Fanny’s memory – and that of her sister, Anna – has been overshadowed by brother Charles, but she was a trailblazer in her own right. In her lifetime, her poetry was celebrated by Irish nationalists and her activism helped to bring many Irish and Irish-American women into politics.

Isabel 'Ida' Mitchell typifies the emergence of a new group of Irish women, particularly from Ulster, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century – the female Presbyterian missionary. Often the daughters of churchmen, they were usually middle-class and educated.