Lily Kempson

Born Elizabeth Anne Kempson in County Wicklow, Ireland, she is remembered as a trade union activist and lecturer, as well as an insurrectionist in the Irish Citizen Army.

[2] The Kempsons, including her father James, a railway porter,[3] mother Esther Moore Kempson, 92-year-old grandmother Mary Moore, Lily and her eight siblings, shared a two-room tenement home in 8 Piles Building situated between Golden Lane and Wood Street in Dublin's Liberties area close to the City Centre.

During the siege of Dublin, which lasted a week, Kempson served as a courier for Padraic Pearse and the others insurrectionists inside the General Post Office, risking her life as she dodged snipers.

[3] When the insurrection was put down on 29 April, Kempson was marked for arrest and imprisonment, but fled to Liverpool where she sailed for the United States using her sister's passport.

[1] Shortly after she arrived in the United States and settled in Seattle, Washington,[8] Kempson married Matthew McAlerney, an Irish immigrant from County Down.