O'Doherty, Joseph (1891–1979), revolutionary, politician, and administrator, was born 24 December 1891 in Derry city, the sixth son of Michael Doherty, a butcher and hide merchant, and his wife Rose (née McLoughlin). He was educated at St Columb's College, Derry, and St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin, where he qualified as a teacher in 1912. However, he found he disliked teaching and quit his first job after three months. He joined the Irish Volunteers soon after their founding in 1913, and became a member of the anti-Redmondite Volunteer executive, active in planning the Easter rising. Just before Easter 1916, he was sent by Seán Mac Diarmada (qv) to take charge of the rising in Derry, but the confusion caused by Eoin MacNeill's (qv) orders countermanding Volunteer mobilisation prevented any outbreak in the city. O'Doherty was arrested in Derry during Easter week and imprisoned in Kilmainham gaol and Frongoch internment camp. Released in December 1916, he was re-appointed to the Volunteer executive (1917–21). In the 1918 general election he was elected Sinn Féin MP for Donegal North, and was among those present at the Mansion House for the meeting of the first dáil on 21 January 1919. During the ensuing Anglo–Irish war (1919–21) he served as a senior IRA officer in counties Donegal and Derry. In the general election to the second dáil in May 1921, he was returned unopposed for Donegal.
O'Doherty opposed the Anglo–Irish treaty, and fought with anti-treaty forces under Noel Lemass (qv). He left Ireland when appointed to an anti-treaty delegation sent to the USA (1922–4). He held his Donegal dáil seat as an anti-treaty republican in the general elections of 1922 and 1923, and was a founder member of Fianna Fáil in 1926. During the June 1927 general election, he was on a fund-raising mission for the party in the USA, but allowed his name to go forward; he polled badly and lost his seat. After serving in the Irish Free State senate (1928–33), he regained his dáil seat for Donegal (1933–7). He was called to the bar in 1936 and practised until August 1945, when he was appointed county manager of Kildare and Carlow, a position he held until his retirement in January 1958.
In 1936 he instigated two libel actions after the publication of On another man's wound, the war-of-independence memoir of Ernie O'Malley (qv). O'Doherty accused O'Malley of implying that he was a coward for having refused to take part in an IRA raid in Moville, Co. Donegal, in October 1919. While the passage in question did not name O'Doherty, he claimed that it clearly referred to him, and that he had decided not to take part in the raid because, as a member of the dáil at the time, he did not think it appropriate to do so. O'Malley's defence argued that the passage did not refer to O'Doherty but that the events described were true. The courts found that O'Doherty had been libelled and he was awarded £250 in his first action against O'Malley and the publishers, the Sign of the Three Candles Press, and £300 in his second action against O'Malley and the Irish Press, who had serialised the book.
O'Doherty married Margaret (Mairéad) Claire Irvine (1893–1986), a native of Co. Fermanagh, who was educated at St Louis Convent, Monaghan, and UCD, qualifying as a medical doctor in 1918. She shared his republican views, and was dismissed from her position as medical officer for Derry in 1922 for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the crown. She later worked at the Women's and Children's hospital, New York city, the old Coombe hospital in Dublin, and was medical officer in Nobber, Co. Meath, and Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Strongly interested in the arts, she was well known for her patronage of young artists, writers and musicians. The O'Dohertys had four daughters and one son, and lived at 16 Terenure Road East, Dublin.
Joseph O'Doherty died 10 August 1979 at the Meath Hospital, Dublin. One of the last surviving members of the first dáil, he was buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin cemetery. His elder brother Séamus O'Doherty (qv) was also a republican revolutionary.