She married Irish revolutionary Cathal Brugha, head of a candle manufacture company, in 1912.

Because of the family activities and involvement in the War of Independence, they moved several times, to the Ring Gaeltacht in Waterford and Ballybunion in Kerry.

[1] Cathal Brugha died in battle on 7 July 1922 in the first days of the Irish Civil War, having taken the Republican side opposing the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

She stayed with the abstentionists of Sinn Féin when Éamon de Valera left to found Fianna Fáil in 1926.

Her continuing anti-Britishness was evidenced when, in 1941, she was accused of harbouring German spy Günther Schütz, who had parachuted into Wexford.