069 Capel Street Library

Thanks for responding. My sister pointed out the building numbers that confirmed it was capel street. I'm glad you could change the url.

My father, John Patrick Colgan, though born in Flat 11, Block G, Iveagh Buildings, the third son of John Fidelius Colgan (tailor) and Mary O'Connor (ditto), on 23/3/1913, moved to residential accommodation above the library that year. He left it, and siblings behind, in 1938 to get married. From that address he won a scholarship to secondary school and completed his leaving Cert in 1931, coming in the top 25 places in Ireland, out of a stock of around 3,000 examinees. He went on to establish his own business as a tallow manufacturer at Brunswick St, Dublin,not affording to take up a job in the civil service. In 1938 he married (almost) the girl next door, Josephine McCann, youngest daughter of Christopher McCann and Mary Doherty,Rush folk, who lived on the attic floor of 96 Capel St, over the brush factory underneath. I understand that Michael Collins of the IRB used, with his Dublin Castle spy, Broe, the Capel St library books in which to place and receive written messages to and from each other. JC

Niall, Good luck with your ownership of the old library building. I believe it was one of the first of the Corpo's libraries.. I am looking forward to the publication of the census of population of the 1920s which is promised, but may be delivered in the next few years. (The US comparable census is already freely available). This will enable me to see what kind of quarters my father and his family lived in. He never spoke about it. As to his business, he made a great living out of it by working hard and long and in fairly dirty conditions. He employed about six men and two trucks (horses and carts during the petrol-rationing war years) until the late 1950s, when he sold his business to Irish Products, of Ringsend, where he continued to bring his custom for them. Eight of us were reared in our new family home at Shandon Crescent, Phibsboro. He and my mother enjoyed foreign holidays most years, including 3 months in the USA about 1949, travelling for five days by liner! I recall, at Easter 1949 (when I was 9) standing with my father at Nelson's Pillar, as he made a colour 8mm movie film of the ceremonies to celebrate Ireland becoming (not yet, I fear) a "Republic"; he had taken the camera back with him from New Jersey. At that time the official film was the famous black and white Pathe News.. I could interest none of the archives in the film, now held by a younger brother.

My grandfather was head librarian at Caple Street. I'm having problems posting more information about him because the Spam Filters keep blocking me. Probably because his last name begins with G and rhymes with 'day'..