School: St John of God Convent, Rathdowney (roll number 16203)

Location:
Rathdowney, Co. Laois
Teacher:
The Sisters
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0828, Page 081

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0828, Page 081

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: St John of God Convent, Rathdowney
  2. XML Page 081
  3. XML “Local Heroes”

Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

On this page

  1. Of all the strong and noteworthy men who lived in this parish during the past fifty years, Mr Rodger Carroll, Bawn, Johnstown was perhaps the best known. His great strength won for him the admiration of everybody who knew him. One can ask no better enjoyment that to listen to stories of his feats of strength. He was a blacksmith by trade and when once he caught the horse's foot in his hand to put on the shoe no force would release it. No matter how strong the horse pulled he never relaxed his grip and he shoed four horses to every other smith's one. In his youth he worked in American with a German and his fascinating stories of his duties while there are still told.
    About 1840 Mr Martin ONeill was appointed Principal of Galmoy National School. His home in Johnstown was four miles from his work and in these days there were no bicycles or motor-cars. He walked to and from his work every day for about forty years and he never took a holiday. He made the journey in less than half an hour.
    My father, who owns a threshing machine, had in his employment a man named Sylvester Campion, Galmoy. One day he shoved he thresher which weighs five tons, a distance of several yards, unaided. It was not down a hill either, but on soft level land.
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. agents (~1)
      1. historical persons (~5,068)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Mary Harte
    Gender
    Female
    Age
    17