Tone was born at 44 Stafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street), Dublin, on 20 June 1763. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was called to the Bar in 1789, but was more interested in politics. When Tone published An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland under the pseudonym 'A Northern Whig', he was invited to Belfast to assist in founding the Society of United Irishmen, which met first on 18 October 1791. A Dublin society was soon formed, but Tone was associated more with the Catholic Committee, whose paid agent he became in 1792.

In 1794, an eccentric cleric, William Jackson, arrived in Ireland to assess for the French government the likely success of an invasion. Tone unwisely wrote a memorandum for him; when Jackson was betrayed and arrested, Tone was fortunate to escape arrest. He was allowed to emigrate to America in 1795. As he later wrote, he sought to break the connection with England, and 'to substitute the common name of Irishman, in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter', and in Belfast he joined with United Irishmen in an oath to this end.

The French minister in Philadelphia encouraged Tone to take his invasion plan to revolutionary France. An invasion fleet left Brest in December 1796, but bad weather prevented a landing. Tone persuaded the French into new expeditions, but by the time Gen. Humbert landed in Co Mayo in August 1798, the United Irishmen's rising in Ulster and Leinster had failed. Humbert was soon defeated, and Tone was captured aboard a French ship in Lough Swilly, Co Donegal, on 12 October. He admitted treason and, when his request to be shot as a soldier was refused, he cut his own throat in Dublin on 12 November dying in prison on 19 November 1798.

From the Appletree Press title: Famous Irish Lives.
Also from Appletree: Irish Museums and Heritage Centres.