O’DONNELL DISCOVERS TERRIBLE DEATH OF GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S FIRST WIFE
Actress ROSIE O’DONNELL discovered an awful family tragedy while tracing her family tree as part of U.S. TV show WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? - her great grandfather’s first wife died from her injuries in a kerosene oil lamp explosion.
The A League of Their Own star discovered the photo of the mysterious woman that hung in her childhood home was that of her great grandfather’s beloved Anna Murtha - and she was shocked to discover records that suggested the woman suffered for an agonising 20 days before she died in December 1881.
The actress and TV personality says, "That’s a long time to suffer… I’m really upset to hear that my great-grandfather’s first wife, Anna, died so tragically. I’ve got to find out more." O’Donnell tracked down newspaper clippings about the tragedy at the Brooklyn Historical Society in New York and discovered the woman was preparing her grandfather’s breakfast with "an infant in her arm" when the child pulled the lamp over the stove - setting Anna alight.
The paper article read, "The woman lingered in great agony" until she died.
But the child was unharmed.
O’ Donnell added, "How heroic. She knew she was on fire; she probably did what every mother would do - save the child first. What happened to that infant?" The star discovered the baby was called Elizabeth - and she was her grandfather’s half-sister. That find led O’Donnell to Elizabeth’s 10 grandchildren, by her eldest son Christopher. She brought her new relatives together for a luncheon in their native New Jersey.
O’Donnell then traced her great-grandfather and his family back to Kildare, Ireland, where they fled to Canada from great poverty, famine and life in a workhouse. She even visited the Birr workhouse where her relatives lived.
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