June 10th, 1895 - May 18th, 1975

She is a Gemini.

Hanora "Nora" or "Norah" O'Leary was born in Kingwilliamstown (modern-day Ballydesmond), Co Cork, Ireland to a Roman Catholic family, she was the daughter of John O'Leary (born 1851), a farmer, and Johanna Healy (born 1856) who had married around 1876. One of 10 children, 7 of whom survived, Nora's known siblings are: Daniel (born 1877), Katie (born 1885), Denis (born 1886), Martin (born 1887), John (born 1890), Jeremiah (born 1892), and Margaret (born 1898). She and her family appear on the 1901 census living in Glencollins Upper, Kingwilliamstown. By the time of the 1911 census, when they were residents in Glencollins Upper, only Nora and her brothers Daniel and Martin were still at home, she apparently already having left school but with no stated profession. Several of her siblings had already emigrated to the USA.

Aboard Titanic/April 14th-15th, 1912:
At the age of 16, Nora boarded the RMS Titanic at Queenstown on April 11th, 1912 intent on joining Katie at West 11th Street, New York City. She was travelling in a group from the Kingwilliamstown area led by Daniel Buckley, and consisting of Hannah Rioddan, Bridget Bradley, Patrick O'Connell, Patrick O'Connor, and Michael Linehan. At the time of the collision Nora was asleep in her cabin but was awakened by the impact. Feeling uneasy, she and her canon mates dressed and headed to the open decks.

Pleas for information from crewman fell on deaf ears but she and her friends managed to make their way to the upper decks and, from that vantage point, claimed to see the lights of a ship in the distance. Nora was rescued on a boat she reported to have had quite a number of Irish passengers aboard. Whilst in the boat, many began to recite the Rosary.

After The Sinking/Later Life/Death:
Following her rescue by the Carpathia and eventual arrival in New York, she was met at the pier by Katie. Nora spent almost a decade in New York working as a domestic. She appeared on the 1920 census as a maid to an engineer and his family on Central Avenue in Hempstead, Nassau, New York but would return home to Ireland the following year. The Ireland that Nora had left was a much different place to the ones she returned to. At the time of her departure in 1912 the Home Rule Bill was being readied, an Act whilst satisfying, the wants of the majority, a large Nationalist-Catholic population, angered Ireland's British-Unionist Protestant minority, mainly concentrated in the north-east of Ulster, pushing the country to the verge of an entho-political civil war.

The Easter Rising, a failed rebellion in 1916, sowed the seeds of what was to become the Irish War of Independence (1919 - 1921), a guerilla warfare between the British State and the forces of the Irish Republican Army and when Nora set foot on Irish soil again the hostilities were still ongoing. She was married on April 17th, 1922 to a veteran of this inflict, Thomas Timothy Herlihy (born 1892), a farmer and a captain of the IRA's 4th Cork Brigade. Nora and Thomas went on to have 5 children, 4 daughters and one son: Hannah, Sheila, Kathleen, Nora, and Timothy. Nora spent the remainder of her life in Ballydesmond and became a widow in 1968. She reportedly discouraged discussion about the Titanic in her later years. Nora passed away on May 18th, 1975 at the age 79 and she and her husband are buried in a family plot in Ballydesmond Cemetery, just a few feet away her fellow Titanic survivor Daniel Buckley. Her headstone reads:

THOMAS T. G. COMPANY CAPTAIN OF CORK,
NO 4 BRIGADE OLD I.R.A.
DIED 23rd NOV. 1968
HIS WIFE NORA (NEE O'LEARY)
SURVIVOR OF TITANIC DISASTER OF APRIL 1912
DIED 18TH MAY 1975
REST IN PEACE

Sources:
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Rest In Peace Hanora O'Leary.