Thomas D'Arcy McGee - Early Life

Early Life

Widely known as D'Arcy McGee, he was born on April 13, 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland, and raised as a Roman Catholic. From his mother, the daughter of a Dublin bookseller, he learned the history of Ireland, which later influenced his writing and political activity. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Wexford, where his father, James Mcgee was employed by the coast guard. In Wexford he attended a local hedge school, where the teacher, Michael Donnelly, fed his hunger for knowledge and where he learned of the long history of English occupation and Irish rebellion, including the more recent uprising of 1798. In 1842 at age 17, McGee left Ireland with his sister due to a poor relationship with their stepmother, Margaret Dea, who had married his father in 1840 after the death of his mother August 22, 1833. He sailed from Wexford harbour aboard the brig Leo, bound for the United States via Quebec, Canada.On the Leo he wrote many of his early poems -Mostly about Ireland. He soon found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoe's Boston Pilot, a Catholic newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts. A few years later he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited the nationalist newspaper The Nation. His support for and his involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped the country by steamship and returned to the United States.