 Eoghan Rua was born in 1748 in, Meentogues, Gneeveguilla, Sliabh Luachra, a mountainous part of County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland.He was from a once-prominent sept that like so many others gradually lost its land and its leaders in the successive British conquests of Ireland.By the time of his birth, most of the native Irish in the southwest had been reduced to landless poverty in a "houseless and unpeopled," mountainous region.