Family
Thomas Francis Meagher was born in what is now The Granville Hotel on the Quay in Waterford City, Ireland and from the age of two lived at Number 19, The Mall (a short distance from his birthplace). His father, Thomas Meagher (1796–1874), was a wealthy merchant who had retired to enter politics. He was twice elected Mayor of the City, which he also represented in Parliament from August 1847 to March 1857. He had lived in the city since he was a young man.
The senior Meagher was born in St John's, Newfoundland, where his father, also Thomas (1763–1837), had emigrated from County Tipperary just before the turn of the 18th century. From his life as a farmer, the grandfather Meagher became a trader, and advanced to merchant, and shipowner, in the only British colony where the Irish constituted a majority of the population. It was here that the senior Thomas Meagher married Mary, née Crotty, and established a prosperous trade between St. John's and Waterford. Later, the grandfather placed his eldest son Thomas in Waterford to represent their business interests. With his move to Waterford, the Meagher family had come full circle, returning to Ireland to prosper. The son Thomas became a successful merchant in Waterford, whose economic success was followed by political office.
Thomas Francis Meagher's mother, Alicia Quan (1798–1827), was the second eldest daughter of Thomas Quan and Alicia Forristall. She died when Meagher was three and a half years old. Meagher had four siblings; a brother and three sisters. Of his siblings, only his older sister Christine Mary lived past childhood.
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“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
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