Cork City & County Archives receive major donation from Fawsitt family

Pictured above are members of the Fawsitt family with the Lord Mayor Cllr. John Sheehan and City Archivist Brian McGee outside City Hall (by Clare Keogh)

Cork City and County Archives Service is delighted to have received the substantial and noteworthy personal archive of Diarmaid (Jeremiah) L. Fawsitt (b1884 - d1967), nationalist, republican, journalist, civil servant and  judge. The generous donation was made by the Fawsitt Family. 

Born near Blarney Street in Cork’s northside in 1884, Fawsitt was active in cultural, industrial and nationalist circles, including the Celtic Literary Society, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League, Cork National Theatre Society, and especially the Cork Industrial Development Association.

In November 1913 he attended the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers in Dublin, and was inducted into the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In December 1913 he was one of the co-founders of the Cork Corps of the Irish Volunteers  at Cork City Hall, later becoming Chairperson of the Executive.

During the War of Independence, Arthur Griffith sent Fawsitt to the United States as consul and trade commissioner of the Irish Republic. He was based in New York. He was also a technical advisor for the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in 1921-22. Later, he was a senior civil servant in the Department of Industry and Commerce,  and a judge of the Circuit Court.

Lord Mayor, Cllr John Sheehan said: "Thanks to the kind generosity of the Fawsitt family, the archive is now a permanent public resource in Cork, to be made available once it has been conserved, catalogued and processed by the Archives. The archive will be a major research asset for historians of 20th century Ireland, and its donation is a significant contribution to our Cork Decade of Centenaries commemorations of the revolutionary period".

City and county archivist, Brian McGee said: "Fawsitt’s archive comprises a large collection of documents such as correspondence, diaries, photographs, news clippings, articles, speeches, lectures, and ephemera related to his involvement in many causes and organisations, as well as more personal material. The archive is of high quality and has been kept with care over generations by the Fawsitt family".