Her father was an incautious country "squireen"--hard-drinking, brutal, and incorrigible. Power served as a magistrate, and in this capacity he was hated and persecuted by his neighbors for rounding up insurgents. Attempting to run a newspaper and several businesses that failed, he lived beyond his means. Despite his mounting debts, he did not moderate his lavish tastes, and his improvidence sunk the family further into debt and made his family life miserable. The similarities between the amounts of energy that both father and daughter had and between their inabilities to economize while in debt are striking. The intellectual traits that characterized Blessington's adult life manifested themselves early. Her formal education was limited to what she received from Anne Dwyer, a neighbor and friend of her mother, but Blessington was a reflective and inquisitive child who read much and entertained her family, friends, and neighbors by inventing stories.
To ameliorate his financial situation Power sold his daughter, at the age of fourteen, into marriage with a man from County Kildare, Capt. St. Leger Farmer of the Forty-seventh Regiment, Royal Artillary. Although warned by Farmer's relatives that the captain suffered bouts of insanity, Power and his wife dismissed such warnings, ignored their daughter's pleas, and forced her into the marriage in March 1804.
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