Mary Haggan: New Yorker who embraced hometown in Donegal

Mary Haggan, who has died suddenly, was a New Yorker who played a stellar role in the community of her adopted home, Ramelton, in north Donegal.

She used her forensic mind for research into history to write Ramelton: An Illustrated Guide to the Town, detailing its rich Georgian heritage, and Country Walks in Donegal, Near Ramelton, a definitive walking guide to area. Her 'can do' attitude also made her a driving force in many organisations.

Her funeral was an indication of the respect she commanded. The Mass was in the Catholic Church while refreshments afterwards were in the Presbyterian Church Hall.

Haggan spent four decades in Ramelton, where her home was the former Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, one of the town’s oldest buildings. She restored it from semi-dereliction. She lived there in traditional style, with neither a fridge nor an electric kettle.

Irish area

Haggan was born in the strongly Irish Inwood area of New York’s Manhattan in September 1948, the second of four children and only daughter to Bernard Powers, a security guard, and his wife Josephine (nee Mitchell). Her father was from west Cork, her mother from north Roscommon.

She received elementary education at St Jude's in Inwood and then went to high school at the Academy of Mount St Ursula in the Bronx.

She began university studies in New York, first at Marymount College and later at City University. In the late 1960s she won a scholarship to study for a year at Trinity College Dublin.

She studied history and political science there and decided to stay in Ireland. After Trinity, she lived in Dublin and Connemara before moving to Ramelton with her husband, Nigel, to operate a fish farm.

For much of her life Haggan did not work outside the home, but always continued educating herself, including gaining a master’s in education at Magee College, Derry.

She also had an excellent singing voice and frequently starred in local pantomimes.

Dedicated pacifist

A deeply spiritual woman, Haggan was a dedicated pacifist who supported the Catholic Worker Movement in the US. When her family reached adulthood, she used to return regularly to New York to work with the homeless.

A few days before her death, she had even bought tickets for her next visit.

Ireland’s failure to take in more refugees angered her. Thus, a while before her death, she invited a refugee family in Afghanistan to come to live with her in Ramelton.

She is survived by her partner Tommy (Logan), daughters Emily, Niamh, Mary, Isobel, Lucy and Irene, sons Titus and Peter, brothers Bernard, Kevin and Robert, and grandchildren.