Neglected Famine graveyard becomes ‘a fitting memorial’

As a child, artist Mary Nolan O’Brien passed the old Famine graveyard every day on her way to school — and, at the request of her mother, always murmured a prayer as she walked by.

So it was fate that must have brought an elderly American man to knock on her studio door in September 2012.

Now in his 70s, engineer and amateur genealogist Bob Murphy from Boston, Massachusetts, had spent decades researching his family tree. His search brought him to the West Cork village of Innishannon.