Hickson, Mary Agnes

Hickson, Mary Agnes (1826–99), antiquarian, was born in Co. Kerry, possibly in Tralee, where her father, John James Hickson, practised as a solicitor. Her mother was probably Sarah Hickson, née Day. Interested in the history of her native Kerry, she became well known for her regular contributions on ‘Old Kerry Records’ to the Kerry Evening Post, selections from which were published in 1872 and 1874 as Selections from old Kerry records. In 1884 she published her two-volume Ireland in the seventeenth century: or the Irish massacres of 1641–2, their causes and results, in which she included hitherto unpublished extracts from contemporary documents, most tellingly several hundred depositions of protestants dispossessed by the Irish rebels. With an introduction by J. A. Froude (qv) the work became a classic account of 1641 from a protestant perspective. Her articles on Munster antiquities, genealogy and topography appeared in the journals of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, of which she was a member from 1879. Her final contribution to the latter journal appeared in the year of her death. She died 6 April 1899 in Kingston College, Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, and was buried in the new cemetery, Tralee.