Background
Brennan was born in County Wexford, Ireland.
Brennan was born in County Wexford, Ireland.
He took part in the 1916 Easter Rising and later became the Irish Free State"s first minister to the United States. He joined the Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers and was recruited into the Institutional Review Board by Seán T. O"Kelly. She was with him in Wexford for the 1916 Easter Rising.
He commanded the insurgents in Wexford during the 1916 Easter Rising and was sentenced to death.
The sentence was commuted to penal servitude. In April 1918 he was placed in charge of a newly formed Sinn Féin Department of Propaganda/Publicity.
However, in November 1918 he was arrested in the run-up to the General Election (held in December), in an effort by the British Government to stifle the Sinn Féin election campaign. The election manifesto on which he had worked was "mutilated by the censor" - only about one half of it could be published.
He became Sinn Féín National Director of Elections in December 1918.
He was Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Dáil Éireann, from February 1921 to January 1922. He organised the Irish Race Convention in Paris in 1922. He was director of publicity for the anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War.
In her story The Day We Got Our Own Back she recounts her memory of how, when she was five, her home was raided by Free State forces looking for her father, who was on the run.
Robert Brennan describes the same incident in his memoir Allegiance. Robert Brennan was appointed the Irish Free State"s first minister to the United States, and the family moved to Washington, District of Columbia in 1934.
He was Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States from 1938 to 1947. He wrote mystery stories as a hobby.
He died in Dublin in 1964.
His continuing political activity resulted in further imprisonments in 1917 and afterwards. The election turned out to be a resounding success for the party.
He was a member of the staff of the Echo Newspaper in Enniscorthy.