A National League branch for Celbridge and Straffan was established on 24 September 1887. Bertram H. Barton was a member of the Unionist Party and instigator of a sedition charge against the Principal of Ardclough School in 1917. Straffan casualties in the Great War included James Cash, (died 27 May 1918), D.A. Carden (4 September 1915), Thomas Goucher (22 January 1918), Ronald B.C. Kennedy (died of illness, 18 August 1917), G Kinahan (14 October 1916), William Lawless (15 September 1917), and Peter McLeish, (21 January 1918). Francis Salmon was a civilian casualty in the Easter Rising of 1916.