Continuing from the previous two posts; with some of my writing/jottings from the late 1980s.
I’ve found two other texts. One piece is handwritten with the date 1987 appearing on the very first page. Maybe it was preparation for a lecture that was never delivered? (Or more likely, my memory is shot.) At this early stage of my researches, i was trying to pull together what i knew, or wanted to know, about the Irish orphan “girls”. Here are some of the questions i was asking .
Irish orphan “girls”
Whatwas their [the ‘Earl Grey’ orphans] experience of the Famine?
What was it like to be female and living in a workhouse? Did they remember wearing workhouse clothes, doing workhouse chores, their lives regulated and disciplined in an unattractive way?
On board ship, and in Australia, did their Irish working-class morality and values clash with English, Victorian middle-class ones?
How well did they cope in their new and distant land, without family and friends? Where did they settle? Who among them were casualties? How upwardly mobile were they?
Giventhe fact that they were relatively inarticulate, less literate, for example, than other female migrants, how are we to come close to these young women? How do we come to know them on their own terms?
We’ve all been there before, I’m sure, you in your family history, me in my preface to Barefoot…, or different places in this blog. Yet the big picture, as well as the microcosmic one, is bound to change the more research is done by different people… As indeed it should.
Female migrants and the Ireland they came from.
Gender Balance
My second text is typewritten, and buried in it, i see the heading, “Female migrants and the Ireland they came from“. Again, I surmise this was an early attempt in the late 1980s at gathering information, a means of clarifying my thoughts, and with this one, trying to fit the Earl Grey orphans into the ‘big picture’, whatever that ‘big picture’ might be.
Common to both these texts is an awareness of something i noted in my previous blogpost, viz.
“Women’s participation in the flight from Ireland in the nineteenth century has not always been appreciated, or given the attention it deserves”.
Is that still the case? Maybe others have written about this since then?
Yet I’m still left stunned when told that during the period of white settlement of Australia there is a gender balance of Irish immigrants. That is, nearly as many women, as men, left Ireland for Australia. Surely that turns conventional wisdom about emigration on its head, does it not? (I’m thinking, shorter distance first, males first, family later. No doubt there will be other kinds of ‘conventional wisdom’.)
In the handwritten text mentioned above, I did indeed draw attention to the ‘astonishing’ fact of gender balance. To quote,
“One of the remarkable features of the Irish diaspora in the 19th and 20th centuries is the high proportion of women who took part. Between 1850 and 1950, for example, the proportion of females migrating from European countries other than Ireland hovers around the 33% mark. In the Irish case, the figure is closer to 50%”.
The ‘fact’ also raises all sorts of questions. What conditions in Ireland influenced their decision? Is there more to it than Famine? What part did mothers and their daughters play in a family’s decision to emigrate? Were families prepared to first send a brother and a sister as a means of testing the waters, believing they would, and could, support one another? How important was a Government-Assisted passage? Basically, how are we to explain the male-female ‘balance’ of Irish migrants to Australia? Where does it come from?
The pre-1850 period
Let’s come at this by putting together the women who came to Australia during the earlier, pre-1850 period; (1) female Irish convicts; (2) the women, some from charitable institutions, arriving in the 1830s; (3) the women who came to New South Wales (Eastern Australia) during the 1839-42 exodus, and (4) the 1848-50 Earl Grey orphans. Then we may have a better idea of the origin of that Irish gender balance ‘tradition’.
Let me clarify by expanding briefly on these examples. I’ll use the two rediscovered texts where appropriate.
Irish Female convicts
“With never enough prison space in Ireland for female criminals, it was always easier for the Irish government to send its convicts half way across the globe to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. Recent work suggests that approximately 33 percent of all female convicts came directly from Ireland, although perhaps another 10 percent, tried elsewhere, were of Irish extraction.Nor was their arrival spread evenly over the convict period. Almost 55 percent of convict women arriving between 1815 and 1821were from Ireland. And in Van Diemen’s Land between 1841 and 1853, 46 percent of them were…Not all of them made good in their new Australian home but a substantial number did so, a fact that was not lost on the relatives they left behind.” (from the 2nd, typescript text, written in the late 1980s.) The question here is, what part did the convict connection play in attracting Irish women to Australia?
