An Overview

JULY 10, 2018

Dry goods merchant and Irish nationalist John F. Armstrong in Augusta, Georgia in 1887 with his sisters Anne and Kitty Armstrong, who were visiting from County Sligo, Ireland

In the 1880s, Augusta, Georgia dry goods merchant John F. Armstrong (1845-1893) was part of a trans-Atlantic conspiracy to overthrow British rule in Ireland.

Born in County Sligo in 1845, JF left Ireland in 1865 at the age of nineteen. In the United States, he became involved in Irish nationalist and relief organizations and, later, the Irish land reform and home rule movements.

During the 1880s, JF served on the Council of Seven and the Executive Board of the Irish National League of America (INLA). In February of 1886, he represented the INLA in a private meeting in Dublin with Irish MP Charles Stewart Parnell and delivered INLA funds to the Irish Parliamentary Party.

In 1889, during an investigation into Parnell's ties to American Fenians, British agents identified JF as a well-known member of the Clan na Gael, the secret Irish-American organization committed to Irish independence.

A faction of the Clan na Gael had funded one of the bombing campaigns in Great Britain during the early 1880s. Carried out primarily by American Fenians, the bombings later became known as the Dynamite War.

In the spring of 1890, JF's health began to fail and, in February of 1891, he traveled to Ireland to recuperate. His health continued to deteriorate, however, and shortly after he returned to Augusta in the late summer of 1893, he became mentally incapacitated.

JF died on November 9th, 1893 at the Georgia State Lunatic Asylum in Milledgeville. He was forty-eight years old.