Liam McKone

Liam McKone is the President of the Fenian Historical Society of Vermont and author of Vermont's Irish Rebel: Captain John Lonergan. Born in Carrick on Suir, County Tipperary, in 1837–exactly one hundred years before Liam–Captain John Lonergan raised a company of Irishmen in Burlington who fought for the Union at Gettysburg. After receiving a Medal of Honor for gallantry, Lonergan headed up the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood, the largest militant Irish nationalist group in the mid-1800s. He was involved in the Fenian attacks on Canada in 1866 and 1870 which struck blows for restoring the independence of Ireland.

Liam has visited Ireland over a dozen times, starting with a motorcycle trip in 1958 while stationed with the US Army in Germany. His ancestors fled from Mullingar in County West Meath in 1848 during the time of The Great Hunger. He has studied Irish history and the language for many decades, but still wrestles with the complexities of both. He has worked as a translator from other languages for over sixty years, so he knows the challenges and pitfalls of rendering the tongue of one culture into another. The ultimate flatlander, Liam was born and raised on the Mexican border in Texas where no hills, trees, water, or winter can be found, but he has called Vermont home for the past forty years.