Susan Fennell (1812-1909) – Ennis & Kilbaha

Susan Fennell (1812-1909) was the daughter of Thomas Pilkington (1784-1838) of Cragleigh, Ennis. She married Timothy Haier, an Ennis shopkeeper and had three children whose baptisms are registered in the Ennis R.C. parish records in the 1840s. She married secondly in the Ennis Church of Ireland church in 1850 to William Reynolds, a baker. The family may have gone to America then. Susan reappears in the 1860s at Kilbaha with her two sons. She is the Susan Haier "known locally as Siobhan Pilkington" mentioned in an account by Mathúin Mac Fheorais (http://www.aoh61.com/history/kilbaha_1867.htm) of the Fenian uprising in Kilbaha in 1867. She ran the shop and pub later known as The Lighthouse Inn at Kilbaha. She married for a third time, to Mathias Fennell, a Kilbaha river pilot. Susan died in 1909 at Kilbaha, aged c. 97. Her photo (above) from c.1900 appears in the Pilkington, Griffin,Keane Collection in Foto, Clare County Library's online images collection, and her complex family connections were the topic of some posts on the Clare Past forum some time ago (http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2010).