and his efforts to promote the revival of the Irish language. Other letters relate to the routine management of St. Enda’s and to Pearse’s involvement with the Irish Volunteers.

A collection of mainly legal and financial papers relating to St. Enda’s School (Scoil Éanna), an Irish language college established by Patrick Pearse in Cullenswood House on Oakley Road in Ranelagh, Dublin, in 1908. The school moved to the Hermitage, a former country house in Rathfarnham, in 1910. Pearse founded St. Ita’s School for girls along the same general lines as St. Enda’s in Cullenswood House in 1910, when he moved St. Enda's boys' school to Rathfarnham. Some of the records refer to the precarious financial state of St. Enda’s and to Pearse’s efforts to raise funds to keep the school solvent. The section also contains some miscellaneous notes by Pearse on education-related subjects. Some of the documents listed below are in either Pearse’s hand or are endorsed with his signature.

Margaret Mary Pearse was a teacher, Irish language activist, and politician. She was born in Dublin on 4 August 1878, the eldest child of James Pearse and Margaret Pearse (née Brady). Margaret Mary worked with her brothers Patrick and William to found St. Enda’s School (Scoil Éanna) in Cullenswood House in Ranelagh, Dublin, in 1908. Following the deaths of her brothers in 1916, she took over the management of the school. Scoil Éanna continued until 1935 when financial troubles forced its closure. In public life, she was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin County constituency at the 1933 general election. She subsequently served as a senator in Seanad Éireann (the upper house of the of the Oireachtas) from 1938 to 1968. Margaret Mary Pearse shared her brother’s cultural and political vision for Ireland and devoted much of her life to upholding Patrick’s legacy. She lived out her life in St. Enda’s, but was never completely free from financial difficulties. She died on 7 November 1968 and, following the wishes of her mother, bequeathed Scoil Éanna to the Irish state. The collection comprises mostly personal papers including correspondence, photographs, and ephemera. Many of the records relate to her role in the management of Scoil Éanna, her interest in education, and to her efforts to perpetuate the memory of the role played by her family in the revolutionary period.