ABSTRACT
Thomas Brennan, the subject of the second piece here reproduced, was a close friend from their first meeting in January 1878 until Davitt’s death. He had begun as a clerk in the North Dublin City Milling Company in Castlebar and was a Fenian. He served a secretary of the central committee of the Land League, but emigrated to Nebraska in 1882 following the Kilmainham Treaty. He prospered there as a property developer, Davitt visiting him on his tours of the United States. Here, in an interview reprinted in the Gaelic American just days after his friend’s death, he comments on the news. “It was Davitt’s great idea to capture beforehand, for the Irish cause, the as yet unenfranchised masses, by making the Irish Party their spokesman, while they still had no direct representatives to plead their case.
