Rock Creek Park
—National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior —
"I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America"
The centerpiece of this small park is a sculpture of Irish patriot Robert Emmet that serves as a tribute to how American democracy inspired the independence of Ireland. Emmet, born in Dublin in 1778, was strongly influenced by the American Revolution. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, Emmet was remembered by contemporaries for his oratorical brilliance.
In 1803, Emmet led an armed rebellion against British rule, proclaiming the establishment of an Irish Republic. The uprising was quickly suppressed. Emmet fled, but was captured upon returning to Dublin to see his fiancé Sara Curran. Tried for treason on September 19, 1803, he was immediately found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Emmet's "Speech from the Dock" motivated the movement that led to independence for Ireland following the Easter Rising in 1916:
"...I appeal to the immaculate God that my conduct has been governed only by the conviction...of the emancipation of my country from the super inhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed. Let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause that of my country's liberty and independence...Let no man write my epitaph. When my country
takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be unwritten."
Emmet was executed the next day, on September 20, 1803. His stirring words continue to inspire Irish patriotism.
Establishing a Park
IN 1912, the Smithsonian Institution offered space for a statue of Robert Emmet in the rotunda of the U.S. National Museum, and a group Irish-Americans commissioned Jerome Connor to create the sculpture. President Woodrow Wilson and members of Congress attended its dedication in 1917. The Smithsonian American Art Museum loaned the sculpture to the National Park Service in 1966 to serve as the centerpiece for this park to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. President Lyndon Baines Johnson sent this message for the 1966 dedication:
"...The sheer patriotism and the gallant courage of Robert Emmet have inspired Americans no less than Irishmen...We Americans are proud to accord a place to honor here in the Nation's Capital to Robert Emmet, whose struggles and sacrifices bespeak the yearnings of mankind throughout the ages."
In 2016 the park was refurbished and re-dedicated to commemorate the 100th Anniversaries of the Emmet statue, the Easter Rising, and the National Park Service.
Jerome Connor, Master Sculptor
Jerome Connor was born in County Kerry, Ireland in 1874. After immigrating to Massachusetts in 1888, Connor trained as a stonecutter and bronze founder. He attended Elbert Hubbard's esteemed Roycroft artisan community, and in 1910 established a studio in Washington D.C., where he lived until returning to Ireland in 1925. His sculptures include Bishop John Carroll (1912), Nuns of the Battlefield (1924), Bronx Victory Memorial (1925), and the Lusitania Peace Memorial in Cobb, Co. Cork (posthumous).
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