On 10 March 1923 John C. Brosnan, an undertaker on Main Street, Castleisland, County Kerry was paid £10 in cash for a coffin. John Kerry O’Connor’s thriving ‘The Emporium’ in Castleisland supplied a hearse for £2 and other funeral requirements for a further £1 10s. These sums represented a small fortune for a bereaved father with insufficient grass on his three-acre holding for his two cows. Two of the man’s daughters lived at home but were unemployed and another son, Patrick, was so ill-treated at the hands of the National Army while in custody in Tralee that he never recovered and died on 25 January 1927. This was the grim situation that confronted Patrick Daly, of Ahaneboy, Castleisland, when he set about interring what remained of his son, John (‘Jack’) in Kilbannivane cemetery outside Castleisland. The latter was one of eight prisoners infamously blown up by a land mine at Ballyseedy on 7 March 1923. While John Daly’s name and gruesome end have been documented, the lives of his father and siblings have not registered in the historical record. The detail provided in military service pension applications has decisively changed this and presents a hitherto unknown opportunity to trace some of the historical contours of family, locality and county. Drawing on examples from pension applications pertaining to deaths in Kerry in March 1923, this essay reflects on some of these new research possibilities.