O Gallchobhair/O'Gallagher/Gallagher

The name of this sept, O Gallchobhair in Irish, signifies descendant of Gallchobhar or Gallagher, who was himself descended from the King of Ireland who reigned from 642-654. the O'Gallaghers claim to be the senior and most loyal family of the Cineal Connaill. Their territory extended over a wide area in the modern baronies of Raphoe and Tirhugh, Co. Donegal, and their chiefs were notable as marshals of O'Donnell's military forces from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

The principal branch of the sept were seated at Ballybeit and Ballynaglack. Gallagher, usually without its prefix O, is one of the commonest names in Ireland being fourteenth in the statistical list compiled from birth registrations. Most of these were recorded in the north-western counties of Ulster and Connacht, the majority being from Co. Donegal, the original homeland of the sept. The national records show them to have been even more intimately connected with ecclesiastical than with military activities. No less than six O'Gallaghers were bishops of Raphoe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and one in the eighteenth.

One of these, Laurence O'Gallagher, who held the see from 1466-1477, was anything but a saintly prelate, while on the other hand Most Rev. Redmond O'Gallagher (1521-1601), Bishop of Derry, the prelate who befriended the survivors of the Spanish Armada and was forced to disguise himself as a shepherd in order to escape the prevailing religious persecution, was eventually captured and became on of our Irish Catholic martyrs. A later Bishop of Raphoe, and afterwards of Ossory, Most Rev. James O'Gallagher (1681-1751) was famous for his sermons (usually preached in Irish), which, when published, ran to twenty editions. In America Father Hugh Gallagher (1815-1882), had a most colourful career as a "frontier priest". William Davis Gallagher (1808-1894), American poet, was the son of an Irish refugee who took part in Robert Emmet's Rebellion.

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