BNDigital

 

Bartholomew Hayden (1792-1857) was one of twenty Irishmen who were contracted from 1823 by the Brazilian Imperial Navy to consolidate Brazil’s independence from Portugal, which had been declared by Dom Pedro I the previous year. Hayden was present when the enemy were driven from their principal base of Bahia in 1823. During Brazil’s war against Argentina (1825-1828), Hayden captured an Argentine privateer and later inflicted serious damage on Argentine naval forces led by fellow Irishman, William Brown. Hayden commanded ten vessels and ended his distinguished career as a full Captain.

In his book Findlaters – The Story of a Dublin Merchant Family, Alex Findlater recalled that

 

in 1831 there was a revolution in Brazil, and Dom Pedro I abdicated. Adam, a family member who had been in Brazil for eight years was by then in partnership trading as Miller & Findlater. During the riots in Rio de Janeiro the firm’s premises were burned down. The firm relocated in Bahia. Made-up fabrics and textiles were shipped out to Bahia and sugar and cotton back to Europe.

The company’s ledgers (1830-1839) survived and revealed the export of large quantities of bottled porter during that period, brewed by Arthur Guinness and sold as Findlater’s Pure Dublin Porter, with bottle labels depicting shamrocks!

Dr. Ricardo Gumbleton Daunt (1818-1893), born at Kilcascan Castle, County Cork, Ireland, was a pioneer in Brazilian public health medicine. In 1843, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro. He went to Campinas from São Paulo in 1845, where he played an outstanding role as a defender of local traditions and as a doctor for the poor and supporter for the disabled. He was a politician and mastered more than ten languages, was an obsessed genealogist, and conquered fame as a luminary of Medicine.