“Finding Mary makes a compelling case for engaging with local history … a microhistory that allows us to enter the world of pre-Famine rural Donegal as through a time machine.”
Berni Dwan, Women’s History Association of Ireland
During a robbery on 10 March 1844, 14-year-old servant Mary Doherty was murdered in a farmhouse near Culdaff, Co. Donegal. There was no doubt locally about the perpetrator’s identity, but there was insufficient evidence against Daniel McKeeny, and he was eventually transported for a separate offence of sheep-stealing. Based on original research, this book reconstructs the world of a north Donegal village on the eve of the Great Famine to explore the approaches to justice taken by the local community and agents of the state, and examines the survival of the murder in local folklore to reflect on memory, remembrance and whose stories get to be told.
The book is available to order here, or to borrow from public libraries in Ireland.
Learn more about this story with my interviews on The Irish History Podcast and on RTÉ’s The History Show.