The McCormack Brothers

We were always told that the McCormack brothers were first cousins of my Great-Grandmother, Mary Anne McCormack. I have not been able to find the link such that the brothers heritage seems to have been lost in time. But here is the story that was often told to me by my Grandfather Denis Ryan.

In 1858 in Loughmore, two local men, Daniel and William Cormack, were executed for the murder of John Ellis, a land agent from Kilrush, near Templemore, County Tipperary. Ellis was hated for evicting tenants on behalf of the landlords who employed him. One night as he returned along the lane to his isolated home, his way was blocked by uprooted bushes and branches. He was shot by a hidden assailant and died an hour later. 

The police had no doubt that this was a political murder, because £90 in Ellis’s wallet was left untouched. The brothers William and Daniel Cormack were arrested and convicted at Nenagh Assizes in March 1858, largely, it was felt at the time, on the evidence of an informer – “a villainous character” – who was widely believed to have been part of the murder plot. The judge was the notoriously corrupt and harsh William Keogh.


The common belief was that a local landlord had shot Ellis in a crime of passion involving Ellis' sister, and that the Cormack brothers had been framed for murder; 2,357 people signed a petition attesting to the brothers' innocence

The brothers were hanged on Thursday, May 11, 1858 outside Nenagh Prison.

Daniel Cormack addressed the crowd at the public execution from the scaffold, saying: “Lord have mercy on me, for you know, Jesus, that I neither had hand, act, nor part in that for which I am about to die. Good people, pray for me.” According to a contemporary report, “the brother having made the same awful declaration, both were in the next moment launched into eternity”.

Years later a tenant named Michael Gleeson, who had been evicted by Ellis, confessed to the murder.

In 1910 a committee was formed in Loughmore to exhume the brothers and rebury them in the churchyard. Daniel's and William's remains were ceremonially removed from Nenagh Gaol and brought back to Loughmore with two hearses drawn by plumed horses, followed by huge crowds. After the procession arrived in the village, the Cormack brothers were buried in a mausoleum in the churchyard where people still go to see the original oak coffins and the inscription proclaiming their innocence.


I have not give up the search for connecting them to us but it would help if I could at least find a death record in Nenagh or Loughmore.

Sources:
History of Loughmore Parish
County Clare Library 
Wikipedia for Loughmore