John Howard Parnell

John Howard Parnell (1843 – 3 May 1923) was an older brother of the Irish Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell and after his brother's death was himself a Parnellite Nationalist Member of Parliament, for South Meath from 1895 to 1900. From 1898 he was also Dublin City Marshal. Biography John Howard Parnell was the fifth child of John Henry Parnell of Avondale, County Wicklow and of his wife Delia, daughter of Commodore Charles Stewart of the US Navy. They met when the twenty year old John Henry Parnell, now owner of Collure in Armagh and Clonmore in Carlow, decided, after the death of his father, to go on a long tour in America and Mexico with his cousin, Lord Powerscourt. Soon after they arrived in America they met in Washington Delia Tudor Stewart, a girl of seventeen, conspicuous in the social and political life of the city. In 1834 they were married in New York, and returned to Ireland. John Howard Parnell was educated in Paris, Chipping Norton and School of Mining where he was awarded a certificate in Geology. At some point he joined the Armagh Light Infantry. Due to the terms of the bequest to the family, it was the younger son Charles who inherited the family estate of Avondale when their father died in 1859, while John inherited another estate in Armagh. John Howard Parnell was the first of the two brothers to stand for Parliament. He sought election as a Home Rule candidate for County Wicklow in the general election of 1874, but was unsuccessful. After this he went to Chambers County, Alabama, United States, where he was a cotton-grower and. later, a pioneering peach farmer, establishing the Sunny South Fruit Farm. He also founded the first Catholic congregation in that part of the state, now the Holy Family Catholic Church in Lanett, Alabama. (Quinlan-2004)