William Bulfin

Who was William Bulfin?

William Bulfin was the fourth son in a family of nine boys and one girl, the children of William Bulfin, of Derrinlough, Birr, County Offaly, Ireland, and Ellen Grogan of Croghan, County Offaly.

He attended the Classical Academy and the Presentation Schools in Birr, and the Royal Charter School at Banagher when it was under head-mastership of Dr. King Joyce.

His maternal uncle, Father Vincent Grogan, was Provincial for the Passionist Fathers of a province that included a monastery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. William Bulfin, the younger, emigrated to Argentina in 1884, with his elder brother, Peter. But they turned their backs on the city, and moved on out to the pampas.

Hundreds of Irish emigrants from Counties Longford and Westmeath had already settled the Argentine. They had with them letters of introduction to the Passionist Fathers in Buenos Aires. The Bulfins went to the ranch of one of these, Juan Dowling, a native of County Longford. There he met the woman whom he would eventually marry, Anne O’Rourke