Specifications: 6" x 9" size; 244 + xxvi pages; 40 illustrations; well indexed by surname. Includes Castles in County Kerry; family seats of power; locations; variant spellings of family names; full map of County Kerry, coats of arms, and sources for research. From ancient times to the modern day. First Edition in dust jacket. Author/Editor: Michael C. O'Laughlin. Please remember that the first book in the Irish Families Project, "The Book of Irish Families, great & small" has information on Kerry families not contained in this book.

On 1 June 1921, at the height of Ireland’s War of Independence, a cycling patrol of members of the RIC was ambushed by members of the IRA at Ballymacandy, between Milltown and Castlemaine in County Kerry. After an hour of fighting, four police officers lay dead and another died a day later, among them a father of nine children. The group of IRA assailants included some of the most high-profile figures in Ireland’s ‘Tan War’, men like Dan Keating, Jack Flynn, Dan Mulvihill, Billy Myles and Johnny Connor, but also lesser-known figures, including members of the local Cumann na mBan. Their actions were condemned from the pulpit and an official enquiry tried to discredit the local doctor who tended to the dying men. This book comes on the centenary of an ambush that continues to resonate in its community and in a county in which the battle with Crown forces was more virulent and violent than most. Drawing on newly published witness statements and previously unpublished official records, Ballymacandy details what happened the five men who died and those who led the attack against them and sets the incident against the backdrop of the wider revolutionary struggle in the county.

Vol 1 905p Vol 2 961p.