Family historians are very much aware of the riches of convict records in both Ireland and Australia. Here, in Irish records, is the memorial of Rose Hughes from Cavan asking for clemency.
And here is another example, from Tasmanian Conduct Records (Con 41/16) of
Margaret Graham or Coleman who arrived from Ireland by the JohnCalvin 18 May 1848. She was convicted at Antrim assizes of burglary, 26/10/1847, and sentenced to 10 years in Van Diemen’s Land. She was a 40 y.o. Protestant, native of Antrim, who could both read and write, yet was only 5′.1/2″ tall. She had been convicted five times before, once for stealing a coat (one month sentence), once for a shirt (4 mths). She was a widow, and had one child. In 1850 she spent 5 days in the cells for being drunk. In 1852 she got her Ticket of leave, and in May 1854 her conditional Pardon was approved. Her petition for Family was approved as early as March 1850. (that is, the chance for convicts to reunite with their families left behind. See Perry McIntyre’s Free Passage, Irish Academic Press, 2011.)
“An important precedent was set during the 1830s when young women, many of them from both Irish and English Foundling Hospitals, Houses of Industry and other charitable institutions, were brought into New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.” And referred readers to an important article by A. J. Hammerton that appeared in [Australian]Historical studies in October 1975 .
Since then, i am very happy to report, our knowledge of the 1830s Irish female immigrants has grown enormously, thanks especially to Dr Liz Rushen in Melbourne. Please take a look at Liz’s website,
The book based on Liz’s doctoral thesis, Single and Free; female migration to Australia, 1833-1837 shows that the majority of the 1830s immigrants came not from charitable institutions but as free enterprising women. I’m not exactly sure how many of the latter were Irish.
To give you an idea of the value of Liz’s work, see Fair Game: Australia’s first immigrant women, Anchor Books, Sydney, 2010, a book she co-authored with Dr Perry McIntyre. In addition to a clear description of how Government and others organised the migration of women by the Red Rover from Cork, and the Princess Royal from London, the authors’ research tentatively uncovers what became of many of the young women. For example,
“Mary Leahy was an 18 year-old servant employed by Mr Bas In George Street for an annual wage of ten guineas, When the colonial authorities reported to Ireland on the fate of the Red Rover women in 1834 she ‘had gone to the East Indies with a family’. (p.195)
I haven’t added up the number of single Irish women who arrived in the 1830s. Maybe Liz , or Perry can tell us. From the vessels carrying those from Dublin and Cork Foundling Hospitals, Duchess of Northumberland (2 trips), James Pattison, Lady McNaughten, including the 1832 Red Rover, and a wild guess at a number for free enterprising women, may i suggest only 1000-1500? Is that too small, or too large a number Liz, Perry?
The 1839-42 Exodus
BY contrast, the number of Irish women who came to Eastern Australia between 1839 and 1842 is much greater. The total number of Irish who arrived in these years is a startling 23,705. Here is a table, for the period January 1841 to June 1842, from NSW parliamentary papers , first reproduced in my Shamrock to Wattle , (1985), p.62.
This influx of arrivals meant that during the early 1840s, there was a large number of Irish women looking for food, shelter and employment. It was in this period that Caroline Chisholm gained her reputation as ‘The Emigrant’s Friend‘. (see my first blogpost on the origins of the ‘Earl Grey scheme’ at the link above, near 1830s women.)
I wonder is there an in-depth study of these 1839-42 Irish immigrants? Eric Richards made a guess one time that the number of females was the same as the number of males. But it was a guess. So large an intake may be crucially important to the origins of our so-called ‘tradition’.
‘God help you, child…If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers’. Claire Keegan, Foster, p.27.
The Earl Grey Workhouse orphans, 1848-50
Add the 4-4150 “Earl Grey” famine orphans to the mix, and you will have a better idea of the ‘tradition’ I’m talking about. And that is before any mention of individual vessels carrying single female Irish immigrants, such as the Beulah and Calcutta to Hobart, the Palestine, Travencore, Sabrina and Clare to Freemantle, as well as a number of others. Or the circa five thousand single females who arrived in Port Adelaide in the mid 1850s. Or the very large number of female Irish government-assisted migrants coming to Port Phillip and Port Jackson during the 1850s.
