John Hand

Fr. John Hand (1807–1846) was an Irish priest and the founder of All Hallows College in Dublin. John Hand was born Bolies, near Oldcastle, County Meath in August 1807, to Luke and Margaret (née Fox) Hand. His family suffered eviction. He went to school at Navan Seminary some eight miles walk from where he lived; he excelled in his studies, winning a competition for entry to Maynooth, started his priestly studies in Maynooth College in August 1831, but left in 1835 to join the Vincentians in St. Peter's, Phibsborough, Dublin, under Dean Philip Dowley, who had left Maynooth in 1833 to set up the Vincentians in Dublin. Fr. Hand was ordained a priest on 13 December 1835, by the Rt. Rev. William Clancy in the private chapel of St. Vincent's Seminary at Castleknock.