Maurice O'Connell: Maurice O'Connell, who has died aged 82, was a former professor of modern history at Fordham University, New York. A great-great-grandson of Daniel O'Connell, he collected and edited his ancestor's correspondence, which was published in eight volumes.
In this and other works he strongly challenged the portrayal of O'Connell as a clerical reactionary and opportunist politician. He depicted O'Connell as far more radical and far more liberal than most of his contemporaries, including the Young Irelanders. He showed him to be as passionately committed to the cause of black American slaves as he was to the cause of Irish freedom, and pointed to his advocacy of the complete separation of church and state.
Arguing that O'Connell was not the serial adulterer of popular legend, he acknowledged that his ancestor sowed wild oats aplenty, albeit before his marriage. But "the combination of history, correspond-
ence and folklore points to the (dis-
appointing) conclusion that O'Connell was a faithful husband." Fidelity did not rate highly in folklore, however, and so the legend of fabulous virility grew.
Born on December 29th, 1922, Maurice O'Connell was the third son of Capt Maurice and Emily O'Connell of Kilheffernan House, Clonmel,
Co Tipperary. His father had been in the British army and was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme; he later served in the Free State army, retiring in 1946.
Maurice attended Belvedere College, and when he matriculated in 1939 his father insisted that he study medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Following an unhappy year studying a subject he hated, he was relieved to fail his pre-med. He then spent "12 inefficient years" working for the Bank of Ireland. By night he studied at University College Dublin, obtaining a BA degree in 1952 and an MA, with first-class honours in history, in 1954.
He completed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1962 he took his doctorate. Following a stint teaching at the University of Portland, Oregon, he moved in 1964 to Fordham University. He taught modern Irish and modern British history and was appointed professor in 1973; he retired in 1988.
In 1963 he married Betty McCann, a niece of Pierce McCann, who had led the Irish Volunteers in Tipperary after the split with Redmond and was elected to Westminster in the 1918 election while a prisoner in Gloucester.
Publication of The Correspondence of Daniel O'Connell began in 1972 and was completed in 1980. He spent three months each year working on research in Dublin. One Saturday afternoon, immersed in his work, he found himself locked into the National Library and was eventually freed by the fire brigade.
His other books included Irish politics and Social Conflict in the Age of the American Revolution (1965), which charted the emergence of the Irish middle class. He dedicated Daniel O'Connell: the Man and His Politics (1990) to John Hume, "the heir to O'Connell". Conor Cruise O'Brien, in his introduction, noted that Maurice O'Connell wrote "about his great ancestor with respect, but not leaving out the warts".
Following his retirement from teaching, he and his wife settled in Blackrock, Co Dublin. He also kept a cottage on the ancestral property in Derrynane.
He was generous, although his wife was sometimes bemused by his sense of hospitality. He regularly forgot to tell her of friends and colleagues he brought home to be fed. Once she returned to find a Japanese tourist camping in the garden. Maurice explained that the visitor had undergone a mystical experience on the Skelligs and needed peace and quiet to meditate.
Predeceased by his wife, Betty, in 1999, he is survived by his brothers, Daniel and Geoffrey, sister, Ricarda (Dicky Cunningham), nephews and nieces.
Maurice Rickard O'Connell: born December 29th, 1922; died September 27th, 2005