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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
42 October-November 2025
DeVeloping lineage
David McCullagh’s recent RTÉ documentary ignored
research that de Valera’s father came from Matanzas,
Cuba — not Spain as his mother told him
By Frank Connolly
The reason de Valera’s mother
may have made efforts to
alter the name of Dev’s father
was her fear that his family in
Cuba might seek to have Dev
returned after his father’s death
T
he speculation by journalist David
McCullagh in his recent two-part
RTÉ documentary on Éamon de
Valera,Rise and Rule, that there was
no evidence the former President’s
alleged father, Juan Vivión de Valera, ever
existed is dubious. Historians and journalists
long ago pinned him down—though he has
also been the subject of much confusion.
As McCullagh explained, there is no record
of Vivion de Valera entering the US; nor is there
a death certificate, and his name appears to
have been altered by his mother to ‘de Valeros’
in the birth cert of Éamon de Valera.
The former President of Ireland was born
on 14 October 1882 in Lenox Hill, New York.
The State of New York records give his birth
name as George de Valero, his father as
Vivion de Valero, and his mother as Kate De
Valero, née Coll.
The name of the child’s father is on the first
baptismal certificate for de Valera in St Agnes
Catholic Church in Manhattan, where the
baptism took place on 3 December 1882.
However, his surname is listed as de Valeros.
His mother, Catherine Coll from County
Limerick, told her son that his father was her
husband, Vivion de Valera, a Spanish artist
who died two years after de Valera was born.
She claimed she married him on 19
September 1881 at St Patrick’s Catholic Church
in New Jersey—although there are no records
of this.
His mother later changed his first name to
Edward, which was Gaelicised to Éamon when
he was a child living in Ireland.
McCullagh came across another birth
certificate also signed by his mother, now
Catherine Wheelwright after her earlier
marriage to an American, and issued in June
1916 while her son was in jail in Dublin
following the Rising. This document was used
to confirm his American citizenship and helped
him avoid the firing squad.
The idea that Juan Vivion de Valera may not
have existed will certainly surprise some of
Dev’s family members.
Over the decades, there has been much
speculation about the Cuban origins of de
Valera’s father. He is listed as Spanish on the
early birth certs but, at that time, Cuba was a
colony of Spain. It was normal for Latinos in the
US to be described as Spanish. Juan Vivión de
[sic] Valera was the son of a Spanish trader who
ran a sugar plantation in the province of
Matanzas. The future President’s father was
born there in 1853.
In August 1996, I published a story inThe
Sunday Business Post explaining how de
Valera had himself referred to his father’s
Cuban origins. In the article, Dev’s grandson,
Éamon O’Cuív, the Galway TD, explained:
“There is firm evidence from the papers
which explains that he knew a lot more about
his background—more than he ever said in
public.”
It is believed that Juan Vivión de Valera
Acosta travelled from Matanzas province in
Cuba to New York in the late 1880s, where he
met and had a child with Catherine Coll.
The reason why his mother may have made
eorts to alter the name of Dev’s father was her
fear that his family in Cuba might seek to have
him returned to that country following Juan
Vivion de Valera’s premature death in 1885—
just two and a half years after their child was
born.
“It seems that after his father’s death the
grandparents wanted the boy back in Cuba,
and that is why Kathleen [aka Catherine] sent
him back to Ireland,” O’Cuív said.
Research in Matanzas has confirmed that
the name Valera is common in the area, with
over 300 people of that name living in Bermeja
in the south of the province. Photos taken by
an English journalist and published in the
London-based Cuba Si magazine in 1988 show
members of the Valera clan, including Black
sugar workers, who bear a striking resemblance
to the Long Fellow.
A photograph of family patriarch Juan
Manuel de Valera hangs on the wall of a period
home belonging to the family in Matanzas
town, and was reproduced in the Business Post
article. It shows an elderly man with features
similar to the former president of Ireland.
O’Cuív recalled that his grandfather showed
him a family bible in the Áras whose flyleaf
carried a note referring to the Cuban origins of
Juan Vivión de Valera, after whom Dev named
his eldest son, Vivian.
“He never made a big deal of it, but he must
have been very conscious of his father—or he
would not have called his own eldest son after
him,” O’Cuív said.
As Taoiseach in the 1930s, Éamon de Valera
made eorts to trace his Spanish origins, but
no specific town, village, or street in Spain has
so far been identified as the likely birthplace of
his father.
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