Thomas Croke - Early Life

Early Life

Thomas Croke was born in Castlecor (parish of Ballyclough), County Cork, in 1824. He was the third of eight children of William Croke, an estate agent, and his wife, Isabella Plummer, daughter of an aristocratic Protestant family who disowned her following her Catholic marriage in 1817. After William Croke died in 1834 his brother, the Reverend Thomas Croke, supervised the education and upbringing of the children. Two of Thomas's brothers entered the priesthood, while two sisters became nuns. He was educated in Charleville, County Cork and at the Irish College in Paris and the Irish College in Rome, winning academic distinctions including a doctorate of divinity with honours. He was ordained in May 1847. Croke's brother, James, was also a priest and served in the Pacific Northwest helping to found several churches including St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Oregon Territory. The Irish radical William O'Brien said that Thomas Croke fought on the barricades in Paris during the 1848 French Revolution. Croke returned to Ireland and spent the next 23 years working there. In 1858 he became the first president of St Colman's College, Fermoy, County Cork and then served as both parish priest of Doneraile and Vicar General of Cloyne diocese from 1866 to 1870. Thomas Croke attended the First Vatican Council as the theologian to the Bishop of Cloyne 1870.