Agnes was the tenth child and second daughter born to Michael Walsh and Mary Houck. She married Jacob Ness and gave birth to seven children, of whom six survived infancy. Her nieces and nephews knew her as "Aunt Aggie". She died in her early forties and is buried in old St John's graveyard in Westminster, Maryland.

Recently I spoke to Agnes's daughter, Margaret Ness Austin, who though only eight years old at the time of her mother's death, was able to supply the information that follows:

Jacob Ness was primarily a farmer, and he and Agnes lived at various locations in Carroll County, including these: a house on Liberty Street, Westminster, where their eldest son, Joseph Edward, was born; a Shriver farm called the Caylor Farm, near Jasonstown, where their daughter, Mary was born; a farm near Snydersburg belonging to Nicholas J. Walsh (and later to Charles Carroll Walsh), where three other children were born; and the Reese Farm on Sullivan Road, where Agnes died.

Agnes was a big woman with a jolly disposition. At the Reese Farm, she used to bake bread on Tuesdays and Fridays, and when the children returned from school, she would serve them bits of fried dough with butter and molasses. She made her own butter. The family kept cows, turkeys, guineas, and ducks. Agnes also made apple butter and often cooked the sour cream and potato soup that seems to have been a specialty of her mother's. The house had a parlor, usually closed, where Agnes would play the organ.

Jacob Ness maintained a ground cellar, or "cave", on Nicholas J. Walsh's property. Cabbage, turnips, celery and apples were kept in it in winter; ice was stored in it in summer and used, among other things, to make ice cream. Jacob ground flour for his own family and for neighbors, and he made wine and cider. Neighbors would come by to discuss farming, play cards, drink cider and dance. Jacob played the fiddle, and his daughter remembers how he would play her favorite tune for her, ''Pop Goes the Weasel". The family would visit Agnes's sister Lizzy and her brother and sister-in-law.

It was on a hot Sunday morning in May that Agnes died. Her husband had been tending cows and picking dandelions, which Agnes had then scalded with lemon and sugar--a first step in wine making. She had also made a bread pudding for dinner and spent some time reading the "Advocate", a Westminster newspaper. She was looking across the garden fence; then she walked to the porch, sat down, and fanned herself with the newspaper. Suddenly she called "Jake!" tried to get up, but collapsed gripping a banister and died. Earlier in the day she had complained of indigestion and taken bread soda as a remedy, but the cause of her death, as with several of her brothers and sisters, seems to have been a heart attack.

Agnes's sister Lizzy moved in with the family for a while after the death. Later Jacob Ness moved back to the Caylor Farm and married Margaret Virginia Trump Ziegler, who had seven children from a previous marriage. Jacob lived until 1947. Margaret Ness Austin has photographs of her mother and father. She is also in possession of the Walsh family Bible. [Memories of Lucy Agnes Walsh Ness, compiled by P.W. Walsh (Pol Breatnach) August 11, 1988 and included in the 1989 Walsh Booklet]