Anna Catherine Parnell

Anna Catherine Parnell (13 May 1852 – 20 September 1911) was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Ladies' Land League. Irish Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell was her older brother. Early life Anna was born Catherine Maria Anna Mercer Parnell at Avondale House in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, Ireland on 13 May 1852. The tenth of eleven children of John Henry Parnell, a landlord and Delia Tudor Stewart Parnell, an Irish-American and the daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart (1778–1869) of the US Navy. She had very little formal education as a child but the family had an extensive library which she was encouraged to read by her mother. After her father died in 1859 Anna moved with the family to Dublin. Delia Parnell was an active socialite while in Dublin and exposed her children to a wide variety of political views. Anna wrote poetry and painted. In 1865 the family moved to Paris but Anna felt stifled by upper class society rules imposed upon her. She was in Paris when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and was active in the American Ladies' Committee fundraising and setting up hospitals. Returning to Dublin, she enrolled in the School of Art of the Royal Dublin Society. Early political activism Anna moved to London in 1875 to continue studying art at the South Kensington School of Design. Parnell was initially success at art, but she did not pursue a career as a painter, and her known paintings are in private collections in Ireland. When her brother Charles was elected as an MP for Meath, Anna became increasingly political. She frequently visited Parliament during debates, sitting in the Ladies' Gallery. She wrote articles about the debates in a column titled Notes From the Ladies' Cage in the Celtic Monthly. In 1879 Anna joined her sister, Fanny Parnell (1848–1882), a poet, in New York where they raised money in support of the Irish National Land League. The sisters worked closely with their brother Charles and Michael Davitt but were critical of how the funds raised in America were being used in Ireland. In October 1880 the sisters founded the New York Ladies' Land League with their mother as president. Ladies' Land League Anna returned in Dublin in late 1880. When it seemed that the Land League men were likely to be arrested, it was suggested that a women's league in Ireland could take over the work in their absence.