SNIPPET: Gerry BRADY examined the career of Aughawillan's distinguished Stained Glass Artist, Wilhelmina GEDDES, in the 2005 issue of the yearly "Leitrim Guardian" magazine: In June 1919, a three-light stained glass window of marked originality attracted considerable attention and acclaim within the art world when it was exhibited briefly in London in the course of its dispatch from Dublin, (where it had been designed and made), to Ottawa, Canada. It was to form the great east window of St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, and had been commissioned in 1916 by PRINCE ARTHUR, DUKE OF CONNAUGHT, the third son of QUEEN VICTORIA and then Governor General of Canada, in memory of the ten members of his personal staff who fell in the First World War. Familiar worldwide to connoisseurs of stained glass as the 'Ottawa Window,' it was unveiled by the PRINCE of WALES in 1919 and was the work of Leitrim-born Wilhelmina GEDDES, a creative and highly original young designer, who became one of the most accomplished stained glass artists of the twentieth century. Wilhelmina GEDDES, the eldest of four children, was born on 25 May, 1887, on her maternal grandparents' farm in the townland of Drumreilly, Parish of Aughawillan, to William GEDDIS (the form of the surname which appears on her birth certificate) and Elizabeth STAFFORD. Her birth was registered on 22 June, but the baptismal names Wilhelmina Margaret were not added until 17 September 1887. The house in which she was born, Drumreilly Cottage, still stands near the entrance to Drumreilly Church of Ireland, overlooking picturesque Garadice Lake, some four miles east of Ballinamore. Her father, who was ranked on her birth certificate as 'manager public works,' was a site engineer on one or both of the railway construction projects which were in progress in County Leitrim during the period 1876-1888. Her biographer, Dr. Nicola Gordon BOWE, states that William GEDDIS was employed with the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties' Railway, but as this line had not been completed by 1882, it is more likely that he was employed on the laying of the Cavan and Leitrim 'Narrow Gauge' which was in the course of construction during the period 1885-1888. Shortly after his eldest daughter Wilhelmina's birth, William GEDDIS moved to Belfast where he became a successful building contractor. Wilhelmina's artistic education began in Scotland where her father took his young family each shooting season. After intermittent attendance at Methodist College, Belfast, she came to Dublin and became a pupil of the great painter, Sir William ORPEN. Among the earliest admirers of her work were the art collector, Sir Hugh LANE, and the writer, Stephen GWYNN. Turning her design talents to stained glass, she was invited in 1912 to join An Tur Gloine (The Tower of Glass), a co-operative stained glass studio founded in Dublin in 1903 by the playwright, Edward MARTYN, and the painter, Sarah PURSER. Almost every significant Irish stained glass artist was associated with this co-operative workshop over the forty years of its existence. Many of her surviving windows are to be found in Belfast and Dublin. Her beautiful 'Innocence in the Fields of Paradise,' (1913) can be seen at St. Molaise's, Monea, Co. Fermanagh... (to be completed)