"Well we have had a few days Republic in Enniscorthy." Séan Etchingham
When the 1916 Easter Rising is discussed or wrote about nationally, the role of Enniscorthy is treated like a postscript. The fact that from the 27th of April to the 1st of May 1916 Enniscorthy was an Independent Republic is rarely mentioned. The reality that the local Volunteer force took control of the town and its citizens, confined the R.I.C. to their barracks, marched to Ferns and took it over and were nearly at Camolin when orders from Padraig Pearse, (who was in his cell in Arbour Hill) to surrender arrived is barely acknowledged. In the town itself the names and stories of the leaders have gone down in local folklore; however the rank-and-file participants are lucky if their names are remembered by anyone outside their families and even some may not be remembered by their own. This book is an attempt to shine the spotlight on the stories of some of those brave men and women. Men and women who in many instances were treated despicably by the Republic they fought for when they went looking for recognition of all they had done
Individual stories like that of the Volunteer who served with the British Admiralty during World War Two after previously being the Town Clerk of Enniscorthy for nearly a dozen years. The Chemistry teacher from the Christian Brothers School who put his skills to other uses. The Volunteer whose son became the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces in the 1980s. The Volunteer who ended up in New York on the orders of Michael Collins and crossed the Atlantic numerous times smuggling weapons. A local man who was a serving British soldier and was home on leave at the time of the Rising and the tragic death of an infant boy in the days following the Rising, whose mother was a member of Cumann na mBan and father a Volunteer.