Her parents were John and Mary Anne O'Shea (née Gill) of Summerhill, Nenagh.
Her older brother John Augustus was a soldier, journalist and novelist, and her sister Marion emigrated to the United States where she married Robert Roosevelt.
Another sister, Margaret (Mrs Kelly) (1854–1927) was noted as being fluent in a number of languages, and translated French works, and her brother Robert Gabriel (1854?–1882) was the London political correspondent for the Freeman's Journal.
[1][2][3][4][5] Sal o' the Wig also drew on the stories relating to Kenyon, with this book drawing on the tales about the priest's house keeper, Sara Kennedy.
[6] She married Frederick William Dillon (born 1860),[7] BL in 1883, and left Ireland to live in Nagpur, India some time after that.