User:Lonehexagon/Joseph Kevin Bracken

Joseph Kevin "J.K." Bracken (29 February 1852 – 2 May 1904) was an Irish athlete, stonemason, and local politician from Templemore, County Tipperary in Ireland. He is best known as one of the seven members who founded the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. He was also a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret oath-bound fraternal organization dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland.

Biography

Joseph Kevin Bracken (often referred to as J.K. Bracken) was born in Templemore, County Tipperary in Ireland in 1852, the second eldest of ten children born to Patrick and Anne (née Hennessy) Bracken. His family's stone-cutting business, which created walls, gravestones and memorial tablets, grew under his management to include contract work for buildings and roads. Bracken is sometimes referred to as the ‘the radical stonemason from Templemore’. He owned 75 acres of land as well as the freeholds of 25 houses in Templemore.

He was a nationalist who was known for both his militant republicanism and his athletics.

Politics

Bracken's was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a local Templemore politician and county commissioner. Bracken's political career was cut short by a series of scandals, legal actions and lawsuits filed against him.

Athletics

Bracken was one of the seven founding members of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. Some historians believe the GAA was initially an extension of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Bracken supported a ban on members playing or watching ‘foreign’ games including soccer, rugby, cricket or hockey. During the first All-Ireland Football Championship in 1887, while acting as a match umpire, Bracken tackled a player who was about to score the winning goal. Although his preferred team won the game, they later lost it on appeal.

Family

Bracken married twice. His married nineteen-year-old Mary Agnes Matthews of Limerick, Ireland in 1889. She died four years later, after they had two daughters, Eileen and Cora. After his first wife's death, he married twenty-five year old Hannah Agnes Ryan in February 1897, who was twenty years younger than him. They had four children named Annie, Peter, Brendan and Kevin. Their son Brendan Bracken was a minister in the British Government during World War II.

Death

In 1902, 50-year-old Bracken moved to Kilmallock, Ireland after a court decided against him regarding a collision between the carriage of local landowner Sir John Carden and Bracken's pony and trap. J.K. Bracken died of cancer, aged 52, on May 2, 1904 at his home, Ardvullen House, located on the outskirts of Kilmallock. Bracken and was buried in nearby Tankardstown. The local Gaelic Athletic Association club in Templemore, J.K. Bracken's GAC, is named after him.