The O’Reilly Women of Charlestown, MA

For a man whose life was filled with adventure and daring, who loved the great outdoors and sports, especially boxing and kayaking, John Boyle O’Reilly’s greatest joy in life was actually in the comfort of home with his wife and four daughters. 

He met his wife Mary Murphy of Charlestown at the Boston Pilot newspaper, shortly after he began working there in 1870. Mary was already a talented writer who published stories in local magazines, using the pen name Agnes Smiley in honor of her grandmother. Mary launched a popular Pilot column for boys and girls called ‘Little Ants,’ creating a wonderful archive of children’s literature for young readers.

Mary Murphy who married John Boyle O’Reilly on August 15, 1872

John and Mary married on August 15, 1872 at St Mary’s Church in Charlestown, just around the corner from 34 Winthrop Street where the family settled; John was 28 and Mary was 20. Within a year, their first daughter Mary Boyle was born on May 18, 1873, followed by Elizabeth Boyle on July 25, 1874, Agnes Smiley on May 19, 1877 and Blanid Boyle on June 18,1880. These women deeply inspired O’Reilly’s writing for the final 18 years of his life. He dedicated his book, Songs, Legends, and Ballads to his wife, writing, “Her rare and loving judgment has been a standard I have tried to reach.” His last volume of poems, In Bohemia, was dedicated, “To My Four Little Daughters.” 

After John’s sudden death from an accidental overdose of medication in 1890, Mary and their four daughters, who ranged in age from 10 to 17 years old, became devoted to his memory and legacy. At the unveiling of Daniel French’s O’Reilly Memorial in 1896, newspapers reported that “Mary, the poet’s widow, came to the stage with her four daughters. They sat as a group on stage….Each of his daughters carried a bouquet of roses and Miss Blanid unveiled the memorial.”

Their mother Mary’s sudden death from pneumonia in December 1897 sent the daughters fully onto their own paths in life, and not surprisingly, they followed in the footsteps of their parents as writers and social activists.

Mary Boyle O’Reilly (1873-1939), nicknamed Molly, wrote creative stories under her mother’s pen name, Agnes Smiley, before becoming a fierce social activist for women and children. She established Boston’s Guild of St. Elizabeth Children’s Home and supported various social service causes. In 1910 she disguised herself as a mill worker to expose child labor abuses in New Hampshire, which led her to a brilliant career in journalism. 

In 1914, Mary began reporting for Newspaper Enterprise Associates of America, a syndicate of 200 newspapers. At the onset of World War I, she entered Belgium disguised as a peasant and reported extensively from the front lines, writing, “If half the world has gone mad, it is for the women to see that something like common sense comes back to the world.” 

Later in life, Mary built a small stone bungalow in Auburndale near Boston as a tribute to her father, according to her Collected Papers at John J. Burns Library at Boston College. She died at age 66 of a heart attack.

Elizabeth Boyle O’Reilly (1874-1921), nicknamed Eliza or Bessie, also began as a poet, publishing a selection of verse in 1903 titled My Candle and Other Poems. After traveling to Europe with Agnes and Blanid in 1904, Eliza remained there, conducting extensive research for two massive cultural travel books. Heroes of Spain, published in 1910, was praised for its “sympathetic estimate of the Iberian peninsula and its people, drawing chiefly from the less traveled region of the Peninsula where the dominant characteristics of old Spain are still said to flourish. ”Her masterpiece was the 600-page tome, How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, published in 1921. The New York Herald called Eliza “noble” for undertaking “this elaborate study of the French cathedrals, which is at once history, description and interpretation.”

Agnes Hocking with students. Courtesy of Shady Hill School

Agnes Smiley O’Reilly (1877-1955) was interested early on in education and was a substitute teacher in Charlestown after college. On June 28, 1905, the day of her father’s birth, Agnes married philosopher William Earnest Hocking, professor at Harvard College and Yale University. Her request to be married by a Catholic priest was denied by the Archdiocese when she refused to sign a paper promising to raise her children Catholic. 

In 1915, the couple launched The Cooperative Open Air School for children on their back porch in Cambridge, a progressive, non-traditional place of learning. It was renamed ShadyHill School in 1925 and still flourishes today. Belgium writer May Sarton, a pupil there, wrote later, “There is no doubt that my creative mind stemmed in those early years from the genius of Agnes Hocking, the schools’ founder and moving spirit.”

Blanid Boyle O’Reilly (1881-1918) the youngest daughter, was named for a mythical Irish character in a book by close family friend Dr. Robert D. Joyce. John wrote a poem entitled “To My Little Blanid,” describing her lovingly as “my little daughter with eyes of blue” who responded to every fairy tale he read her with the question, “Oh, is it true?” 

Not much has been written about Blanid, and there is no evidence she took up writing or social activism. After their trip to Europe in 1904, Blanid returned to attend the wedding of her sister Agnes. Five years later, the 1910 US Census reported her as being an inmate at the Worcester State Hospital for mental patients. In 1918, she died in Maryland at age 38.

In later years, mental illness cast a dark and mysterious shadow upon the lives of the O’Reilly sisters. When Elizabeth returned from Europe in April, 1918 to complete her book on French cathedrals, her sisters Mary and Agnes had her committed to an insane asylum in Massachusetts, for “talking in an irrational manner.” She escaped after 18 months and fled to New York, where her sisters again tried to have her admitted to Bellevue Hospital psychopathic ward. Eliza was placed in protective custody with her lawyer while Judge Robert F. Wagner weighed the evidence, eventually ruling that she was indeed sane and free to go. Her book was published a year later by Harper & Brothers in June 1921, and she died of cancer on September 11, 1922 in New York City. 

While this sibling dispute was a tragically sad coda to Elizabeth’s life especially, it is indisputable that the O’Reilly women were extraordinary in their own right, much like their parents.

Research + Text, Michael Quinlin