Book remembers my uncle from Cork, the revolutionary

FORMER UCC student turned artist, and now a qualified genealogist, Linda Keohane has published a book entitled My Uncle Dennie And His Small Part In Ireland’s Civil War.

Dennie Keohane, born in the Mealagh Valley, Bantry, in 1901, was a revolutionary who killed a young man. Dennie lived in exile in London for 22 years before returning to Ireland, and died in Dublin in 1967.

“The first time I remember hearing about Dennie was the phone call to say he was dead,” says Linda.

“But before that, I remember talk about a gun being found on the family land. However, you didn’t ask questions. If things had gone a different way, there’d be a roadside memorial to Dennie or he might have been elected to the Dáil or seen as a hero.

“There were so many participants (in Ireland’s revolutionary period) in a small way. Their stories never saw the light of day, partly because people didn’t want them to. And a thing I’ve been trying to discover since I wrote the book was whether the Free State was executing the anti-Treaty side, left, right and centre.”

When Dennie went to England, says Linda, “he was running away from the situation. I’ve been trying to talk about this. I wonder how many people like him feared they could be imprisoned if they had stayed or would be punished by the State for the part they played against it.”

Linda is almost certain that her uncle killed James McCarthy, known as Benny.

“An interesting thing is that Benny had a sister called May. She married Ger Johnny Sheehan. They were the parents of PJ Sheehan, the late Fine Gael TD for Cork South West.

“People still talk about Civil War politics. PJ Sheehan only died in 2020. At his funeral, it was said that the death of his uncle Benny as a very young man was an influence on his decision to go into politics.”

Towards the end of the Civil War, on St Patrick’s Day in 1923, “four men took Benny from his home at 4am and shot him on the roadside in Bantry. I don’t have 100% proof my uncle was one of those four men.

“The first I knew of the shooting was when my cousin John, who lives a mile from where Benny was shot, told me that as a teenager, he was working in a garage in Bantry. There was a disagreement there one day. A customer turned on John and said ‘Your uncle was that man who shot the poor, misfortunate McCarthy.’ That was 50 years later. Memories are long.

“The death certificate says there were bullet and gunshot wounds. So it seems like two different people may have shot Benny. I’ve kind of accepted that there will always be grey areas.

Linda adds: “Denny was anti-Treaty. I would have loved to find a witness statement in the Bureau of Military History that definitely references him.”

Linda’s father, who was 50 when he married, “revered his older brother, Dennie, who was 14 years older than him. It was said that Dennie had a woman called Annie in Dublin who was 17 years younger than him. That was when he was in his sixties. It was a late-in-life relationship that was very happy.

“When Dennie died suddenly, he was brought back to Bantry to be buried. Annie ran after the hearse. I found that very affecting. She was said to be a lovely soft sort of person, according to her niece who I met. She used to call him ‘poor Denny’ and looked after him as he wasn’t in great health.”

As to why the couple never married, Linda says it could be “because he didn’t want to interface with officialdom.

“The other thing I liked about Denny is the letters he wrote to his mother, telling her not to be worrying and sending her money. They were tough times.”

For Linda, her research into her uncle’s life “was a kind of voyage of discovery. I knew practically nothing about him and ended up really admiring him.

“What I now know about Denny is his influence on my father and the way he approached the northern situation. Also, I’d say my father felt survivor’s guilt.

“Denny had a poor and limited start in life. He was said to be brilliant at school and very handsome. He went to England and worked on the building sites. People say he was a steeplejack. I never found proof of that.

He had a hand-to-mouth existence, he never married and didn’t have children, whereas my father, 14 years younger than Denny, joined the Civil Service. He had a good job that he enjoyed, got married and had kids.

“I’d say he felt that the killing incident kind of ruined Denny’s life.”

County Clare-born Linda’s interest in genealogy came from her parents, who were into tracing people and history.

“My father, growing up in Bantry, remembers men staying in the house. One morning he woke up and saw a rifle and a lot of men hanging around. So there was all that going on.”

Linda studied the History of Family and Genealogical Methods at the University of Limerick and at UCC where the course was transferred. That was about ten years ago. She got first class honours.

After doing first year arts at UCC after leaving school, she dropped out to go travelling, and along the way, she became a self taught visual artist. She loves genealogy.

“You have to be an obsessive kind of person to do it,” she says.

My Uncle Denny is available at Bantry Book Shop, Kerrs and Coughlans in

, Skibbereen Bookshop and Vibes & Scribes in Cork city. It can also be ordered from Linda on her Facebook page.