John MACBRIDE

1868 - 1916  (47 years)

• Name	John MACBRIDE
  Born	7 May 1868	Westport, County Mayo, Ireland
  Gender	Male
  Died	5 May 1916	Kilmainham Jail, Dublin, Ireland   [1]
  Person ID	I85564	Families of the Overberg
  Last Modified	12 Dec 2019

  
  

  Father	Peter MACBRIDE
  Mother	Honoria GILL
  Family ID	F32155	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	Maud GONNE,   b. 1866,   d. 1953  (Age 87 years)
  Last Modified	12 Dec 2019
  Family ID	F32156	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 2	Maud GONNE,   b. 1866,   d. 1953  (Age 87 years)
  Children	1. Sean MACBRIDE
  Last Modified	12 Dec 2019
  Family ID	F32157	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Sources

  [S2] SABIODIC. Irish patriot and volunteer in the Boer forces during the Second Anglo-Boer War. Little is known of John’s youth, apart from the fact that he went to the U.S.A. as a young journalist. In about 1895 he settled in the Transvaal Republic, where he worked for a time as a sampler at Langlaagte Mine and later at a printing works in Johannesburg. Towards the middle of 1899 the Irish in the Transvaal formulated plans to aid the republic in the forthcoming struggle against Britain, and a year of victimization led them to form a secret Irish Brigade. M. was made the officer commanding the First Irish Brigade, which was founded on 1.10.1899, and was given the rank of major the next day. He was also appointed as special justice of the peace. At the beginning of the Second Anglo-Boer War (11 October) M. was in Natal. On 30 November, with his forty Irish comrades and twenty-seven Boers under Lieutenant (later Captain) Koos Boshoff, he attacked a British fort opposite Lombardskop, but was surprised by a superior British force and had a very narrow escape. On the eve of the British breakthrough at Pietershoogte on 26.2.1900, the Ermelo commando, under Commandant J. N. H. (Hans) Grobler, found themselves at Horseshoe Hill, where M. and forty members of his Irish Brigade joined them during the night and took an active part in the subsequent military operations in Natal. When Johannesburg was occupied by British forces on May 31, M. and Colonel Arthur Lynch, officer commanding the Second Irish Brigade, were responsible for keeping the road to Pretoria open by fighting a rear-guard action. The Irish fought bravely in many battles but when Pretoria fell to the British troops on June 5, M. and some of the Boer commandos withdrew over the Mozambique border from Hectorspruit. M. was so inspired by the Boers' struggle that after the war his republican activities were carried into Ireland. In 1905, in his absence, he was elected a member of the British parliament, but on the advice of his friends decided to de-cline the offer and remain in Paris, where he worked as a correspondent for various American and Irish newspapers. He was later allowed to return to Dublin unmolested and became a water-bailiff in the service of the local municipality. He maintained close ties with the Irish Separatist Movement. On the Easter Monday of 1916 he joined the Irish rebels. After his capture, he was, because of his role in the Anglo-Boer War which was still held against him, one of the first to be sentenced to death. He refused to beg for remission of sentence and died as a true patriot. John was known among the Boers as a brave and able man of great moral strength. In Ire-land he was regarded as a patriot and after his death as a martyr. As far as his appearance is concerned, Deneys Reitz described him as an unattractive, red-haired little man. MacBride’s wife was the beautiful Maud Gonne who was at one stage known as the world's most beautiful woman and who was the inspiration for many of W. B. Yeats's poems and plays. She was the symbol of Irish opposition to the British, a founder-member of the Sinn Fein movement and a prominent re-publican politician. John’s deeds inspired his only son Sean to found the Republican Party Clann na Poblachta in later years. As Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Costello cabinet, Sean read a proclamation on Easter Monday 1949 in terms of which the Irish Republic came into being.