Manorville’s Link To Ireland’s Fight For Freedom

With President Donald Trump raising eyebrows across the Atlantic by voicing support for the reunification of Ireland, Long Island has its own remarkable connection to the century-old struggle for Irish independence — tucked away in Manorville.

Off Captain Daniel Roe Highway stands a monument honoring Thomas J. “Tom” Clarke and his wife, Kathleen, two central figures in Ireland’s revolutionary history who once called the rural Brookhaven hamlet home. Recognizing their important role in Ireland’s struggle for independence, the Suffolk County Ancient Order of Hibernians erected the memorial in 1987 using Wicklow granite quarried in Ireland.

Trump recently called Irish reunification “fantastic” and said he would like to see it happen, remarks that drew sharply different reactions from Irish nationalists and Northern Ireland unionists. Under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland’s constitutional status can ultimately be changed through democratic consent. Years before Trump’s comments, the Clarkes were pursuing their own vision of an independent Ireland.

Tom Clarke had already spent 15 years in British prisons for his involvement in Irish nationalist activities when he came to America. Kathleen Daly followed him to New York, where they married, and the couple eventually settled into a peaceful life on a Manorville farm.

Their Long Island years proved only an interlude to a tragic and tumultuous second chapter of their lives.

The Clarkes returned to Ireland in 1907, where Tom helped rebuild the Irish Republican Brotherhood and became one of the principal planners of the 1916 Easter Rising. His name appears first among the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Following the failed uprising, British authorities executed Clarke by firing squad on May 3, 1916.

Kathleen carried on.

A founding member of Cumann na mBan and one of the few people entrusted with knowledge of the Rising beforehand, she became an important political figure after her husband’s death. She later served in the Dáil and Seanad and, in 1939, became Dublin’s first female Lord Mayor.