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Mary McNeill
Mary Alice McNeill (1897-1984) was born in Belfast and educated in Oxford and Dublin. Returning to Belfast in the mid-1920s, she became a member of the Arellian Association, which established a nur...view moreMary Alice McNeill (1897-1984) was born in Belfast and educated in Oxford and Dublin. Returning to Belfast in the mid-1920s, she became a member of the Arellian Association, which established a nursery school for the city’s poor children in 1928 – nearly 100 years after Mary Ann McCracken established a nursery school in the Poor House.
McNeill dedicated her life to voluntary projects and served on the Board of the Belfast Charitable Society from 1945 to 1964. She published her first historical biography, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, in 1960. Having declined an M.B.E. in 1953, McNeill went on to accept an Honorary M.A. from Queen’s University Belfast in 1961. She published two further biographies: Little Tom Drennan (1962) and Vere Foster (1971).view less