John O'Manony (Revolutionary)
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- See Sean Matgamna for the Trotskyist also known as John O'Mahony.
John O'Mahony was one of the founders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He was born in 1816, in Kilbeheny, in County Cork, Ireland. His father and uncle had been members of the United Irishmen, and had taken part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
He ignored the ban by the Roman Catholic Church on its adherents attending Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied Sanskrit, Hebrew and Irish.
He joined Daniel O'Connell's movement for the Repeal of the Union, but quickly became dissatisfied with the lack of progress. He joined the Young Irelander movement and took part in their failed rebellion in 1848. He left Ireland for France, and moved to the United States in 1854.
In 1858, he helped found the American wing of the IRB, initially known as the Fenian Brotherhood. Because of his popularity among Irish-Americans he was soon-after made a colonel in the mainly Irish 69th Regiment of the Union Army, which fought in the American Civil War. He helped organise the first of the Fenian Raids into the then British colony of Canada in 1866 and the Fenian Rising in Ireland in 1867. He died in 1877 and was interred in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
