Thomas Francis Meagher 200th Birthday card children’s competition. Please click on the image below for competition sheet, running in all Waterford Libraries. Closing date 1st September 2023. Prizes are provided by the TFM Committee.
The Thomas Francis Meagher Tricolour Committee are delighted to partner with Waterford Libraries to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Francis Meagher. Born in The Granville Hotel on the third of August in 1823. The Waterford man went on to be the first person to fly the Irish Tricolour from 33 The Mall on the 1st of March. “The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the orange and the green and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood”
He was arrested after taking part in the failed 1848 rebellion and was sentenced to death. However due to international outcry, he was transported to Tasmania then known as Van Diemen’s Land in permanent exile, never to return to Ireland. He escaped from Tasmania four years later and made his way to America, quickly becoming a top New York lawyer. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Meagher commanded over fifteen thousand men known as The Fighting 69th. He also was a pallbearer at Abraham Lincoln’s funeral. Upon the conclusion of the American Civil War Meagher was later made Governor of Montana. He died aged forty three on the first of July 1867 after falling overboard a steam ship into the treacherous waters of the Missouri River. The reasoning for his disappearance is still a mystery to this day.
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