Roland Curtin's Education

In his authoritative book, Making Iron on the Bald Eagle (ref 1), the late Penn State Emeritus History Professor Gerald Eggert stated that both Roland Curtin (b. 1764) and his brother Constans (b.1783) received a quality primary education and that both attended O’Halloran’s Classical School in Ennis, near their home in Dysert, County Clare, Ireland. To support this assertion, Eggert cited two secondary sources: the first, an account by Dr Roland G Curtin, Roland Curtin’s nephew (Constans Curtin’s son) in “Genealogy of the Curtin Family”, accessible in the Centre County Historical Library, Bellefonte, PA; the second, a letter from George Potter Curtin to “Aunt Kas”, dated March 17, 1984, accessible in the Curtin Mansion Archives. 
 
Roland and Constans’s parents, being Catholics, would have encountered difficulties in securing a quality education for their children. A series of Penal Laws in 17th and 18th century Ireland were designed to prohibit Catholics from teaching school and also to prevent Catholic parents from circumventing the law by sending their children to study abroad (ref 2 and 3). The Education Act of 1695, for example, stated: “teaching by Papists is one great reason that many natives are ignorant of the principles of true religion” [Anglican].  With a fine of 20 pounds and three months in prison for each offence, teachers who broke these laws put themselves at considerable risk.
 
During the era of the Penal Laws, many Catholic children were deprived of even primary education. There were public schools in some places, and in fact some Catholics chose to enroll their children. A grammar school was set up in Ennis in 1773, for example, and in 1778, there were 80 students, six of whom were registered as Catholics (ref 4).
 
It also was common during these years that independent Catholic teachers, often itinerants, defied Parliament (ref 4). They were surreptitiously paid to hold classes in ‘hedge schools’, although the schools were commonly in barns or houses, not in the open air next to hedgerows as might be inferred from the name. After the repeal of the 1695 Education Act in 1782, Catholic teachers publicly advertised their services. 
 
One well-known area Catholic teacher, who perhaps emerged from the hedges, was Stephen O’Halloran. He taught at the Ennis Grammar School (ref 5), presumably after 1782, when the infamous Education Act of 1695 was repealed.    
   
O’Halloran’s Classical Academy was founded in 1792, endured, and became known for preparing students to attend the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, founded three years later, in 1795 (ref 6). It is possible that Roland Curtin was under Stephen’s tutelage during the era of hedge schools, or that Roland attended the public grammar school in Ennis. Roland would have already have been 17 or 18 when the Education Act was repealed (after which time Stephen O’Halloran could have taught legally at the public school), however, and 27 or 28 when the academy was established on O’Connell Street. It seems more likely that Constans and one or more of Roland’s other younger brothers were taught by Mr. O’Halloran at the public school or attended his academy. 
 
References:
 
1. Eggert, G G. Making Iron on the Bald Eagle, Penn State University Press, University Park, PA, 2000, p8. 
2. Education Act 1695, Online at Wikipedia
3. Penal Laws (Ireland), Online at Wikipedia
4. Power, J. Education in Claire. Online at clairelibrary.ie
5. Ó Dálaigh. Tomás Ó Míocháin and the Munster Courts of Gaelic Poetry, c 1730-1804, Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society (https://www.stor.org/stable/24389561)
6. Ó Dálaigh, B. Irish Historic Towns Atlas, no 25, Ennis, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 2012 (www.ihta.ie, accessed June 29, 2024), text, p 6