Power O'Malley

Who was Power O'Malley?

Michael Augustine Power was born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland on 19 January 1877 to Michael Power and Bridget Hannigan. Upon the death of his father, his mother married Dennis O'Malley and the family moved to Dublin where he reportedly studied at The Metropolitan School of Art. He took the name O'Malley in honour of his much loved stepfather.

Emigrating to New York at the turn of the 20th century he did book illustrations and covers for Life, The Literary Digest, Harper's and Puck. He traveled to the west coast where he advised John Ford on film settings and reportedly painted sets for Cecil B. DeMille's epic The King of Kings. In 1904 he married Ruth Yeaton Stuart, the daughter of an Alexandria, Virginia judge. The couple probably went to France where he continued his study of art. After twenty-three years, the marriage ended in divorce. The couple had two children, Theo, who died in infancy, and is buried in Bailey's Bay, Bermuda, and Ruth Power-O'Malley, born in 1906 in Bailey's Bay, Bermuda. Ruth Power-O'Malley was a well-known writer of short stories and screenplays during the 1940s. Her novel, Mrs. Cassatt's Children, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 1943. It is based on the story of her Virginia family, who settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Ruth Power-O'Malley is buried in the Outerbridge family grave, near that of her brother, in Bailey's Bay.