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Dictionary of Miramichi Biography

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FLANAGAN, PATRICK (1799-1884)

FLANAGAN, PATRICK, teacher and sexton; b. Ireland, c1799; m. Hannah McAloon; d. Chatham, 10 Jun 1884.

Patrick Flanagan, together with his wife and daughter Catherine, arrived on the Miramichi in 1831 from County Fermanagh in the north of Ireland. From that time until shortly before his death he was a teacher in Chatham. His school was classified officially as a public school, but it was situated for some years on Catholic church property and was viewed as a Catholic school. During the same period, the County Grammar School and the Madras, or National, School were seen as Anglican schools.

In an advertisement published in 1840 Flanagan thanked the public for supporting his school and announced that he would be continuing to offer instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as algebra, geometry, trigonometry, bookkeeping, mensuration, surveying, and gauging. He stated, in his usual wooden prose, that he would be teaching the mathematics "in a superior style by lecture and demonstration, whereby all hidden and combined powers of numbers may be so easily explained that the weakest capacity may easily comprehend."

In 1854 Father Richard Veriker advertised for a teacher to conduct an official Catholic school in Chatham, and he later hired Thomas O'Kane for the position. Extreme hostility between Flanagan and O'Kane was expressed in letters which they wrote to The Gleaner in 1857. O'Kane was succeeded in 1859 by Thomas Marshall, but when Bishop James Rogers arrived in 1860 he had Marshall dismissed and organized a diocesan school taught by seminarians.

Meanwhile, Flanagan continued to conduct a Chatham parish school. He also served as the first sexton of St Michael's Church, from 1839 until near the end of his life. He and his wife, Hannah McAloon, had seven children, at least two of whom became teachers. Their daughter Bridget Flanagan taught on a 1st class license in Chatham's Lower District for twenty-four years before falling prey to tuberculosis in 1883, while still in her early forties. She was "a lady of refinement and culture" and "one of the most zealous, scholarly and enthusiastic teachers of Chatham." Her brother John Flanagan taught on a 2nd class license for a great many years in several parishes in the county, and in 1911 was among the first teachers in the province to qualify for a teachers' pension.

Sources

[d] Times 12 Jun 1884 / Advocate 18 Jun 1884, 10 May 1911, 19 Apr 1933; Educ. report 1883; Fraser (C); Gleaner 21 Oct 1854, 11 Apr 1857; World 24 Oct 1883


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