Clare, Wallace George

Clare, Wallace George (1895–1963), priest and genealogist, was born 9 August 1895 in Ipswich, Suffolk, the only son of Frederick Clare, wine buyer, and Agnes Clare (née Keegan). His father died when Wallace was 2 years old, and his mother brought him and his sister up in Lowestoft, where he attended Lowestoft College. He spent a year in St Wilfred's College and some time in Paris, and was ordained (1918) as a Roman Catholic priest; his conversion from anglicanism had taken place in 1908 while he was still at school. He was a curate in Northampton cathedral till 1922, then parish priest at March, Cambridgeshire, till 1935; from 1935 to 1940 he was chaplain to a boys' school in Buckinghamshire, and from 1940 to 1963 chaplain to St Joseph's College, Ipswich. It was from his rooms there that Clare ran the Irish Genealogical Society almost single-handedly for twenty-seven years. He first suggested founding the society in 1936, was its secretary and archivist till his death, and was its first fellow (elected 15 March 1937). Clare worked on theology, ecclesiastical history, and educational history, but devoted most of his energy to Irish genealogy. He was one of the first scholars who sought to foster a wider interest in this subject: he published A young Irishman's diary (1928), the diary of his grandfather, John Keegan (qv) of Moate, Co. Westmeath; several genealogical guides; and A simple guide to Irish genealogy (1937), a pioneering handbook that was widely used. His major work, a genealogically annotated edition of the Irish convert rolls, remained unfinished at the time of his death on 19 April 1963.