John McCormack : Short Biography

John McCormack was born on 14 April 1891 in house 5 in Carrowkeel. He was the third of seven children born to John McCormack and Mary Jane McDermott. A Catherine Dockery was the informant of his birth. He may have had a learning difficulty as he was the only one of his siblings who didn't learn to read and write. 

His mother Mary Jane died on 6 June 1897, when he was only six years old. Just five years later, his father John died, in the summer of 1902, when he was eleven. His three sisters were sent to the Sisters of Mercy in Roscommon while the four brothers were taken in by their Lynch cousins. His brother Ned was apprenticed to Michael Lynch, a blacksmith. John was also apprenticed to a tailor, most likely in Elphin (tailors in Elphin at the time included the Regans, Morans, Gaynors, Furys and Reynolds).

John became a tailor and lived in Carrowkeel with his family. He contracted "Phthisis" around September 1909 and died on 8 March 1910, just a month before his nineteenth birthday. A family story says he developed pneumonia while attending a sporting event in bad weather, which led to his eventual death. He was buried in Elphin Graveyard with an unmarked grave. On 10 June 1919, his belongings and money were officially granted to his brother Thomas McCormack.