Raharney man who made lasting mark in New York

What connects Raharney and the Westmeath Examiner to New York municipal politics, US insurance giant MetLife, Hollywood and the Oscars?

The answer is Christopher Murray (1871-1936), an intrepid Deelsider who left Westmeath for the United States in the 1890s and made a lasting mark in his adoptive country.

A regular correspondent with this newspaper, he never once forgot the connection with the land of his birth, and passed on that ancestral bond to his descendants, one of whom, his great-great-grandson Sean Murray, made another pilgrimage to Westmeath in recent months.

Sean is a successful veteran of the alternative (non-bank) finance industry, editor-in-chief of deBanked, one of the leading voices for that industry, and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference, a sort of Web Summit for the major players in the non-bank finance universe.

A lot of Sean’s business, including deBanked and various publicity, advertising and consulting services to the industry, is conducted through a Brooklyn-based company wonderfully named Raharney Capital LLC.

Sean is passionate about his Westmeath connections and has written an as-yet unpublished book about his family’s history, the direction of which changed forever when his great-great-grandfather decided to emigrate to the US in 1894. He is also fascinated with broader discussions on Irish history, and recently published an article on the controversy surrounding Éamon de Valera’s ancestry and birth circumstances for the latest edition of Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society’s journal, Iarmhí.

But accounting for the Murray clan and its transatlantic story has been Sean’s primary research interest in recent years, and that story starts on March 1, 1871, when Christopher Murray was born in Raharney to Timothy, a shoemaker, and Margaret Murray (née Whyte).

Growing up locally, he worked as a bartender in Dublin and excelled in middle-distance running before boarding a ship to America in 1894. “This wasn’t a story of leaving Ireland as a result of famine, poverty or anything like that,” said Sean, explaining that Christopher left Ireland with an ambition to see a new world and to succeed in it.

Naturally, Christopher wasn’t the only Westmeath or indeed Raharney man in New York, and, as is often the case with the Irish diaspora, they flock together and organise based on common heritage. He immediately became active in the Raharney Rovers of New York and the city’s Westmeath Men’s Social and Benevolent Association.

Blessed with a flair for writing, Christopher became the primary conduit between these organisations and the Westmeath Examiner, a paper still only in its fledgling years and, at that time, under severe pressure as a result of a feud with the bishop of Meath, and so only too happy to receive fresh, original material accounting for the success of Westmeath ex-pats thousands of miles away. Under the nom de plume ‘Raharney Rover’, Christopher maintained frequent correspondence with the Examiner’s founding editor, John P Hayden, and contributed his first article in 1896.

In New York, Christopher and his wife Mary – a native of Croboy, Hill of Down, not far from Killucan on the Meath side of the county boundary – founded a large family, and he settled into a successful career as an insurance inspector with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, known today as the multi-billion dollar global insurance MetLife, which gives its name to one of Midtown Manhattan’s most recognisable skyscrapers. Elsewhere, he took part in track athletics and coached several athletes, while helping to enhance Irish cultural pursuits and the great Raharney tradition of hurling among New York’s Irish community.

As his personal wealth and standing in New York increased, Christopher took the opportunity to reach out to his native Raharney in its time of need. In the early years of the 20th century, the parish church in Raharney, St Brigid’s, was badly damaged by a storm and while vacated for a considerable time, fell into disrepair. In 1903, political, religious and educational leaders in Raharney appealed to Christopher and his fellow Raharney exiles for their aid in restoring the church to its former glory.

“The Raharney Rovers responded by holding two fundraisers in New York City, one in a local school hall, and a second much larger one in the Michael J Jennings Hall,” Sean explained. “Jennings, the owner, was also a Westmeath man who had the sole distribution rights for Kilbeggan whiskey in the US.”

The Rovers raised money for stained glass windows which adorned the church when it reopened to worshippers in October 1905, and if you look at the windows today, you will see an inscription crediting the Raharney Rovers with raising the funds necessary to procure the centrepiece glasswork. Some feet away, you will also see a holy water font installed with funds donated by Christopher in memory of his parents.

“Christopher was adamant at the time that he not be given all the credit for the contribution,” said Sean. “He said the support extended beyond Raharney natives and included exiles from Killucan, Rathwire, Mullingar, Coralstown and Kinnegad.”

Through his continued involvement with the Westmeath’s Men Association, Christopher had a direct route into New York municipal politics and that access became even more profound with the beginning, in 1910, of 23 years of uninterrupted Irish control of the office of mayor of New York City. He was close friends with John Purroy Mitchel – grandson of the Irish republican John Mitchel – who served as mayor of New York between 1914 and 1917. In one of his last acts as mayor, Mitchel appointed Christopher to a post as commissioner of weights and measures for the city of New York and its five boroughs.

During that period, opinion among members of the Westmeath Men’s Association was initially firmly behind the Irish Parliamentary Party of John Redmond and the broader home rule project, and the president of the association, Dr Joseph P Brennan – a native of Cloneyheigue, near Kilbeggan – was the most passionate advocate for loyalty to Redmond.

However, after the 1916 rising, opinion in the Irish community split and Mitchel’s adherence to the home rulers led to his downfall in the 1917 mayoral election. Within a year, Redmondism declined and Sinn Féin were in the ascendant, and while Brennan withdrew from public life, Christopher embraced the new departure in Ireland as the will of the majority.

Some months after his appointment to the weights and measures commissionership, Christopher, by then in his mid-40s, grieved the death of his wife Mary; he later remarried. Meanwhile, well into the 1920s and 1930s, he continued to correspond with the Westmeath Examiner and to allow his compatriots share the benefits of his success and connections in New York through a variety of initiatives.

“He took the lead on helping to raise funds in New York to finish the construction of Cusack Park in Mullingar,” Sean said.

“Unfortunately, that was while the US was going through the Great Depression and the most that the Westmeath-born in New York could muster collectively was only enough to pay for Westmeath GAA’s first hurling trophy.”

However, he explored other means of bridging the Atlantic in the areas of tourism and culture. He organised trips for American Catholics to attend the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in 1932, and three years earlier, brought the first ever American film crew to Ireland to produce a short film about Irish life, entitled ‘Erin’s Isle’. Christopher engaged Irish-American filmmaker Emmett Moore and his crew to tour the country to produce newsreel-style documentary.

Moore’s entourage captured footage of late-1920s life in Mullingar and Raharney, and in September 1929 the film was shown in cinemas in Athlone and Mullingar, with screenings advertised on the front page of the Westmeath Examiner. “Unfortunately, the films were eventually lost and did not survive to the modern era,” Sean said.