An article on the history of the Wray family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Wrays were the owners of the Ards Estate before it was purchased by the Stewarts in 1781. It is noted that in about 1700 William Wray ‘bought 5,000 acres of land between Dunfanaghy and Doe from William Sampson’. The article adds: 'In 1781 the estate was sold to Mr Alexander Stewart, brother of the first Marquess of Londonderry and uncle of the infamous Lord Castlereagh, for the sum of £13,250 in order to meet the owner’s debts'. An appendix to the article includes some brief notes on the Stewarts of Ards compiled by Fr. T.J. Walsh, a diocesan priest in Cork.
Statement by Fr. Augustine Hayden OFM Cap., ‘Franciscan Monastery, Rochestown, County Cork, formerly of the Priory, Church Street, Dublin’, referring to the hostilities during Easter Week, 1916. The record (which is incomplete) is a copy of the statement made by Fr. Augustine to the Bureau of Military History (held in the Irish Military Archives). The statement concludes on Monday, 8 May 1916, before the executions of Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston, Con Colbert and Éamonn Ceannt.
Missionary Bulletin leaflet, No. 11 (Oct. 1979). The bulletin notes the Golden Jubilee of the arrival (4 Feb. 1929) of the Irish Capuchins in Cape Town and gives a brief history of landmarks in the South African mission
Recollections by an t-Athar Eláir OFM Cap. (Fr. Hilary McDonagh OFM Cap.) of the re-internment of Fr. Albert Bibby OFM Cap. and Fr. Dominic O’Connor OFM Cap. in the cemetery of Rochestown Capuchin Friary, County Cork, in 1958. The notes were compiled by Fr. Nessan Shaw OFM Cap. The manuscript is incomplete.
Publication by Fr. Owen O’Sullivan OFM Cap. on the history of the Irish Capuchins in Zambia, 1931-1981 ([Zambia, 1982]). The chapter headings include: the pioneers; the land and its people in a changing world; a beginning is made; working through schools; the friars’ conditions; progress step by step and stone by stone.
A letter from Dermot MacIntyre to Fr. David Kelleher OFM Cap. referring to the history of the former Stewart-Bam residence in Ards. An extract from the letter reads: 'In regard to Ards and Ards House, I have just found an old notebook of my father’s. He used to jot down bits and pieces on anything to hand and in this old notebook he has an entry dated, Friday, December 30, 1910. He writes: "Was at a dance in Ards House last night given by Sir Pieter Bam. Charlie Coll and I played for them. Bam came in about 9 o’clock. I did not like it all but would rather be in the poorest thatch house in Doe, with the Gaelic sounding round me, than in the midst of it all. Bam does his best to unbend, but it is plainly an effort and he seems to know himself that it won’t be successful. His wife is outrageously proud. She sat all the time like an incarnate goddess and noticed no one. Such pride is a sin against Heaven. You would think the ordinary people were less than dogs to her. Her sister is not one whit better"'. Further extracts from his father’s journal refer to the landlord’s relationships with the workers and tenants on the Ards estate, to the histories of various local churches, to a Feis at Doe Castle in 1910, and to the building of the Lough Swilly railway in Donegal.
Transcript of Fr. Ronan Herlihy’s oral account of his missionary work in Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia). The file was compiled as part of Dr. Charles Flynn’s resources for the study of mission history at Maynooth University. This project was funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Irish Capuchin Archives holds a digital copy of this file.
