Mary Anne Donohue nee Farrell : Short Biography

Mary Anne Farrell was born in Loughrea in 1855. When my grandfather, Gerald Brandon Donahue, passed away in 1998, my step-grandmother sent me this photo. She said it was GB's grandmother, and his father's "dear" mother. She couldn't remember her name, or any other details. All my father ever knew about his grandfather Thomas, Mary Anne's eldest son and first child, was that he wrote lyrics for sheet music, and said that he "had to" leave Ireland for teaching Protestants to read. When I took the Ancestry DNA test, I received messages from Donahue third cousins, and they were able to tell me about our great-great-grandparents - where they were buried (in Philadelphia - I've since visited their gravesite) and where they were from. Ancestry helped me fill in all the rest. In 2019 my sons and I stayed in Loughrea for 3 days. It was wonderful.