I’ve called this the tradition of Irish female immigration to Australia. Is that the best way to describe it? I’m also interested in putting the ‘Earl Grey orphan scheme’ into context, position it on a bigger canvas. And of course, to pay attention to women’s flight from Ireland to Australia, during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. Too many eggs in the basket?
The question i want to leave you with is this, and i must be careful how i phrase it,
why did so many women leave Ireland to come to Australia during the ‘long nineteenth century’, between 1791 and 1920? You may even wish to extend the end date.
Any suggestions? Do tell me what you think. Noli timere, to quote Seamus Heaney.
Let me finish with something for your delight, from the National Library of Ireland, celebrating the centenary of W.B.Yeats’ Nobel prize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4Gsl8-t1Y
Can you recite any of these from memory?
and finally, my thanks to www.tintean.org.au for reissuing a story about one of the Belfast girls, Mary McConnell.
P.S. I used AI for the auto-generated excerpt, thanks to WordPress.
I now have a clearer idea of where these recently found scraps of paper came from; they date from the 1980s, as my interest in this particular area of research became more serious. Yet there’s no mention of my taking the subject out of the academy, and appealing to family historians for help.
Some of the scraps relate to my doubts about venturing into women’s history. I was obviously concerned about doing so. Brave? Stupid? Naive? Obstinate? This all seems apparent from what I jotted down.
Here is a random selection of my jottings.
‘Women’s participation in the flight from Ireland in the 19th century has not always been appreciated, or given the attention it deserves‘.
‘It may seem reasonable to assume that destitute young Irish females, victims of the Great Famine, inmates of Victorian workhouses, were among the wretched and oppressed of the earth. But it would be wrong to lump them all together indiscriminately as powerless and passive victims of patriarchal society’. From an early date, I was determined not to deny the famine orphans any agency.
‘Don’t start from an ‘a priori’ position, either forcing or distorting evidence to suit one’s ends, or failing to apply the canons of rigorous self-criticism’.
‘What was the structure of their oppression? Were they passive victims of government instrumentalities—selected, inspected, packed and freighted, indentured and apprenticed, and protected, by a succession of remarkably paternalistic bureaucrats’?
‘Patriarchal values formed part of their cultural background and instinctively some women reacted to the subjugation which these implied. Rebellious or so-called refractory behaviour in a workhouse, or on-board ship to Australia might be interpreted in such a light. Perhaps, too, the decision to emigrate’.
‘Yet however plausible the argument that disaffection with the patriarchal society in which they lived encouraged women to emigrate, there still remains the difficult distance between plausibility, and establishing that this was in fact so’.
‘19th century Irish newspapers cast females in the classic Madonna-Whore mould. Female convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land were ‘pariahs of their sex, condemned of the law and outcasts of the world’. Female orphans were idealized innocents, ‘rosy-cheeked’, ‘smiling’ and laying claim ‘to that unparalleled beauty for which the daughters of Erin are so characteristic’. But on board ship these rosy-cheeked innocents became ‘the sport and prey of brutalized mariners’, and were led down the road to perdition.
‘But what do stereotypical and patronising attitudes shown towards women in newspapers tell us about the regard with which women were held in society at large anyway? Arguably, not a great deal’.
Do you, dear reader, ever use writing as a way of clarifying your thinking? I imagine that was what I was doing here.
If you have a glance at either of the Cambridge University repository links below, you’ll see how far away from https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com the subject of my doctoral thesis was. (Not that i was a total newcomer to Irish history).
I am extremely pleased that so much good material is available on ‘open access’ nowadays. Combat misinformation however and whenever you can…even if my own interest in ‘Jacques Rohault and the history of natural philosophy’ might be a sure fire cure for your insomnia.
I’ve come across a few more typed pages that date from around the same time as these scraps of paper. They deal with the question why so many Irish women left Ireland in the 19th century. I’ll share them with you in the next post. My experience with http://www.tintean.org.au has shown me that posts can, and should sometimes, be short.
…and could hear her saying, yet again, and very clearly, and so late in the day, that she’d changed her mind ...
(from Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day, Faber and Faber, 2023.)
