Historically significant Daniel MacCarthy archive to go on public display Cork

The Cork City and County Archives Service is to open the long-lost archive of writer and historian Daniel MacCarthy Glas (1807- 1884) to the public.

The archive was donated by his descendants Susan MacCarthy and Don MacCarthy of Oregon, USA. The collection documents a range of topics: from the MacCarthy lineage, to 19th century poetry and historiography, the Irish nationalist movement, the history of early modern Ireland, the French Revolution of 1848, the British empire in India and South Africa, emigration, to the Great Famine and its dire impact on the local population in West Cork.

There will be a public exhibition for National Heritage Week, The Tanist of Carbery: Daniel MacCarthy Glas and His Long-Lost Archive, which will be on display at the Cork City and County Archives, Blackpool from August 18 for National Heritage Week and beyond.

The Heritage Council of Ireland, under their 2025 heritage stewardship scheme, has funded the purchase of two state-of-the-art exhibition cases to facilitate the secure display of the items. 

The exhibition will tour libraries and other locations around Cork city and county at a later date.

Unique

Comprising almost 1,400 unique items, the archive is of major historical importance containing personal letters, manuscripts, photographs and drawings from Daniel MacCarthy and other family members.

Born in London of Irish descent, MacCarthy’s father-in-law was rear-admiral Home Riggs Popham who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and invented a code of signals adopted by the navy in 1803.

One historically priceless document in the archive, a 1784 family pedigree of the Gaelic prince Jeremiah MacCarthy (Diarmuid MacCárthaigh an Dúna) compiled by famous poet-schoolmaster Séan Ó Coileáin of Myross, “The Last Bard of Munster”, has been identified as having immense significance. 

This unique parchment, written in a combination of both Irish and English, is one of very few original manuscripts in existence from Ó Coileain or any other Gaelic scholar from the period.

The pedigree has been subject to a detailed process of transcription and interpretation by professor Cornelius Buttimer, formerly of UCC. In the coming years parts of the archive shall also be digitised and placed online.