Name Sinead Valera Died January 7, 1975 | Role Author Spouse Eamon de Valera (m. 1910) | |
Books Irish Fairy Tales, More Irish Fairy Tales, The Enchanted Lake: Cla, Twelve Short Masterpieces Similar People Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith, Cathal Brugha | ||
Sinead de Valera, also known as Sinead Ni Fhlannagain and Sinead Bean de Valera ([ɕɪnʲeːdʲ bʲeːn̪ˠ dʲe vʲalʲerˠa]; 3 June 1878 – 7 January 1975), was an author and the wife of the Irish republican leader and third President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera.
Contents
Background
She was born Jane O'Flanagan in Balbriggan. Her father, Laurence, was a carpenter and was a native of Kildare who moved to Balbriggan and married a local girl, Margaret Byrne. The couple emigrated to New York where their daughter, Mary, was born in 1871. The family had returned to Balbriggan by 1873 and Sinead was born there in 1878. She trained as a teacher and worked first in Edenderry, before taking up a post at a national school in Dorset Street, Dublin in around 1901. The 1901 census records her as 'Jane Flanagan', living with her parents and three siblings at 6 Richmond Cottages in Dublin.
Marriage and children
In her spare time, she taught Irish at the Leinster College of the Gaelic League in Parnell Square. One of her Irish students was Eamon de Valera, then a teacher of mathematics. On 8 January 1910, they were married. Together they had five sons, Vivion, Eamon, Brian, Ruairi and Terence (Terry), and two daughters, Mairin and Emer. On 9 February 1936, Brian, then aged twenty, was killed in a riding accident in the Phoenix Park. Not long after they married, she changed her name to the Irish spelling, Sinead.
Due to a combination of his imprisonment, political activities, and fundraising tours of the United States, the family saw relatively little of Eamon de Valera in the 1916-23 period. He was also away from home frequently during the early years of his political career. Sinead de Valera played little or no public role during her husband's fifty years in public life.
Literary output
Sinead de Valera wrote thirty one books for children in both English and Irish. Among her works were plays such as Cluichidhe na Gaedhilge (1935) and story collections such as The Emerald Ring and Other Irish Fairy Stories (1951), The Stolen Child and Other Stories (1961), The Four-leafed Shamrock (1964) and The Miser's Gold (1970).
Death
Sinead de Valera died on 7 January 1975, at the age of 96, the day before what would have been the de Valeras' sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. Eamon de Valera died nearly eight months later, on 29 August 1975, aged 92. The couple are buried together, along with their son Brian, at Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.