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. She was 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. Parnell was initially successful at art, but she did not pursue a career as a painter, and her known paintings are in private collections in Ireland.

When Charles Parnell and other leaders were imprisoned in 1881, as predicted, the Ladies' Land League took over their work. Though it was envisioned as a placeholder until the men were released, Anna organised branches throughout Ireland, encouraging women to play an active role in Land League activities.

Later life

After her brother's death in 1891 Anna lived the rest of her life in the south of England. at the age of 59 while swimming at the Tunnels open-air baths. She was buried in Holy Trinity churchyard on 23 September.

Commemoration In September 2021, 110 years after her death, Anna Parnell was honoured with a blue plaque on the Allied Irish Bank wall at the top of O’Connell Street, in Dublin city centre, the site of the Ladies Land League which she founded with her sister Fanny in 1881. Historian Margaret Ward has called for Parnell's body to be repatriated to Ireland.