Margaret was born on February 25, 1841, in Killusty, a townland in a region of County Tipperary, Ireland, known as the Golden Vale of the River Suir.
Improved circumstances enabled Margaret's family to finance their emigration to America and/or they were given a monetary incentive when, in 1854, landlord Robert Cooke, Esq.
Margaret spent sufficient time in a classroom to allow her to later exchange letters with her two primary American employers, the Boltwood and Dickinson families.
[2] Soon after the Maher family emigrated to Amherst, Massachusetts, Margaret's sister, Mary, married Thomas Kelley (1832–1920), another south Tipperary immigrant on December 1, 1855.
The Maher siblings and their brother-in-law Tom Kelley expanded this multigenerational family compound through their combined wages, real estate investments, and boarding house business.
By her mid to late teens Margaret was employed as a maid-of-all-work by Fanny and Lucius Boltwood, peers of Emily Dickinson's parents.
When their oldest son, Lucius Manlius Boltwood married Clarinda Boardman Williams in 1860 and they were expecting their first child, in 1861, Margaret appears to have been reassigned to care for that family.
[8][9] Margaret left Hartford, Connecticut, where she was working for the Junior Boltwoods, in spring 1868 to help care for her terminally ill and recently widowed father in Amherst.
Her act of insubordination worked the miracle for which posterity is in debt, turning the private genius of her mistress's poetry into a universal legacy.
[24] Margaret, at 58 years old, is believed to have moved back to Kelley Square upon the 1899 death of her remaining Dickinson employer, Lavinia, Emily's younger sister.