Molly Childers

Mary Alden Childers ( Osgood; 14 December 1875– 1 January 1964), known as Molly Childers, was an American-born Irish writer and nationalist. A daughter of Dr Hamilton Osgood and Margaret Cushing Osgood of Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts, her older sister was Gretchen Warren. She married fellow Irish writer and nationalist, Erskine Childers. Their son, Erskine Hamilton Childers, became the fourth President of Ireland. Early life and family Childers, affectionately called "Molly", was born into a reputable Bostonian family that lived at 8 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Physically disabled from the age of three following a skating accident, Childers was educated at home and was not mobile for the first 12 years of her life. Eventually she was able to move enough to ride horses, but she was never capable of walking without crutches. Her father, Dr Osgood, was a student of Dr Louis Pasteur and spent time with him in France and Switzerland. It was this research with Pasteur that enabled him to bring the first rabies antitoxin back to Boston, and in turn the United States. The Osgood's ancestry was directly linked to John Quincy Adams and Anne Hutchinson, and Childers was very proud and outspoken about this connection. Her mother Margaret Cushing Osgood encouraged her to read and to pursue a life in academia, as her disability would hinder other careers. The Osgood family home on Beacon Street was next door to the Boston Athenæum. Childers spent years of her childhood inside this library, reading for hours every day; several members of the Osgood family were among the first proprietors of the institution. Marriage In late 1903, Childers was seated next to Erskine Childers at a dinner given by her aunt on Beacon Hill. Erskine was in Boston on a ceremonial trip with Lord Denbigh and the Honourable Artillery Company. By January 1904, after some weeks of courtship, the two were married at Trinity Church in Boston. One Boston newspaper described their wedding as the most "distinguished gathering" of the season. Charities