I find by the newspapers of the time that Primate Boulter acted
with much generosity, especially in the second year of the famine,
feeding many thousands at the workhouse at his own expense. He also
appealed to his friends to subscribe for the same purpose. The Right
Honourable William Conolly, then living at Leixlip Castle, distributed
L20 worth of meal in Leixlip, and ordered his steward to attend to the
wants of the people there during the frost. Lords Mountjoy and
Tullamore, Sir Thomas Prendergast, and other influential persons
commenced a general collection in Dublin, but it was only for the
starving artizans of Dublin. The co-heirs of Lord Ranelagh ordered L110
to be distributed in Roscommon; Lady Betty Brownlow, then abroad, sent
home L440 for her tenants in the North; Chief Justice Singleton gave
twenty tons of meal to be sold in Drogheda at one shilling and a penny a
stone; the Rt. Hon. Wm. Graham did the same--it was then selling from
one shilling and sixpence to one shilling and eightpence a stone; Lord
Blundell gave L50 to his tenants; Dean Swift gave L10 to the weavers of
the Liberty.

An obelisk 140 feet in height, supported upon open arches, and
surrounded by a grove of full-grown trees, stands on a hill near
Maynooth, and can be seen to advantage both from the Midland and the
Great Southern Railway. It is usually known as "Lady Conolly's
Monument." From its being built without any apparent utility, illnatured
people sometimes call it "Lady Conolly's Folly." It is said to have been
designed by Castelli (Anglicised "Castells"), the architect of Carton,
Castletown House, and Leinster House, Kildare Street, now the Royal
Dublin Society House. It bears on the keystones of its three principal
arches the suggestive date, "1740." It was erected to give employment to
the starving people in that year, not by Lady Louisa Conolly, as is
generally supposed, but by a Mrs. Conolly, as the following information,
kindly supplied by the Marquis of Kildare, will show:--

"I find in my notes," says the Marquis, "that the obelisk was built by
Mrs. Conolly, widow of the Rt. Hon. Wm. Conolly, Speaker of the Irish
House of Commons. She had Castletown for her life, and died in 1752, in
her ninetieth year. Mrs. Delany, in her Autobiography, vol. iii, p. 158,
mentions that her table was open to her friends of all ranks, and her
purse to the poor.... She dined at three o'clock, and generally had two
tables of eight or ten people