A man who conducted a search into his family’s heritage found a close relation to a man who defended the Mansion House “against a mob of unionists”.

James McCann (33), from Sallynoggin, Co Dublin, discovered his great-great-grandfather, Joseph Roe, fought a group of unionist youths that caused mayhem in the former Dáil building in 1900.

After trawling through government records, library archives and newspaper clippings for weeks on end, James found that Joseph, a wine importer on Dawson Street in the 1900s, defended a house steward working in the Mansion House after a gang of mobsters beat him up during a quest to tear down the Green Ensign.

After retrieving the flag from the mob, Joseph tied it around his shoulders and refused to remove it.

The youths attacked him and dragged him all the way to Duke Street, until police arrived to arrest seven of his attackers.

Joseph was escorted back to the Mansion House by police and returned the flag to the Lord Mayor of Dublin.

The death of James’s father three years ago spurred a quest to find more information about his heritage.

“My father passed away about three years ago from lung cancer, and I suppose him and my mother would have separated when I was quite young.

“I didn’t quite get to know his side of the family the same way I’ve gotten to know my mother’s side,” James told the Irish Independent.

“There was a curiosity there so that’s what started to motivate me to look into it,” he said.

“I started off with what records I had.

“I had obviously my dad’s birth cert, for example, with his father’s name. I was able to track his birth cert all the way back.

“Then I could start fleshing out the history by checking newspaper archives and baptismal records, they have all their occupations listed on it so you can start looking in the right places for the information,” he added.

“I’d say it probably took me about two months.”

He continued: “The time-intensive part just becomes the investigation where you start maybe having to go to different libraries or tracking membership records of different organisations, that kind of stuff.”

James said uncovering more about his heritage has helped “paint a bigger picture” of who his relatives were.

“It helps give context about the people that you might have heard about. Even habits, and behaviours. It helps paint a bigger picture in terms of what’s gone on before you and who your parents were, where they lived, who they might have met with and what kind of achievements they had.”

The McCann family are attending a special private reception with Lord Mayor Paul McAuliffe at the Mansion House on Monday to pay homage to his heroic ancestor.

“I met the Lord Mayor by accident a couple of weeks ago,” he said.

“He was coming out of the Mansion House and I decided to tell him the story. He thought it was incredible.”

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