Mrs Cusack-Smith
(1800-1872)
24 March 1862

Volume 6, page 116, sitting number 7332.

[The preceding entry in the Silvy daybooks is this sitter's husband.]

Louisa Smith-Barry was the illegitimate daughter of James Hugh Smith-Barry (1748-1801) of Marbury Hall in Cheshire and of Fota House in Co Cork, Ireland. As a young man, her father had travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East, borrowing large sums of money and amassing a huge collection of ancient statuary, vases and paintings, mostly by Italian masters. He died in 1801 and his twenty-eight-page will was eventually found in a trunk. By it, he willed that his five children by Ann Tanner be made legitimate and assume the surname Smith-Barry.

On 7 September 1819 Louisa Smith-Barry married the Right Honourable Thomas Berry Cusack-Smith, son of Sir William Cusack-Smith, 2nd Baronet. Her husband was a distinguished lawyer and judge, who, for twenty years, between 1846 and 1866, was Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Their marriage produced one son and five daughters. 

Mrs Louisa Cusack-Smith died on 18 April 1872 at 8 Merrion Square East in Dublin (now the headquarters of The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland).