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Early Life
Nora Connolly O'Brien was the daughter of Irish republican and socialist leader James Connolly and his wife Lillie Connolly. She was born in Edinburgh and one of seven children. The moved with her family to Dublin when she was three years old. Her formal education in Dublin extended to weekly Gaelic League classes to learn the Irish language. Otherwise, her mother, a former nursery maid, taught her how to read by the age of three and how to write, and arithmetic. The family moved to Troy, New York, when Nora was nine years old for her father to work at an insurance company. That work fell through, at which time he became increasingly political prompting the family's eventual return to Ireland, this time to Belfast in 1910 with Nora going ahead a year earlier.

After her father's execution, the surviving Connolly's tried to depart for America but were denied passports. Undeterred, they travelled to Boston via Edinburgh with Nora using the pseudonym Margaret (her middle name). In Boston, she met Seamus O' Brien, a courier for Michael Collins, who she later married in 1929. When she wanted to return to Ireland, she was denied entry but stowed away on a boat from Liverpool dressed as a boy. Her marriage to Seamus was happy but produced no children.