Journalistic Beginnings
Sheehan was born in Dromtariffe, near Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, the second eldest of three sons and one daughter of Daniel Sheehan senior and Ellen Sheehan (née Fitzgerald). His father was a tenant farmer. He was educated at the local primary school; in 1880 when he was seven years old, the family experienced eviction from the family homestead at the onset of the Irish Land League's Land War, when tenant farmers united to protest against landlords' excessive and unjust rents by withholding payment.
Sheehan's family were supporters of the Fenian tradition, and his experience of discrimination made him a strong supporter of Irish nationalism. Sheehan was a continued supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell after the 'Parnell split' of 1890 in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and became a Parnellite. He always remembered his only meeting with Parnell at Tralee, when Parnell was presented by a loyal address (drafter by Sheehan) from his Killarney supporters.
He began his career as a schoolteacher at the age of 16, studying land law and legal procedure when time allowed. He undertook part-time journalism from 1890 and was otherwise self-educated to a high literary degree. Sheehan was correspondent for the Kerry Sentinel, and later special correspondent to the Cork Daily Herald in Killarney. After he married in 1894, he first moved in 1896 to Scotland and joined the staff of the Glasgow Observer in pursuit of journalistic experience, then becoming London editor of the Catholic News in Preston, England.
In 1898, at the beginning of national self-reliance under the revolutionary Local Government Act (1898), which established Local County Councils for the first time, he returned to Ireland working on various papers in Munster including the Cork Constitution, and from 1899 to 1901 as editor of the The Southern Star, Skibbereen.
Read more about this topic: D. D. Sheehan
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