A fascinating new local history publication by Laois native Mary Conliffe will be launched in Donaghmore Workhouse Museum tonight at 7pm.
Dr Niall O’Doherty, Editor of the Rathdowney Review, will be the guest speaker on the night.
The book, Grandmother Catherine in France during the Great War and family memories from Laois, tells the story of Mary’s grandmother, Catherine Cleere, who worked as a governess in France during the First World War.
It is based on a diary kept by Catherine during the war and discovered by the author in 2010.
Catherine Cleere was born in Clough, Co. Laois in 1885 and later moved to nearby Donaghmore. She was educated by the St. John of God Sisters in Rathdowney where she studied French.
Following in the footsteps of her older sister Margaret, Catherine travelled to France to work as a governess. She was based in the household of a rich industrialist family in Tourcoing, a small city in northern France, when war broke out in 1914.
The book explores Catherine’s experiences during the long and lonely years of war and describes how she settled back to family life in Ireland in the years that followed.
The book contains a potted history of the regions Tourcoing and Montmirail, which the author visited when researching her grandmother’s wartime experience.
The book also includes a brief narrative describing the birthplace of the Cleere sisters in Laois and some fond memories of the author’s life while growing up in Laois.
Mary Conliffe (ne Cummins) was born in 1951 and grew up on the family farm in Doon, Borris-in-Ossory, County Laois. She became an air hostess with Aer Lingus in 1971.
Her writings have been published in Ireland’s Own and the magazine’s Annual Anthology of Winning Irish Short Stories in 2015 and in the following two years.
One of her stories is featured in Beyond the Farm Gate, edited by P.J Cunningham in 2015. She contributes annually to the Laois Rathdowney Annual Review and has been published in the Family Fortunes section of The Irish Times.
Mary graduated in 2009 with a master’s degree in local history from Maynooth University. Her thesis was based on the Caragh Orphanage County Kildare (1865-1894) and the criminal convictions of Revd Samuel George Cotton 1895.
Mary served on the board of directors of Kare, the organisation for intellectually disabled persons in Kildare, for seven years (2015-2021).
She lives in Robertstown, County Kildare, with her husband Kevin, a mathematics teacher.
They have two children – Patrick a solicitor in Dublin and Marie Therese, a beautiful young woman who lives in a Kare residence for special needs persons in Clane.
Proceeds from the book will go in aid of people with intellectual disabilities.
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