Juan Vivion de Valera was the man Éamon de Valera maintained was his father.
According to Eamon's account, Juan Vivion was a Spaniard who emigrated to America. There, he met Éamon's mother Kate Coll, who had immigrated from Knockmore in County Limerick, and married her in 1881, a year before Éamon's birth. Juan Vivion died in 1885 leaving his widow and child in poor circumstances.
On de Valera's original birth certificate, his name as given as George De Valero and his father is listed as Vivion De Valero. The first name was corrected in 1910 (possibly 1916) to Edward and the surname to de Valera.
Biographers of Éamon de Valera have failed to find any church or state record of the marriage of Catherine Coll and Juan Vivion de Valera. Furthermore, no birth, baptismal or death certificate has ever been found for an individual named Juan Vivion de Valera (or the alternative spelling de Valeros). Yet, it was not uncommon for 19th century immigrants to change names or be subject to poor documentation. Yet, this led some modern scholars, including Éamon's biographer Tim Pat Coogan, to conclude that Kate Coll actually bore her son out of wedlock and that Éamon then invented Juan Vivion de Valera to disguise his illegitimate birth. This theory is contradicted, however, by Éamon's New York birth certificate referenced above.
The historian Sean Murphy has listed the long-term search for facts about Mr de Valera, allowing that he may have come from New Mexico, and was perhaps returning there at the time of his death.
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