Margaret was born in 1673[1] as the eldest daughter of William Burke and his second wife Helen MacCarty.
Margaret's mother was her father's second wife and the eldest daughter of Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty.
Her father's first wife had been Lettice,[2] daughter of Henry Shirley, an English baronet,[3] and a Protestant.
Thomas and Margaret three sons: —and five daughters: She died on 19 July 1744 at Kilcash Castle.
She is also remembered by the nineteenth-century Irish song 'A Lament for Kilcash', which was written in her memory.