Mary Ann Donovan : Short Biography

In April 1888, teen-ager Mary Ann Donovan stood alone on the quays of Queenstown, outside the city of Cork, waiting to board a ship bound for Boston. Her parents had died a few months before, making Mary Ann and her older brother John the only members of the family remaining in Ireland. Older sister Nellie had already gone to America and lived in Lynn, Massachusetts, and Nellie’s weekly letters home were bright spots in the Donovan household. After their parents’ deaths, Nellie sent the passage money so that her sister could join her. The “S.S. Marathon” was to be her home as she crossed the water, one of the thousands of other Irish farm girls seeking a better life in a new land.