The only genealogist in the village

Mary Josephine O'Farrell was born in 1861 at 13 Lower Baggot Street and was baptised in the Catholic church of St Andrew, Westland Row, Dublin. She was one of eleven children born to Lewis Farrell, a victualler and Ellen O'Hanlon. O'Farrell worked as a genealogist in the early 1900s. In the 1901 census, Josephine is recorded as having no occupation and living with two of her spinster sisters, Christina and Gertrude. Gertrude was a shorthand writer. The house had a servant and a Trinity College Dublin undergraduate boarder. Her brother Joseph is living on Morehampton Road as a pharmacutical chemist. By the census of 1911, Joseph is living with Christina (sanitary inspector) and Gertrude (now a pharmacutical student at the age of 36,although it is recorded as age 30). Mary Josephine is living at 34 Beechwood Road Lower aged 49. She is now living alone and calling herself a genealogist. Mary Josephine is most active in the 1910s up until the destruction of the Four Courts. On the 8 August 1922 the Irish Independent reports that a Josephine O'Farrell has been awarded £3000 compensation from the destruction of the Four Courts, more compensation than is offered for some people who lost immediate family members. She died in 1925 and she is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. The date of the collection being deposited at the Public Record Office of Ireland coincides with the death of her spinster sister Christina in 1941.