New book recounts the Limerick man who fought Crazy Horse
The new release tells the story of Thomas Patrick Downing
NEXT year marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A new book, by a local author Des Ryan, tells the tale of a Limerick man, from Adare, who fought and died on that fateful day in June 1876.
The Ballad of Thomas Patrick Downing is a true story. Thomas was born to Ellen Harrigan and Thomas Downing in Adare village in 1856. His father, a member of the Irish Constabulary, had an unfortunate brush with O’Donovan Rossa and the Fenian movement, after which he was forced to move to America to find work.
Growing up in Savannah, Georgia against the backdrop of the American Civil War, Downing experienced the cruelty of slavery and then watched as the slaves were emancipated around him.
After the war, Downing left Savannah and made his way to Lebanon, Kentucky where he enlisted in the army and fate placed him with the Seventh Cavalry, whose regimental song was none other than Garryowen.
He spent two years in Kentucky suppressing the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan before being assigned to the remote US Canadian border to protect the US Boundary Commission's survey.
Finally, at the age of just 20, Thomas Patrick Downing marched out of Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory with General George Armstrong Custer in search of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. A month later they found them at the Little Bighorn.
There, Thomas Patrick Downing took his place in the history books. He was one of almost 300 cavalry troops killed in one of the worst military defeats in US military history.
Downing was buried where he fell and his story buried with him. For 150 years he has just been a name on a memorial.
Now his life has been uncovered and he becomes the only one of General Custer's anonymous Irish troops to have his story told from start to finish. What a life. What a death.
Meticulously researched and featuring a foreword written by Limerick historian Sharon Slater, the book is written as a memoir, expressing first-hand what Downing's experiences would have been.
The Ballad of Thomas Patrick Downing will be released on October 28 and will be available online and in most bookstores.