P.S. A landmark commemoration of the Famine orphans will take place in Williamstown 19 November commencing at 2pm.
Disclaimer. ChatGPT is responsible for the description of this post.
I’ve come across a few typed pages of stuff i seem to have written around the time of the first volume of Barefoot…? That is, the late 1980s or early 1990s. This particular one was on the back of a list of medicines. I’m intrigued. I cannot remember it. When did i write it? Is it an early draft of the Preface and Introduction to Barefoot 1? or was I preparing a lecture, a conference paper, or even an article for an Irish history journal? Readers will recognise some sentences. Some claims and issues are dated by now. (Pace my comments about twentieth century historians). I’ll keep searching for more pages. Or should I not? Maybe they will be of interest…i hope.
Here’s my first discovery. Historiographical? Was i trying to put the immigration of Irish females into some kind of context? I’ll suppress the temptation to revise it.
“They were condemned out of hand as prostitutes, ill-suited for work in the colonies, and undisciplined and promiscuous during the voyage here. Even more surprising is the fact that the criticisms of contemporaries should be so readily and uncritically adopted by twentieth-century historians. Fortunately, the good sense and meticulous scholarship of some, A. J. Hammerton for example, has shown how ill-founded condemnation of these young women was. Too often the exceptional case has been taken as typical, an isolated complaint “representative of every woman on every ship” (my italics). All of them were tarred with the same brush.
As far as the Irish foundlings were concerned, not one of the boats carrying young women from charitable institutions in Dublin and Cork was reported on unfavorably at the time of their arrival. (Check) Yet recently an Irish historian could still write, “…on the long voyage to Australia the sailors and girls consorted promiscuously. When they reached Sydney, they became prostitutes…”. Such blanket condemnation and blind following of the undiscriminating opinions of contemporaries has too often been characteristic of historical writing on the subject.
The weaknesses of historians aside, it remains true that single female migrants were generally looked down upon by religious leaders, and members of of the upper and middle-class public in Britain and Australia for most of the nineteenth century. It was as if the language learnt from Masters and Surgeons, uncomfortable if not openly hostile to the women convicts and female paupers in their charge became the only acceptable way of saying things. Such language was repeated unquestionly by a succession of commentators as a means of attracting attention, and gaining publicity for themselves. The hostility of the early days was to forge images and condition attitudes towards later female migrants, not least the female orphans from Irish workhouses in…”
And after that she wove a garland for her hair. She pleated it. She plaited it. Of meadowgrass and riverflags, the bulrush and waterweed, and fallen griefs of weeping willow.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.
Postscript
I hesitated ever so briefly about adding this bit. But it is too important not to. It’s a brief and simple explanation of why i am writing “YES” in the upcoming referendum. It’s from my FB page.
‘I suppose i have to ask myself why? Where did that come from? EQ. Emotional intelligence. I know deep down it is the right thing to do. From…? Life experience, not all of it in Australia. My training as a would-be historian, try to know and understand, try putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Use empathy. I’d hope descendants of the Irish orphan ‘girls’ would have that.‘
Please forgive the delay. I’ve been caught up with a few family matters. Let me put up the missing photographs that I’ve been able to find. I seem not to have those of Margaret De(h)ee or Dea (n) (e) c.1836-1920, per Inconstant to Port Adelaide, my photo of the headstone of Ellen Fox (1833-1896) per Inchinnan to Port Jackson, nor the pic for Bridget Maria Flynn c.1831-1916, from Clonmel, Tipperary, per New Liverpool to Port Phillip. I’ll keep looking.
If you remember from the previous post I had reached as far as Margaret Ward. Here are the pages again, pp.156-9.
and
The first one on p.157 is of Sarah Arbuckle (c. 1834-1908), one of the three Arbuckle sisters from Tyrone, per Derwent to Port Phillip. My thanks to Len Swindley.
Next is Jane (c.1835-96), one of two Bing, or Byng, sisters From Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, per Diadem to Port Phillip. Thanks to Michaela Smart.
Then there’s Catherine Crowley (c. 1834-1909) from Bandon, in County Cork, per John Knox to Port Jackson. Thanks to Patrick St. George.
And the last one on page 157, Catherine Fox (1830-1920) from Armagh, per Earl Grey to Port Jackson. Thanks to Gwen Etherington.
