View of Chatham, Kent in 1832, where John Burke and Mary McDonnell lived from 1825–1839.

Mary McDonnell in, “The lot of the soldier’s wife” (revisited)

Image credit: — Picturesque views in England and Wales: Chatham, Kent in 1832. (See details, below.) Since writing the first installment of "The lot of the soldier's wife" in 2015, the recent discovery of a (third) marriage record lifts Mary McDonnell out of the inscrutable murk of family history mystery. Nevertheless, Mary has led us…

The lot of the soldier’s wife was unenviable

So little was etched into the written record about our great-great-great grandmother, Mary McDonnell (1794–1869), the earliest known of our ancestors in this line from the county of Mayo. Of course, the system of record keeping favoured male heads of household, tradesmen, and soldiers. Women tended to fall off the archival radar. While we are…