Margaret O'Carroll

Alfred Webb

A Compendium of Irish Biography

1878

O'Carroll, Margaret, "Margaret-an-Einigh" — (Margaret the Hospitable), was born early in the 15th century, and married Calvagh O'Conor, chief of Offaly. The Four Masters speak of her as "the best woman of her time in Ireland." "She was the only woman that has made most of preparing highways, and erecting bridges, churches, and mass-books, and of all manner of things profitable to serve God and her soul," says MacFirbis, the chronicler. It was her custom twice each year to give a sumptuous entertainment to the bards and the poor. Thomas D'Arcy McGee has written two poems in her praise — one relating an anecdote connected with her pilgrimage to Compostella, in Spain. She died of cancer in 1451. Her two sons survived her but a short time; and her daughter, Finola, after being twice married — to Niall Garv O'Donnell and Hugh Boy O'Neill — ended her days in a convent, 25th July 1493.

Sources

134. Four Masters, Annals of Ireland by the: Translated and Edited by John O'Donovan. 7 vols. Dublin, 1856.

Featured Books

An American widow’s account of her travels in Ireland in 1844–45 on the eve of the Great Famine:

Ireland’s Welcome to the Stranger

Sailing from New York, she set out to determine the condition of the Irish poor and discover why so many were emigrating to her home country.

Mrs Nicholson’s recollections of her tour among the peasantry are still revealing and gripping today.

The author returned to Ireland in 1847–49 to help with famine relief and recorded those experiences in the rather harrowing: Annals of the Famine in Ireland.

See more of our books »

The Ocean Plague: or, A Voyage to Quebec in an Irish Emigrant Vessel is based upon the diary of Robert Whyte who, in 1847, crossed the Atlantic from Dublin to Quebec in an Irish emigrant ship. His account of the journey provides invaluable eyewitness testimony to the trauma and tragedy that many emigrants had to face en route to their new lives in Canada and America. The book is also available in Kindle.

The Irish in America by John F. Maguire provides a substantial and invaluable account of the extreme difficulties faced by pioneer Irish immigrants in North America during the 19th Century. The book is also available in Kindle.

The Scotch-Irish in America tells the story of how the hardy breed of men and women, who in America came to be known as the ‘Scotch-Irish’, was forged in the north of Ireland during the seventeenth century. It relates the circumstances under which the great exodus to the New World began, the trials and tribulations faced by these tough American pioneers and the enduring influence they came to exert on the politics, education and religion of the country.

Show fewer titles