ABSTRACT
Early Life Eamon de Valera was born in New York in 1882. His immigrant Irish mother, Catherine Coll, met a Spaniard, Vivion de Valera, and they were married in 1881. Of his parents he remembered little, for his father died in 1885 and he was sent to Ireland to be reared by his maternal grandmother and uncle. He attended the national school at his village of Bruree and later the Christian Brothers School at Charleville. His family was too poor to be able to afford his educational fees, but de Valera's aptitude at mathematics and general excellence in his studies earned for him a scholarship to Blackrock College in Dublin. In 1898, he began Blackrock and again earned scholarships which allowed him to continue at the University College Blackrock and to take a degree in mathematics. He then took a position at Rockwell College in Tipperary, teaching mathematics.
