"Stephen Joseph Meany was born in Newhall, county Clare, Ireland, September 12, 1822. His mother's name was Mary Sheehan. He was educated in the public schools of Ennis. He began his journalistic career on the Clare Journal, and was connected at different periods of his life with the Limerick Chronicle, Freeman's Journal, Irish Tribune, Limerick and Clare Examiner, Drogheda Argus, and Liverpool Daily Post. In 1847 he founded the Irish National Magazine, but it had only a short existence. In October, 1843, O'Connell undertook to thwart the offical reporter of the House of Commons...by delivering his address in Irish. But Meany, whose facility as a shorthand reporter was remarkable, took down the address and it was published in the Freeman. He was intensely interested in the national movement and was imprisoned several times on account of his writings. In 1856 he paid his first visit to America, and wrote fo the New York Herald, Sunday Times, and Harper's Weekly. He became part owner of the Toledo (O.) Daily Commercial and German Weekly. In 1865 and 1866 he was connected with the Fenian movement, organized a fair at New York to raise funds for the relief of those arrested in the futile raid on Canada, and on his return to Ireland in November, 1867, was promptly arrested for speeches made in the United States, tried in Dublin and sentenced to penal servitude for fifteen years. After several months' imprisonment he was released on condition that he should leave the country. He returned to New York and did work for the World, Star and Weekly Democrat, making frequent visits to the old country. In 1882 he was arrested in Ennis, Ireland, under Mr. Forster's coercion act, but was soon released. In 1885, he went to London and gave material aid in the defense of Burton and Cunningham, who were implicated in the attempt to destroy the Tower of London. In 1887 he went to Waterbury [Connecticut] to edit the daily Democrat...On February 8, 1888, he died of erysipelas, which set in after a surgical operation for diseased toe joint...After funeral honors in this city and New York the body was taken to Ireland, lay in state in Ennis for a week, and was buried in Dromcliffe churchyard. At the age of eighteen Mr. Meany married Miss Hoare, by whom he had two sons and two daughters....Stephen J. Meany was six feet tall...and at the age of sixty-five walked the streets of Waterbury with the elasticity of step that characterized him when as a youth he was spoken of as the most athletic of the young men of his native town." pp. 987-88 The Town and City of Waterbury, Conencticut: From the Aboriginal Period to the Year 1895 New Haven: Price & Lee, 1896 transcribed by Sharon Carberry, Georgie