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Show j PATRIARCH OF CONNEMARA. ' An Irishman Who Lived, a Century and a Quarter, - We learn from our Irish exchanges that there died recently on the peninsula penin-sula of Erris-laurin, near Clifden, County Galway, John McDone, who had attained the extraordinary age of 125 years. He was known all over the 1 countryside and the adjacent Islands as the Patriarch of Conemara. Born in 1776, he had a vivid recollection of the landing of the French, under General Gen-eral Humbert, in Kinsala in 1798. The people did not know that the French had come to obtain Irish support, and ! McDone remembered seeing the terri-' terri-' fied inhabitants fleeing for safety. Some sixty-four years ago, being then turned sixty years of age, he took part i in the building of Slynehead light house. His first wife and five children were carried off by cholera in one day. He afterward married a girl of IS, named Anne King, who survives him, and is now 78 years old. The present archbishop of Tuam, Dr. MacEvilly, who Is 84, recalls that his predecessor told him of McDono's history, his-tory, and the facts of the case are corroborated cor-roborated by some of the clergy and other inhabitants of the district. Martin Mar-tin Flaherty of Poulreve, near Slyne head, says that McDone was an old man when he knew him there sixty years since, but fairly well off. in pos- j session of some twenty cattle, thirty ' sheep and a horse. Three children of ! the second wife emigrated to America: ! two daughters married in San Fran-! Fran-! Cisco, and themselves have grandchil-; grandchil-; dren, so that McDone was also a greatgrandfather. great-grandfather. Being thus left without help, he became poorer and poorer, till j he died in a little stone cabin on the edge of the Atlantic. He was a fervent fer-vent Catholic, and fie and his wife were wont to recite nightly the rosary in common in the tongue of the Gael, for neither knew a word of English. |