Ellen, Mary and Paul's second child lived on the family farm for quite some time. When she was about 20 she married a landless laborer named Jonathan Sheely from eastern Ireland. Jonathan had been traveling through Siglo County, he stopped at the Twomey farm to ask for work when he met Ellen. Mary and Paul, but specifically Mary, did not approve of the young man. The Twomeys may have been poor, but at least they had land, even if they rented it from someone else. Still, that did not stop Ellen from marrying him. However, it did result in her being disowned, and having to move to a small village about five miles from the Towmeys' farm. Ellen and Jonathan rented a single room in a house belonging to an acquaintance of Ellen's. Ellen raised three children in that single room, Denis, James, and Katherine. Even though the Sheely's had no land, they were still effected by the famine. Because of the increasing mass of homeless Irish men and women looking for work, Jonathan Sheely, like Thomas Colbert, had to go further afield for work. Unlike Colbert though, Sheely was not tied to land so when he left to find work in England he planned on staying for longer than just a winter.

When Jonathan went to England to find work, Ellen remained behind in her small room in the Irish village. From time to time Jonathan would send money, but those times were often too far between. Many a night Ellen went to bed without eating, and many a day she was threatened with eviction from her room for nonpayment of rent. It was only due to the fact that Ellen and the land lady were friends that she was not through out the many times she missed a payment. However, what Ellen failed to realize was that Jonathan's money was coming at lengthier and lengthier intervals. Finally, no money came at all. Ellen held off the landlady for as long as she could, but in such hard times even friends could not afford to be generous for too long. To make matters worse her oldest son, Denis, came down with a coughing sickness, probably Typhoid. The malnutrition that had become a fact of life for him had weekend his immune system, and like so many others, the disease killed him quickly. In an act of desperation, Ellen sent her remaining two children to stay with friends, while she took to the roads to find work or food. Unfortunately, Ellen did not get very far. A traveling peddler found her body in a ditch several miles from the village where starvation had finally caught up with her.