Juan Vivion de Valera

Juan Vivion de Valera was a Spaniard, who had emigrated to America. He had studied to be a sculptor, but due to ill health he had to revert to teaching music. He allegedly married an Irish woman, Kate Coll, who was born in Knockmore, Co. Limerick, and had emigrated to America two years earlier, in 1881, although biographers of Eamon de Valera have failed to find any church or state record of the marriage. In 1882 they had their first child Eamon de Valera, who later became a prominent Irish revolutionary, then the Taoiseach of Ireland, and finally the third President of Ireland.

Juan de Valera died in 1884, when his son was only two years old.