Margaret Silk

According to an oral tradition Hannah Mayer was a daughter or niece of Amschel Rothschild but she was actually a cousin of his (she was obviously confused with Hannah Mayer Rothschild by her descendents). She was disinherited from her family when she and her son Nathan and her other children became Frankists. Nathan took the name William Maher in Ireland and was married to a daughter of Jacob Frank by his first wife. The Mahers were leaders in a network of Frankist (they called themselves Zoharists) families who adopted an Irish version of their names. The Maher (Mayer), Cullen (Cohen), Moran (from HaMoranu), O'Connor (Kinnor) and Murphy (Morpugo) were the spiritual leaders of this first wave of Frankists who settled in Ireland after 1760. They intermarried with each other and older crypto-Jewish families already in Ireland who now became influenced by the Frankist teachings and became devout Catholics for the first time. The second wave of Frankists coming to Ireland began around 1790 especially those coming from Hasidic backgrounds.

25,000 Polish Jews embraced baptism and a further 35,000 from other places in Europe. Many more Jews who were influenced by the Frankist teaching remained in the Jewish communities keeping their Frankist beliefs secretly. The Frankist community was divided when Eva Frank allied with the Prague Sabbateans and took this version of Frankism into occultic and Sabbatean directions.

Hannah Mayer (nee Rothschild) was one of those that rejected this direction and steered the movement into being faithful to Catholic teachings and the Jewish Zoharic mystical traditions. These families maintained their secret identity in the Catholic Church for about a hundred years (by intermarrying with those from other Frankist families) when they rapidly assimilated into their local Catholic communities and many started to marry Gentile Catholics.

Hannah was a Tzadikess and matriarch of her clan and the ancestress of many leaders in Irish Catholicism such as Cardinal Paul Cullen, Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, Bishop Patrick Moran, two Bishops called Michael O'Connor etc