JULY 10, 2018
Dry goods merchant and Irish nationalist John F. Armstrong in Augusta, GA, in 1887 with his sisters Anne and Kitty Armstrong, who were visiting from County Sligo, Ireland.
John Francis Armstrong (1845-1893) was born near Tubbercurry in County Sligo, Ireland in September of 1845. In 1865, at the age of nineteen, JF left Ireland to escape arrest for anti-British activities. He immigrated to Augusta, Georgia, where his uncle, Thomas Armstrong, had settled after leaving Sligo during the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852).
In Augusta, JF married Sarah Theresa McAndrew (1845-1887) and became a successful dry goods merchant. Starting in the late 1860s, he became involved in local and national Irish-American organizations that supported Irish land reform and home rule.
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.