My good friend Aidan McGuire suggested I add a section on Chester Beatty, miner, financier, collector and honorary Irish citizen. Chester Beatty was born in New York and graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1898. His paternal grandparents were from Ireland. He went west, working for the Guggenheims in Colorado and other areas and by 1910 had amassed a fortune in excess of a million dollars.
He moved to London in 1913 and from there travelled throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He set up his own venture capital firm, the Selection Trust, in 1914 and made investments in Russia, Serbia, Rhodesia and West Africa. After the war, he travelled frequently to Cairo where he had a house, started collecting antiquities and art and focusing on his copper investments in Rhodesia and diamonds in West Africa. These proved successful and he became a British citizen in 1933.
After WWII, he had some differences with the new Labour government regarding his finances and moved to Ireland, becoming good friends with President Sean T Kelly and Taoiseach, Eamon De Valera. He donated paintings to the National Gallery and set up a library to store his own antiquities on Shrewsbury Rd. in Dublin.
When he passed away in 1968, he was given a state funeral and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
The Library and collections are housed in their own special section in Dublin Castle and are open to the public.