Margaret Gibbons

Life
1884-1969; b. Tyrrellspass, Co. Westmeath; dg. of an RIC officer, moving to Fore, Co. Westmeath; four sisters and two brothers, among whom Kitty (Mrs O’Doherty) and Mary (Mother Columba, Loreto, Navan) were also authors; ed. Fore national School, Collinstown, and St Mary’s College, Belfast; qualified as a teacher; taught on Scottish Islands, and Cannistown, nr. Navan; she applied for but was not accepted for the Catholic China Missions; travelled to India at 73, and researching life of Mar Invanios, Archb. of Trivandrum; a poem by her appears in Catholic Bulletin (July 1912); d. unmarried. IF

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Works
  • My Pretty Maid, Talks with Girls by ‘Eithne’, with a pref. by his Grace the Most Rev. T. P. Gilmartin, DD Archb. of Tuam (London: Sands 1927).
  • The Life of Magaret Aylward, Foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Faith (London: Sands 1928), ill. [pls].
  • Little Nellie of Holy God: A Model for First Holy Communicants (London: Sands [1929]).
  • Glimpses of Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Restoration of the Daughters of St Brigid, by Most Rev. Dr. Delaney (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1932), xii, 386 p., ill. [16 lvs. of pls].
  • Guide to St Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg (Dublin;Talbot Press 1932), 32pp.
  • Loreto, Navan: One Hundred Years of Catholic Progress, 1833-1933 (Navan: Meath Chronicle 1937).
  • The Ownership of Station Island, Lough Derg (Dublin: Duffy 1937).
  • Station Island, Lough Derg, with brief historic sketch of the Pilgrimage and Chronology [5th edn.] (Dublin 1950).
  • Mar Ivanios, 1882-1953, Archbishop of Trivandrum (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds 1962).

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Notes
Kith & Kin: Mary Gibbons (1873-1959), her sister, was Mother Columba of Navan Loreto Convent, advocate of Irish culture, and author of ‘Who Fears to Speak of Easter Week?’; a close friend of Eamon de Valera in later years.

Namesake: a namesake, Margaret Gibbons, later Mrs. Patrick MacGill, was the neice of Cardinal Gibbons and author of over twenty novels; she later opened a drama school in Los Angeles, and again in Florida. (See under Patrick MacGill, infra.)

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