sold for $5000, won him national recognition and a reputation as a Western painter. Other western-themed works include Lynch Law – Comrade’s Appeal 1877, Scouts of the Yellowstone, 1877 and Back to the Wigwam 1881. The painting of Preliminary Trial of a Horsethief was painted near Oskaloosa, Iowa. The Magistrate in this trial, seated in the center of the picture, is John F. Cartwright (1827–1893), my Second Great Grandfather. The Des Moines Register published this picture in their Sunday edition in about 1954. Submitted by Harvey C. Mayhill. "Custer's Last Rally" In 1876 when news of General George Custer's fatal defeat by the Sioux Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn reached the East, Mulvany immediately recognized the significance of this event and headed west to Montana to capture it on canvas. Over the next four years, he made two trips to the battle site and set up a studio in Cincinnati, Salida, Denver and then in Kansas City., Mulvany's large masterpiece, the 11ftx20ft Custer’s Last Rally, 1881, began its seventeen-year coast-to-coast tour of the country before H. J. Heinz took over ownership in 1898. "Aughrim" Around 1882, Mulvany secured a commission from the Irish Club of Chicago to paint the Battle of Aughrim – a tragic loss for the Irish in 1691. John began preliminary sketches in Ireland in 1882 and finished the piece in 1885. This painting was presumed lost until it was offered for sale on eBay in 2010 by a dealer who thought it represented an American battle scene, purchased by an Irish art gallery, exhibited in Dublin and subsequently sold. Politics Mulvany was a lifelong member of the Irish secret society, Clan na Gael, whose aim was Irish independence. He narrowly escaped imprisonment by the authorities while researching uniforms for his Aughrim painting at the Tower of London just days before it was bombed in the Fenian dynamite campaign in 1885. His involvement in internecine fighting within the Chicago branch in 1886 cost him the Aughrim commission and after his friend, Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, was murdered in 1889 over financial irregularities with this same branch, Mulvany left Chicago for the west. He married Mrs. Ellen Welch in 1890. and was divorced two years later in CO. He also had a romantic involvement with Lucy Deere, whom he met c. 1880 and contacted before his death in 1906. Mulvany painted in Oregon, San