Margaret Pearse (neé Brady) (1857-1932) was the mother of Pádraig and Willie Pearse, both executed following the Easter Rising of 1916 and later TD of the Second Dáil Éireann. Margaret Brady was born in Dublin, her father was a coal merchant originally from County Meath and her mother a native of nearby Oldtown. In 1877, she married James Pearse, an English stonemason originally from Birmingham who had moved to Dublin, and had four children, two daughters (Margaret and Mary Brigid) and two sons (Pádraig and Willie). Although she was uninvolved herself in nationalist politics prior to 1916, the execution of her two sons and her desire to preserve their legacy as well as the harassment of the surviving Pearse family by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence drew her into politics. Elected into the Dáil Éireann in 1921, she rejected the Treaty and left the Dáil following its ratification. She would later join Fianna Fáil as a founding member in 1926. She died in 1932, at the age of 75, and was honoured with a state funeral.