 |
| Jean Lannes |
For quite awhile, ever since I found him actually, I've been curious as to why William McGarr from County Wicklow, Ireland was blessed with the middle name of Lannes. It wasn't his mother's maiden name, she was Mary Doyle. It wasn't a name I'd ever heard before. It certainly didn't sound Irish; not to mention very few Irish persons even had middle names in 1836, the year of William's birth.
Today I typed "Lannes" into my Google search engine. What came up was page after page of a Frenchman by the name of Jean Lannes, aka the 1st Duc de Montebello, one of Napolean's generals. Now why would someone in County Wicklow name their son after a French general? From my reading of Irish history, I recalled the French offering assistance during the Rising of 1798, perhaps that was it? Indeed, Napoleon did stage the Expédition d'Irlande to aid the United Irishmen in their rebellion against England. Furthermore, a certain Madame Junot wrote, "only those who knew Lannes can form a just idea of the hatred he bore England...". That would do it.
The naming choices in this family get even more interesting. When William Lannes himself became a father, the name he chose for his son was Robert Emmett McGarr, as in the great Irish patriot Robert Emmett who led a rebellion against England in 1803 for which he was executed. William's other son was named William Marion McGarr. That one took some searching and I'm not positive I'm right about the origin of this one. A search for Marion came up with many unrelated hits. When I added the search term "Irish hero" however, I found numerous articles about a soldier in America, among them, one titled, "Irishmen in General Washington's Army", and we all know who General Washington's foe was. |
| Francis Marion |
The 1798 Rebellion was very much influenced by the American and French revolutions, and Wicklow took a centre stage in the uprising, so this wouldn't surprise me, Ellie. Though I do find it amazing how informed people were 200 years ago, remembering they were mostly illiterate, and often lived in rural areas. And the your McGarr family lived in what is still the back end of nowhere :-)))
ReplyDeleteHa ha. They do don't they? I read somewhere, I think it was the book "The Hidden Ireland", that said even rural dwellers were quite up on things on the continent. Because the priests traveled there often and brought the news home.
ReplyDelete