Mary kenny osullivan biography examples

When the young Marquis of Headfort, Geoffrey Thomas Taylour, fell in love with a beautiful Gaiety girl – yes, an actress – and insisted on marrying her, in 1901, all of gentry society, in Ireland and in England, was scandalised.

Not only had Rosie Boote been on the stage – and her mother and father before her – but she was also a Roman Catholic, which was almost worse in the eyes of the establishment at the time.

Everyone, including King Edward VII, tried to stop the match. Everyone said it couldn’t last. Lord Headfort was warned that he would have to resign his commission in the very grand Ist Irish Life Guards, where he was much esteemed: a former actress could not be presented to the regiment! Everyone told Headfort that high society in Ireland and England would snub the couple, since this was mesalliance between a peer of the realm and a stage performer who was only one step up from being a chorus girl.

Geoffrey, Marquis of Headfort, ignored all the nay-sayers

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Mary Kenney O’Sullivan: ‘A noble ung woman on fire for her cause’

A bronze likeness of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan, on exhibit in the Boston Statehouse.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

The likeness of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan is depicted in bronze at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. The monument, titled “Hear Us,” was dedicated in 1999 by State House Women’s Leadership Project, and honors six women of distinction.

O’Sullivan, one of those six women, was a mästare for women factory workers during her lifetime (1864-1943), as well as a suffragette.

A daughter

of Hannibal

Born during the Civil War in Hannibal, Mo., Mary was the youngest daughter of Irish-born Michael and Mary Kenney’s four children. Michael worked as a laborer. When Michael Kenney died circa 1878, financial circumstances led 14-year-old Mary into the workforce.

According to printed biographies, her first job was at a book bindery in Hannibal, where she earned $2 a week. Four years later, as a su

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March 2023 is Irish Heritage Month and Women’s History Month in Massachusetts. In honor of both of these month-long celebrations, and to mark International Women's Day on March 8, the Boston Irish Tourism Association pays homage to these seven Irish-American women from Massachusetts whose accomplishments in their respective fields have positively influenced society and inspired people around the world.

Mary Kenney O'Sullivan
(1864-1943)

Nationally acclaimed union organizer Mary Kenny was born in Missouri to Irish immigrants. She worked in Chicago and New York as an organizer before moving to Boston’s South End in 1893. She organized rubber makers, shoe makers and garment workers, shops where women were paid poorly and suffered bad working conditions. When her husband John O’Sullivan died, she continued her work, creating the National Women’s Trade Union League and taking part in the Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence, MA. The Massachu