Maguire, Tom (1892–1993), revolutionary and republican, was born 28 March 1892 in Cross, Co. Mayo, fourth of eleven children of William Maguire, coach-builder and Fenian, and Mary Maguire (née Grehan). Joining the Irish Volunteers on their foundation in 1913 and encouraged by the Easter rising, he formed the first company of Volunteers in Cross in 1917. Sworn into the IRB in 1920, he was appointed OC South Mayo Brigade, IRA, in September. His unit afforded protection when the first dáil court sat in Ballinrobe on 17 May 1920, and put into effect the court's judgement. Involved in an attempted capture of Cross RIC barracks in June 1920 (the first attempt on a barracks in Co. Mayo), he was elected a member of Mayo county council in June 1920 and subsequently chairman of Ballinrobe district council. He took part in a successful IRA ambush of British forces at Kilfall (7 March 1921) and in an ambush at Tourmakeady (3 May 1921); in the round-up that followed, he was shot and badly injured at Westport, and his adjutant (Michael O'Brien) killed. Maguire and his column escaped in the darkness, though his family home and coach-building business were destroyed by crown forces. Recovering from his injuries for the remainder of 1921, he was returned unopposed as Sinn Féin candidate to the second dáil for Mayo South–Roscommon South (June 1921), after the withdrawal of Conor Maguire (qv) (no relation) in his favour. Despite considerable clerical pressure on him to accept the treaty, he voted against it in January 1922. He was reelected to Dáil Éireann for Mayo South–Roscommon South in June 1922 and Mayo South in 1923, but with the other Sinn Féin deputies refused to take his seat in the dáil.
OC 2nd Western Division, IRA, from October 1921, he took control of Ballinrobe infantry barracks following its evacuation by the British army. Along with other, mainly southern and western, IRA leaders, he signed a letter (dated 11 January 1922) to Richard Mulcahy (qv), demanding the calling of an army convention and a reaffirmation of allegiance to the republic, and proposing that the IRA should be under the supreme control of its own executive. He was elected to the anti-treaty IRA executive on 26 March 1922, though he withdrew in favour of Michael Kilroy at the adjourned convention (9 April). His anti-treaty efforts were impeded when some members of the IRA's western division supported the provisional government, and his role in the subsequent civil war was curtailed when he was captured 23 October 1922. Imprisoned in Athlone barracks and courtmartialled in January 1923, he was not executed, unlike his younger brother Seán (executed in Tuam workhouse in April). He escaped 10 June 1923, was appointed to the IRA executive the following month (a position he retained till 1926), but had to remain in hiding till 1925. Prevented by the IRA from standing as a Sinn Féin candidate in the June 1927 general election, and refusing to stand in the 1935 Galway by-election, he never stood for political office again. He was elected vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1931 and again in 1935. In 1938 he reluctantly agreed to the delegation of the second dáil's powers of government to the IRA, wishing for more time to consider its implications. He had not been present when the matter was considered at a meeting in the house of Mary MacSwiney (qv) in Cork (8 December).
About 1929 he had started work with the Irish National Insurance Company, becoming an inspector. By the 1940s he was an insurance broker. From 1969 till his death in 1993, as the sole surviving member of the second dáil, which had never been officially dissolved and was seen by republicans as the legitimate government of Ireland, he was an important symbol for republicans. Attending numerous IRA commemorations in Ireland and the USA, he remained an uncompromising republican, supporting the Provisional IRA after its split with the Official IRA in 1969, and Republican Sinn Féin (of which he became a patron) after its break with Provisonal Sinn Féin in 1986, following the latter's decision to take seats if elected to Dáil Éireann. The following year he declared the Continuity Army Council to be the lawful leadership of the IRA. On reaching 100 years in 1992, he refused to accept the centenarian's cheque from the president of Ireland. He died 5 July 1993 in Castlebar. He married (20 January 1925) Annie Christina Feeney, whose brother Patrick, a young Volunteer, had been shot (5 May 1921) by the RIC after the Tourmakeady ambush; they had four sons and one daughter.