Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891)

He was born and lived at Avondale House (see images), Co. Wicklow, built in 1777 by a distant relative, Samuel Hayes of Hayesville, who died without children and left it to Parnell's great-grandfather, Sir John Parnell 2nd Bt. Charles was half-American through his mother (a niece of Boston's entrepreneurial "Ice King" Frederic Tudor) and he was named for her father, Admiral Charles Stewart, U.S.N, who fought in the War of 1812. As a politician, he became the leader of the Home Rule movement and would almost certainly have won Home Rule for Ireland were it not - ironically - for Catholic Ireland's entrenched views on morality. He had a decades long affair with Mrs Katharine O'Shea by whom he had two daughters. Although they were eventually married, when their affair became public knowledge in Ireland his political career - and the last chance of Irish Home Rule - was dashed. He died just four months after his marriage.