Ellen Curley Doyle, born in 1805, worked as a domestic servant along with her daughter, Mary, for the Burton Persse family at Moyode Castle in East Galway, Ireland. While employed at Moyode, Ellen became close friends with Matilda, Persse's second wife, and two of her children, Matilda (1827-1870) and Henrietta (1835-1886).

Mary Doyle married Joseph Evans III (1823-1897) in 1848 and immigrated to North America along with Evans's parents, to escape the bleak conditions of famine in Ireland. They settled in the Canadian frontier in present day Ontario Province.

In 1849, Ellen Doyle also left Ireland and settled with her family in Canada. Two years later, she visited her siblings, who had settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ellen and her daughter Mary continued to correspond with these geographically distant family members, particularly Ellen's niece, Mary Ann Curley Jenkins, and her nephew, I. J. O'Reilly, throughout the 1850s.

Ellen worked for the Persse family again briefly in 1854, when she was employed for six months in New York by Dudley Persse, a cousin of the Moyode Persses.

One of the children of Mary Doyle Evans and her husband was Edward Evans, who later married Sarah Thompson, daughter of Arthur Thompson and Catherine Stack. Edward and Sarah had six children, including Jessie Evans, who married John Dugan.

Mary Doyle Evans died in 1880 and her mother Ellen Doyle died in 1891.

Sources:

Copy of marriage certificate of Arthur Thompson and Catherine Stack Marriage (August 6, 1851), 1927 July 31, Dugan collection of Doyle, Evans, and Persse family materials, MS.2004.056, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.

Roy, James Charles. "'I Prefer a Free Country' – Letters to and From County Galway Emigrants 1843-1856." Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society: Galway, 2004.