Margaret Cusack was born in Dublin and joined the Anglican sisterhood in London. In 1858 she became a Catholic, taking the religious name was Sister Mary Frances Clare. In 1860 she came to Newry to the Irish Poor Clares, who worked with young women. She went to Kenmare, County Kerry, to open a foundation, and from 1879 to 1880 she collected funds for the relief of the poor. In 1881 she left the order. She gained the approval of Pope Leo XIII in 1884 to found the Sisters of Peace. She went to America to guide and train immigrant Irish girls though she had to abandon the project when it received an indifferent reception. She published biographies of Saints Patrick, Columba and Brigid and of O'Connell and Father Mathew as well as pamphlets on women and works of fiction, for example Ned Rusheen (1871) and Tim O'Halloran's Choice (1877). She reverted to Anglicanism and bitterly attacked Catholicism. In 1889 she published her autobiography The Nun of Kenmare, and in the following year died in Warwickshire.

Born:	6 May 1829
Died:	5 June 1899