To the student of social history few careers surpass in interest that of Margaret O'Neill. Born of humble parentage, she ran the gamut of social possibilities, exercising more influence over the political destinies of her country than any other American woman has ever done.
Unlike other great belles who owe their fame to the universal admiration they evoke, Margaret O'Neill owed hers quite as much to the animosity she roused. Her cause hotly espoused by the President of the United States, her conduct made the subject of cabinet debates, she rose to fame as broad as the land of her birth, and later beyond the seas to a fame unshadowed by enmity, though not dearer to her patriotic soul. Born late in the last century, she came to be a belle in so far as having beaux makes a girl a belle in the days when the native Washington girl had few rivals. The shriek of Fulton's steamboat had not yet startled the world. The stage-coach was the universal means of conveyance, though the daughters of some Southern and Western Congressmen, from districts unfamiliar even with its lumbering proportions, ambitious to taste the pleasures of a season at the capital, used frequently to make the tedious journey on horseback. Her girlhood belleship had well terminated, indeed she had married and brought children into the world, before the completion of the great canal in 1826, which made the more sanguine voyager of that day hopeful that eventually eight miles might be travelled in an hour!
Though she never knew the exact date of her birth, she had heard it frequently related that she was two weeks old at the time of Washington's funeral, December 18, 1799. She was the eldest daughter of William O'Neill, a descendant of the O'Neills of Ulster County, Ireland, and himself a native of New Jersey, who had migrated to the capital with the hope of improving his fortunes. There he opened a tavern in the western section of the city, a short half-mile from the President's house. He was a genial host, and his house soon attained popularity with the jeunesse dorée, as well as with military men and Congressmen, though it was a long way from the Capitol. The Union Tavern, in Georgetown, however, which was also popular with our early law-makers, was still farther away. From its door to the Capitol the old 'bus known as the Royal George, one of Washington's earliest institutions, made frequent trips, stopping at O'Neill's and other taverns and boarding-houses along the route to pick up its patrons.
Margaret grew up in the unconventional atmosphere of the tavern, a type of undisciplined American girlhood, wayward, high spirited, full of generous impulses, her mind fed on impetuous and misguided admiration, and herself blessed with a magnetic soul that drew most men and many women irresistibly to her. She was a toast that stirred the hearts of the most phlegmatic of mankind and evoked unparalleled enthusiasm from those of more ardent temperament. Hers was the highest type of Irish beauty, a marvellously white skin, soft gray eyes, warm chestnut hair that curled above an expressive brow, exquisite features, a small round chin, a delicately beautiful figure of medium height, with an erect carriage and her spirited head nobly poised.
The "Health," written by Edward C. Pinkney, whom Edgar Allen Poe placed first in his estimate of lyric poets of America, is said to have been inspired by her in 1824.
"I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon,
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven.
"Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows,
As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.
"Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain,
And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain;
And memory such as mine of her so very much endures,
When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers.
"Affections are as naught to her, the measure of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness of young flowers.
And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns the idol of past years.
"I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon.
Her health! And would on earth there stood some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry and weariness a name."