Series - In-letters to agents

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Title

In-letters to agents

Date(s)

  • [1910-1951] (Creation)

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Extent and medium

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Name of creator

(1866-1946)

Biographical history

Toler Roberts 'Rob' Garvey was the third generation of Garvey land agents. He took over the land agency business, with its headquarters at his residence at Tullynisk Park, Birr, in 1914 on the death of his father, Toler Roberts Garvey Sr. He looked after the estate at Birr Castle and other estates of gentry in south Offaly and north Tipperary during the revolutionary period 1916-23 and beyond. As a result he managed the estates through turbulent times, notably the requisitioning of Birr Castle by the Free State Army during the Irish Civil War (1922-23). He died at the age of 80 on 1 April 1946 and is buried at Clonoghill cemetery, Birr.

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System of arrangement

Series of original bundles of in-letters to the successive Rosse agents, Toler R. Garvey Junior and Capt. Alec Drought, alphabetically arranged by correspondent(with all the usual inconsistencies which such a system produces) by
Garvey and Drought, and now boxed in alphabetical order, except where strict adherence to the alphabet would have meant an uneconomical use of the boxes. The principal problem with the in-letters to Garvey (which constitute the lion’s share) is that he ran other agencies besides the Rosse from the Birr Estate Office and used the one alphabetical system for his correspondence, regardless of agency or estate. The result is that at least half the letters to him rightfully belong in Section V (the section devoted to the other agencies of Garvey, his father and grandfather). To divide up the correspondence by agency and estate would take an inordinate amount of time, would probably not be wholly practicable, would dismantle an original filing-system and in any case would give an unnaturally ‘cut-and-dried’ appearance to Garvey’s daily office routine. No such attempt has therefore been made. Instead, the correspondence has been arranged, exactly in the bundles as it was found.

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Conditions governing access

Access strictly by appointment only. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Conditions governing reproduction

May be reproduced in accordance with provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Acts (2000). No reproduction online, in print or broadcast without express permission of copyright holder.

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Dates of creation revision deletion

June 2021, Leslie Duggan

Original descriptions by A.W.P Malcomson, Calendar of the Rosse Papers (Dublin, 2008).

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