Leonora O'Reilly

Leonora O'Reilly was an American feminist, suffragist, and trade union organizer. O'Reilly was born in New York state, raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. She was born into a working-class family and left school at the age of eleven to begin working as a seamstress. Leonora O'Reilly's parents were Irish immigrants escaping the Great Famine; her father, John, was a printer and a grocer and died while Leonora was the age of one, forcing her mother, Winifred Rooney O'Reilly, to work more hours as a garment worker in order to support Leonora and her younger brother.