Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Sir William Johnson, born in County Meath, Ireland, was a pioneer in the Mohawk Valley in the early 18th century. He was much liked by the Mohawk Indians, over whom he exerted a benign dictatorship. He was active in the Anglo-French wars and was probably largely responsible for keeping the land from becoming French territory. He built Johnson Hall on the banks of the Mohawk River and was instrumental in attracting Irish migration and settlement in the area. A widower, he took as his second wife a woman named Molly Brant; which of the following is true of Molly?
2. Which of these heroines of the American Revolutionary War was born in Ireland?
3. Three signers of the Declaration of Independence were born in Ireland. Which of these was NOT one of them?
4. Irish clergyman Philip Embury was born in Limerick in 1728, the son of German immigrants to Ireland. He emigrated to New York in 1760 and eventually established this Protestant religion in the United States.
5. Architect James Hoban emigrated to America in 1785, eventually settling in North Carolina. In 1791 he completed work on the State Capitol at Columbia, which he had designed. Hoban's magnum opus, however, was this major Washington edifice, which was completed in 1793 and rebuilt in 1815 (after the War of 1812). Which is it?
6. William Theobald Wolfe Tone was the son of the celebrated Irish patriot Wolfe Tone, who had committed suicide in prison to escape execution after an unsuccessful uprising in 1798. William eventually emigrated to America, where he studied law in New York and served in the military; he also wrote a two-volume biography of his famous father. Prior to his emigration to America, however, Tone had been declared an adopted child of the republic of this European country.
7. Stephen Clegg Rowan was born in Dublin in 1808 and emigrated with his family to Ohio in 1818. He joined the navy and became a commander in 1855 in the Mexican War. He subsequently served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
8. Although the name by which she is generally known suggests that she was born elsewhere, this celebrated seductress and adventuress, whose lovers included King Ludwig of Bavaria, author Alexander Dumas, and composer Franz Liszt, was born Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in Limerick, Ireland in 1818.
9. Irish nationalist Thomas Meagher was dubbed "Meagher of the Sword" by author William Makepeace Thackery after a fiery speech to the Repeal Association in 1846 in which he described the sword as a sacred weapon. Sentenced to death after the uprising of 1848, his sentence was commuted to a life sentence of penal servitude in Tasmania. He escaped in 1852 and emigrated to America, where he bacame a journalist. During the Civil War he became a brigadier general of the Union Army and organized the Irish Brigade. In 1848, before his arrest, Meagher made a significant proposition regarding Ireland which was subsequently adopted and remains today; what did he propose?
10. John Hughes, born in 1797 at Annaloghlan, emigrated to America in 1817. He took holy orders in 1826 and became a vigorous champion of the embattled American Catholic Church. He eventually became the first archbishop of the newly formed archdiocese of New York in 1850 and laid the cornerstone of St. Patrick's Cathedral. What famous university did Hughes first establish in 1841?
11. George Armstrong was born in Armagh in 1822 and emigrated to America at the age of 8 with his family in 1830. Which of these is Armstrong considered to be the "father" of?
12. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa was among the first to join the Fenian movement organized by James Stephens in 1858, and became the manager of its journalistic organ "Irish People". He emigrated to America in 1871 after enduring twenty years of grueling penal servitude following an arrest in 1865 (he was freed on condition that he leave Ireland). Rossa remained in America for the remainder of his life; he became an editor and wrote two books on his experiences in Ireland. After his death in 1915, was his body returned to Ireland for burial?
13. Inventor John Phillip Holland was born in County Clare in 1841 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1872; what major contribution did he make to the field of naval warfare?
14. John Butler Yeats, father of the great poet William Butler Yeats, was a prominent painter and portraitist of his day. In 1908, he travelled to this prominent American city for what he thought would be a brief stay; actually, he remained there for the remainder of his life. Which city was it?
15. James O'Neill, born in Kilkenny in 1849, was the father of the great American playwright Eugene O'Neill; what was James' profession?
16. Dublin-born composer Victor Herbert would achieve great fame in the U.S. as a composer of operettas, comic operas, and popular songs; he would also earn renown as a conductor. Originally, Herbert was an instrumentalist; what was his instrument?
17. Leonora Marie Kearney Barry was born in County Cork in 1849 and emigrated as a child with her family in 1852. She married in 1871, but was left a widow ten years later with two children to support. She took a factory job and learned first-hand about the terrible conditons and low wages that were the lot of female factory workers at that time. She would eventually devote her life to improving the lot of the working woman. By what name did she become popularly known?
18. Another famous reforming "mother" was Mother Jones, nee Mary Harris, coincidentally also born in County Cork in 1830. Brought to America by her father at the age of five, Mary became a schoolteacher and married a member of the Iron Moulder's Union in Memphis, Tenessee and had four children. Her entire family was tragically wiped out in the yellow fever epidemic of 1867. She began a dressmaking business in Chicago to support herself, but she lost both her business and all of her possessions in the Great Chicago Fire. She threw herself into philanthropic work and social reform on behalf of workers' rights and child labor, which consumed the remainder of her life. At what age did Mother Jones die?
19. Our third "mother" is Mother Marie Joseph Butler, born Joanna Butler in (appropriately) Ballynunnery, County Kilkenny. In 1876, she entered the novitiate of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in France. She was sent to Portugal three years later and took her final vows in 1880. She was made superior of a convent school in Braga, Portugal, in 1893; ten years later, she was sent to New York to take charge of the school of the Sacred Heart. Where in New York was she sent?
20. John Robert Gregg was born in Rockcory, County Monaghan, in 1867 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1893; what significant contribution did he make in the line of office work?
21. Filmmaker Rex Ingram emigrated to the U.S. in 1911 at the age of 18 and directed his first film, "The Great Problem", at the age of 23. He became a major force in the still nascent motion picture industry, creating such notable films as "Black Orchids", "Under Crimson Skies", "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", and "The Prisoner of Zenda". His films also introduced such legendary stars as Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro. Ingram was actually not his true surname, but his middle name. His actual surname was the same as another legendary filmmaker; what was it?
22. Legendary Irish tenor John McCormack became an American citizen in 1919, having appeared there for many years in opera and concerts. Hailed along with Enrico Caruso as possibly the greatest tenor of all time, McCormack was also a noted philanthropist, especially active on behalf of Catholic charities. What special recognition did he receive in 1928 in honor of his work in this regard?
23. Actor Barry Fitzgerald moved to America from Ireland in 1936 and enjoyed a highly successful career in motion pictures as a character actor in such films as "The Quiet Man", "How Green Was My Valley", "And Then There Were None", and especially "Going My Way", co-starring with Bing Crosby. In the latter film Fitzgerald played the lovable Irish Catholic priest Father Fitzgibbon, the role for which he is best remembered; was Fitzgerald himself a Catholic?
24. Padraic Colum, the celebrated author, poet, and dramatist, was born at Longford in 1881. He is best known as the author of the lyrics to the song "She Moved Through the Fair". In 1912 he married fellow writer Mary Maguire and they emigrated to the U.S. together, where each taught at Columbia University. In 1923, the legislature of this future U.S. state authorized him to collect and edit the region's native legends and folklore and adapt them as children's literature. Which state was it?
25. Actress Maureen O'Sullivan, best known as Jane to Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan in the 1932 film "Tarzan", was born in Roscommon, Ireland, in 1911. Which of these other famous Irish-American actresses was born in Ireland?
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