... was born around the year 1773, in the county of Sligo, in the district of Connaught in west Ireland. MacGilligan, a man of medium height and stocky build, was born in a small cottage in a clachan. A clachan was a community of several interrelated families who owned the land around them communally.

By the time Liam was born, Ireland itself had been under the control of England for nearly a hundred years. All the land that Liam's clachan "owned" technically belonged to the Duke of Ambrose, who's grandfather had received title to lands throughout Ireland from William I. Ambrose had never seen his land holdings in Ireland, they were for the most part leased or administered by upperclass Irish. When Liam was ten, Michael Plunkett, a merchant from Ulster who had made his money in the wool business, rented the land the clachan sat on, as well as the land several miles around it. Plunkett ordered the land broken up into plots of land to be rented to the locals. Due to the poor quality of the region, the only way Plunkett could make money off of it was to charge rents on it. The break up of Liam's clachan was gradual, but total.

When he was 17, Liam married a local woman named Ann McCann. After the marriage, instead of building a hut in the clachan, as his father had done, Liam rented fifteen acres of land from Mr. Plunkett. Liam's land was poor at best. It set at the base of a hill, and consisted of rocky uplands at one end and a bog at the other. Liam's hut set on a relatively flat piece of ground at the edge of the bog, and was essentially a stone box with a turf roof. Liam drained part of the bog, and planted it with potatoes, the only crop that could be effectively grown on the poor ground. Like most of his neighbors, potatoes were his family's main source of food. Liam payed the rent on the land, which increased a little every year, with a combination of entrepreneurial schemes. Liam grazed between four and five pigs on the uplands of his farm. With the money from selling the pigs, he was able to pay his rent and had a little left over to buy some barley. Although technically illegal, Liam distilled the barley into liquor, and sold it throughout the community. Liam's wife, Ann, also contributed to the support of the family by spinning woolen thread, which was sold to local merchants who supplied wool to the textile industry of Ulster to the northeast. With the extra money from these schemes, Liam and his family were able to supplement their diet of potatoes with milk and bread, and on rare occasions meat.

In spite of their difficult lives, Liam and Ann had a total of seven children. The first child, a girl, died at birth. Due to the fact that the MacGilligans were Catholic, and their first child had not been baptized, she could not be buried on the consecrated ground of the local church. Instead, the MacGilligans' first child was buried in Liam's bog. Liam and Ann's second child was also a girl, who they named Mary. She was born in the winter of 1791. Much to Liam's joy the next four children, who were born over a five year period were all boys; Robert, Cornelius, Harold, and Patrick. Liam and Ann's final child, a girl they named Eliza, survived child birth. However, at age ten, she was caught in a rain storm, while tending to the pigs. The next day, she had a raging fever with a wheezing cough. There were no doctors in the area, and even if there had been the MacGilligans could not afford them. A local midwife was called upon, and she administered several local remedies in exchange for a quart of Liam's homemade whisky. Most of the remedies were made by mixing local roots and herbs with a large portion of terpentine. In spite of the remedies, within a week of Eliza's first fever, she died of what was commonly referred to as consumption.