The last photo i have to hand is of Eliza Barrett, nee Greenwood (1830-96) from Moy, County Tyrone, per Earl Grey to Port Jackson. Thanks to Linda Collett.
I’ll keep looking for the other three.
Re Notes, endnotes or footnotes…
There are some brief notes at the very end of the 2021 version of Barefoot (pp.511-12) which tell you where the documents came from, and basically, how some of the “Belfast Girls” were identified. Not all of the young women sent to Maitland and Moreton Bay are identified in the documents. But if you go to the Register list for the Earl Grey you will find many of the others. Beside their name is a notation, “sent to Maitland” or “sent to Moreton Bay”. There are a few anomalies that will pose an interesting problem for some family historians. Eliza McCready from Downpatrick is not mentioned in any of these documents, yet she soon turns up in Moreton Bay. What exactly happened to the Earl Grey women in the first few years? How many on board that ship were sent to Moreton Bay by 1850? I am sure Ray Debnam’s CD , The Feisty Colleens will have some suggestions.
Early in 2017 I made an attempt to add some notes, when i put into my blog a copy of my Preface, and Introduction to the 1991 edition. See for example, https://wp.me/p4SlVj-Zg You will need to scroll down to the end.
One of the problems was that my reference numbers were out of date. Yet such is the magnificent progress made by our archivists, i’ve successfully searched online for the current numbers.
Thus, for example, starting with the references i had regarding Board of Immigration reports for vessel arrivals, e.g. AONSW (Archives Office New South Wales) 4/4699 Microfilm reel 2852, i went to https://mhnsw.au/collections/state-archives-collection/ and was able to find NRS-5255, NRS-5256 and NRS-5257. These are, respectively,
‘Reports by the Immigration Agent on the condition of immigrants and ships on their arrival 1837-1895‘;
‘Reports by Surgeons on the health of immigrants during their passage (Medical Journals) 1838-86‘;
and ‘Reports by the Immigration Board on complaints of immigrants about their passage 1838-87‘.
I assume it is here we would find information about the scandals, mentioned at the bottom of page 19 of the 2021 version of Barefoot..?, regarding the Hyderabad and Fairlie, maybe of the Subraon too. That’s the vessel that arrived in Port Jackson just a few months before the Earl Grey.
Frustratingly, I have a copy of the Report on the Subraon but the precise reference eludes me. Was it in the collection of Reports and other papers at AONSW 9/6298? Although what i have is obviously printed from a negative microfilm.
That’s the one detailing how the young women from a Dublin Foundling Hospital were abused by crew members. Young Dolly Newman was hoisted up the mast, and was later to die from a miscarriage(?).
On page 35 of the 2021 version of Barefoot it is mentioned that prospective employers of the young orphans had to apply formally, and be approved by the Sydney Orphan Committee/Board of Guardians. What i have in my old notes is the reference, AONSW 4/4715-7 “Registers and indexes of applications for orphans 1848-51“. Would a reader like to take up the challenge, and find the current State Records number? Here’s an example to tempt you,
These are the names of individuals applying for an orphan to become their servant. On the example above, at the top of the page, 24 August 1849, John Armstrong, a Surveyor of Macquarie Street, Sydney is applying for an orphan female as a general house servant under an Indenture. And in the last column on the right of the page under result of the application, he is ‘approved for an apprentice’. But there is sometimes much more than this. Further down that page at number 816, there is something about the elusive Mary Littlewood per Earl Grey.
In those early days, one of the most fruitful sources i used at State Archives was the nineteen volumes of Immigration Correspondence (AONSW 4634-52), covering the years 1838-64. For the orphans i concentrated on the years 1847-51. The correspondence coming out of the Immigration Agent’s office, mostly from F.L.S. Merewether, was especially helpful. It is in those volumes, for example, one can trace the story of young Margaret Devlin from Keady, County Armagh. See pages 36-37 of the 2021 Barefoot version.
In effect, from an early date, I was trying to do what every family historian does instinctively, that is, link as many different sources as possible to find information about a particular family member. This “record linkage” will be familiar to many readers. And the great thing is, more and more is discovered all the time.
