Mary Agnes O'Connor
Mother Mary Agnes O'Connor (6 January 1815 – 20 December 1859) was an Irish Sisters of Mercy nun, foundress, and social worker. Life Mary O'Connor was born in Kilkenny on 6 January 1815. She was the youngest of the ten children of Patrick and Mary O'Connor. On 27 April 1838, she entered the Convent of Mercy, Baggot Street, Dublin, receiving the habit of the Sisters of Mercy on 4 September 1838. She took the name Sister Mary Agnes and professed on 24 September 1840. She initially worked in the House of Mercy, a refuge for homeless women, as well as visiting the sick in their homes and in Sir Patrick Dun's and Mercer's hospitals. O'Connor was sent to London on 31 July 1844, on a temporary basis to be the first superioress of St Edward's Convent, 32 Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. She resigned from this position on 27 January 1846, at the request of bishop Dr John Hughes, to found a Convent of Mercy in New York. She left with a group of nuns from Dublin on 13 April 1846, boarding the Montezuma in Liverpool, and arrived in New York on 14 May 1846. They began their work by visiting patients