Sinéad de Valera, also known as Sinéad Ní Fhlannagáin and Sinéad Bean de Valera, was an author and the wife of the Irish republican leader and third President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera.
Background
She was born Jane O"Flanagan in Balbriggan. Her father, Laurence, was a carpenter and was a native of Kildare who moved to Balbriggan and married a local girl, Margaret Byrne. The couple emigrated to New York where their daughter, Mary, was born in 1871.
The family had returned to Balbriggan by 1873 and Sinéad was born there in 1878.
Career
She trained as a teacher and worked first in Edenderry, before taking up a post at a national school in Dorset Street, Dublin in around 1901. Sinéad de Valera wrote thirty one books for children in both English and Irish. Sinéad de Valera died on 7 January 1975, at the age of 96, the day before what would have been the de Valeras" sixty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Éamon de Valera died just under eight months later, on 29 August 1975, aged 92.