‘One of our own’: John L Sullivan

A note in the Kerry Weekly Reporter in October 1890 outlining the death of a Kerry emigrant in the USA was probably one many that the newspaper carried throughout its history, but how many were as news worthy as this? The death notice in question related to the father of a world boxing champion, the son of a Kerry emigrant who had left Ireland during the Great Famine. The 1890 note read:

DEATH 0F A KERRYMAN IS AMERICA

An American paper in announcing the death of Michael Sullivan, father of the champion  boxer, John L Sullivan, which occurred recently at Boston, says : '' Mr Sullivan was a native of County Kerry, Ireland, where he was born sixty five years ago. ' He came to this country about 40 years ago and has been a resident of South Bend ever since. Just a year ago the champions mother died." John L. arrived too late at the bedside of his father before death.

For many, Sullivan was America's first heavyweight hero and was known as the last world champion bare-knuckle boxer.

Born in Boston in 1858, John L Sullivan died on 2 February 1918.

In 1887 Sullivan, then at the height of his boxing career visited Ireland and was feted in Dublin and elsewhere. As the Freemans Journal commented:

A large crowd had assembled at Kingstown to meet Sullivan and by the time his party had reached Westland Row station, they were to find themselves "in a complete state of siege", such was the multitude that had gathered.

In response to several calls, Sullivan gave a brief speech from the drawing room window of hotel room at the Grosvenor, in which he thanked most cordially the people of Dublin for their warm and enthusiastic welcome.

It was further noted that:

‘all classes and conditions of people were represented, There were barristers and doctors in dozens, while the military were represented by no less a personage than the Commander of the Forces in Ireland, the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, who visited the hero of the night: in his dressing room just before he made his appearance in the ring in all his war paint’.

In sport and in death, Sullivan was claimed as ‘Irish’ or ‘Irish American’ an thus ‘one of our own’.

For more information on Sullivan and his Irish visit of 1887 visit the Irish Newspaper Archive (www.irishnewsarchive.com )