Life
1732-1809 [Chevalier Thomas O’Gorman]; b. Castletown, Co. Clare;
ed. Irish College, Paris, MD; m. dg. of Count d’Eon, and inherited
extensive vineyards which he lost in the revolution, whereat he retired
to Ireland on the charity of his relations; he was created Chevalier in
the Irish Brigade by Louis XV, a personal friend; native Irish-speaker;
associated with Charles O’Conor from c.1764; collected Irish manuscripts
and compiled pedigrees of expatriates, arranging for the Book of Lecan
[recte Ballymote] to be given to the RIA by the Irish College,
being the first MS in Irish to come to the RIA; he possessed a complete
set of the Annals. DIB
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Works
Denis Gwynn, The O’Gorman Mahon, Duellist, Adventurer, and Politician
(Jarrolds 1934), 247[?]pp. ports.
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Commentary
C. C. & R. E. Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor Michigan: Irish American Cultural Inst./University Microfilms 1980): Charles O’Conor of Belanagare commends O’Gorman’s projected history of Co. Clare on
‘Smith’s plan’, viz., the author of histories of Down,
Waterford, and Cork, and Kerry, later praised by T. B. Macauley, and supplies
information from Leabhar Gabhála, and the Irish Annals,
and recommends the Annals of the Four Masters as a source for the
later period. (1 Sept. 1767; p.199f.; also further letters to, at p.399,
400, &c.); also, ‘I have known [him] for seventeen years’
([1781]; here p.414.)
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