Apart from his name and address, this Annie Brophy photograph from the Waterford City and County Council archives (circa 1920) was merely captioned ‘Portrait of a man seated in a chair.’

An article on Pickardstown Ambush Volunteer Johnny Dobbyn, Sporthouse, published around the time of the 50th anniversary of the War of Independence regretted the absence of a picture, saying ‘despite a wide search, none could be procured’ of the young man.

Born in 1898 into a family of agricultural labourers, John went to Butlerstown school and later earned his keep as a live-in farmworker at Sporthouse.

A small and quiet lad, he was wont to sit by the gramophone in the farmhouse kitchen. He joined the local Sinn Féin Club around 1918 and practiced drills or other activities with the IRA ‘A’ Co., 5th Battalion, Waterford No. 1 Brigade.

Attached to the signalling corps and expert at handling flags, he came to be involved in the ambush of British troops near Tramore in January 1921, in which two Republicans, namely Michael McGrath, Poleberry, and Tom O’Brien, Ballycraddock, Dunhill, died.

The following year Johnny was a member of the maintenance party that took over the Tramore Barracks when the RIC were evacuated. He did police duty there until the close of the Siege of Waterford, when the volunteers withdrew and headed into the Comeragh Mountains, where columns were being organised to continue guerrilla warfare.

It was there that he met his fate on August 14th 1923; killed when a comrade’s rifle misfired on the range during the Truce. He was aged just 24.

John Dobbyn is buried in the Republican Plot at Kilrossanty Churchyard and is named on the Ballinattin Memorial in Tramore.