Mary Alden Childers

Mary Alden Osgood Childers, MBE (14 December 1875 – 1 January 1964) was an American-born Irish writer and Irish nationalist. She was the daughter of Dr Hamilton Osgood and Margaret Cushing Osgood of Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Her older sister was Gretchen Osgood Warren. Molly married the writer and Irish nationalist, Robert Erskine Childers. Their son, Erskine Hamilton Childers, became the fourth President of Ireland.

Childers, affectionately called "Molly", was born into a reputable Bostonian family that lived at 8 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. Physically disabled from the age of three following a skating accident, Childers was educated at home and wasn't 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. It was this research with Pasteur that enabled him to bring the first rabies antitoxin back to Boston, and in turn America. The Osgood's ancestry was directly linked to John Quincy Adams and Anne Hutchinson, and Molly was very proud and outspoken about this connection. Molly's 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. Molly 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.

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