Patrick Hennelly, comments and selected references

More than one visitor to Hennelly's shop was impressed by the number of special tools, many handmade, used for pipemaking. Hennelly was well-skilled in several crafts and could, for example, as blacksmith, forge a reamer from an old file.

Some recall him as eccentric, curmudgeonly, critical. Others got along well with him, found him to be helpful, engaging. Chicago piper Kevin Henry, for example, was great friends with Hennelly.

In his pipemaking, Hennelly's keywork generally followed the designs of the Taylor brothers. In other ways he was sometimes very creative. There is report of a chanter which has a reedcap with a twist-top to stop air flow, as substitute for a stop-key. Hennelly sometimes clad parts, mainstocks, for example, in pearloid plastic sheet or similar material - derisively known as "mother of toilet seat." Two sets, of radical design, have the drones mounted on the upper side of the mainstock. The regulators extend out as usual, and they rest on the player's leg.

Hennelly probably did not mark his work, but two Hennelly chanters are stamped. One with the letters "P H" (or perhaps "P N"). Another with "T" stamped on a key block and near it a broken-off piece which may have been where stamping a second letter was attempted.

New York piper Mattie Connolly once went with Kevin Henry to visit Hennelly. He recalled that when Hennelly saw pipes he approved of he said "Decent work and artistic work."

In recognition of his pipemaking Hennelly was invited to demonstrate reedmaking and pipemaking at the mammoth Smithsonian National Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, 1976.

According to US Census returns Hennelly worked as a carpenter in building construction. He married Margaret Nevins [Piggott has the name as Navin], also from County Mayo, in Chicago in 1927. They had seven children and at the time of his death 22 grandchildren.

Nick Whitmer June 2020, additions Nov. 2022
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Connolly, Mattie conversation Oct. 13, 2018.

Gavin, Sean "Uilleann Piping in Chicago" Notes and Narratives lecture at Na Píobairí Uilleann, July 19, 2018. [speaks of Hennelly (begins about 30:30) and Kevin Henry (41:30)]
http://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=860&mediaId=30539

"HENNELLY" [death announcement] Chicago [IL] Tribune Tuesday Aug. 8, 1978 p. 13 column 4
Newspapers.com

McCullough, Lawrence E. Irish Music in Chicago: an ethnomusicological study PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1978 pp. 30-31 [Hennelly and Tom Ennis]; 72-4 [his pipemaking work, description of a "skyscraper" set]

Sky, Patrick "An American Pipemaker" [forging a reamer] An Píobaire vol. 1 no. 10 Bealtaine 1972 p. 80
https://pipers.ie/source/media/?galleryId=1010&mediaId=25885