PORTLAND — Erin Bishop will present a program titled “Social History of Ireland’s 19th Century Catholic Middle Class” at 2 p.m. April 29 in the Maine Irish Heritage Center at the corner of State and Gary streets.

A release from the center describes the program as follows:

In 1800, Daniel O’Connell, a young barrister who had just made a start in Irish nationalist politics, began a clandestine correspondence with a distant cousin, Mary O’Connell of Tralee, County Kerry.

Two years later, Daniel married the dowerless Mary, jeopardizing his inheritance and sealing a deep bond that continued through his rise to international prominence and election to the British Parliament. It would be severed only by Mary’s death in 1836.

The public life of Daniel O’Connell, called “The Liberator” or “The Emancipator” for his work on behalf of Irish Catholic emancipation, is well known.

As part of the Maine Irish Heritage Center’s quarterly series of Dúchas (Heritage) talks, Erin Bishop will present a panoramic view of Mary O’Connell’s private world — a rare look at the lesser-known social and domestic life of the 19th-century Irish Catholic middle class.

Bishop is the former director of education for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. She obtained a master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from University College Dublin, where she explored the lives of 19th-century women.

She has published two books on the life of Mary O’Connell. Bishop lives in Falmouth and works as an independent researcher, writer and museum consultant.

Admission is free; all are welcome. For more information, call 899-0505.

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