Using http://mhnsw.au I found that AONSW 4/4635 was now NRS-5247 or rather, Reel 3114. Entering Margaret’s name into the Index search box, I was given the reference to exactly where she appears in reel 3114 and 3115.
Bitten once more by the bug, I delved into the collection of Colonial Secretary papers. I went to the very useful Index to Colonial SecretaryLetters Received 1826-96, created by Joan Reese, Linda Bowman and Aileen Trinder. And there i was alerted to two letters relating to young Margaret Devlin in 1850 and 1851, which i don’t think I’ve seen before. It’s easy to see the attraction for family historians, and others. It is all a very different experience nowadays for researchers. My big hearty congratulations to all our archivists who have made this possible.
That seems to be a good place to stop for now.
May i finish by drawing your attention to this year’s Melbourne Bloomsday celebrations? Exiles by James Joyce looks well worth seeing. It’s on 15th to 25th June. Best check the dates.
I was mightily chuffed to have my 1991 Barefoot…? included in the untapped.org.au project. Do have a look at the website to see all the works that were brought back into print.
Because of the sheer number of books involved, some corners were cut, especially with larger volumes such as Barefoot. Despite this, those involved did an excellent job. The index of the original edition is missing, as are some of the illustrations but the text is eminently readable.
What I’m planning to do today is supply some of the missing illustrations, and maybe expand the endnotes a little. (I do love a substantive endnote or footnote. Robin Haines is an expert at this . See her Doctors at Sea. Emigrant voyages to Colonia Australia, Or her endnotes for chapter 3 in Irish Women in Colonial Australia. )
Brilliant!
First up are the missing family reconstitution forms. They are for Margaret and Sarah Devlin and Catherine Fox per Earl Grey, Margaret Gerity/Geraghty per Panama,Mary Anne Byng per Diadem, and Ellen Brodie/Brady per Pemberton.
Please forgive my clumsy way with technology. If you want a better copy, do ask, and I’ll see what i can find. Maybe try the search box first. No promises mind.
Imagine what could be done for the history of a local area, over time, using this historical demography technique.
I’m tempted to publish this post straight away simply because NBNco maintenance work may affect my access to the internet over the next three days. In the meantime, I’ll look out the orphan photos that appeared in the 1991 volume.
‘There’s nothing like a fresh of breath air’ or ‘a loyal wifish woman cacchinic wheepingcaugh’. Apologeeds to James Joyce.
From County Westmeath, Ireland to County of Westmoreland, New South Wales.
By Caroline Thornthwaite
This is the story, as much of it as I have been able to put together, of Elizabeth Feeney, a young Irish Catholic orphan who migrated to the Australian colonies under the sponsorship of Earl Grey’s Famine Orphan Emigration Scheme. She is identified as passenger 97 on the Tippoo Saib, which arrived in Port Jackson on 29 July 1850.
Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward Feeny and Jane Thompson, was baptized on 27 June 1832 in the Townland of Mayne (Irish: Maighean), County Westmeath, Ireland.
The Civil Parish of Mayne comprises 19 townlands, including the townland of Mayne. The only village in the Civil Parish of Mayne is Coole, which lies in the townland of Coole (formerly Faughalstown) and borders the townland of Mayne. Geographically, Mayne Townland consists mainly of farming land and low-lying bog land. Its Irish name Maighean literally means ‘farmstead’.
The Catholic Parish of Mayne lies within the Civil Parish of Mayne in the Barony of Fore, County Westmeath. Civil registration of baptisms, marriages and deaths in Ireland did not begin until 1 January 1864. Prior to that, such records were often kept only by the conscientious priests, as they were under no legal or ecclesiastical obligation to do so. Fortunately, the parish priests of Mayne were of the conscientious type, and they kept records from the latter part of 1777. Sadly for family historians, some of the text has faded beyond reading and quite a few pages are missing from the record books.
The names Feeny and Feeney occur in the surviving Church records only on about a dozen occasions, and only between the years 1815 to 1864. This suggests that the family probably moved into the district not long before 1815. There are no Feenys mentioned in the Church records of neighbouring townlands. There are no notations in the church records to indicate where the Feenys came from or what brought them to Mayne Townland. They may, however, have had relatives in the Parish as there are several instances found in church records connecting them to the Tormey family.
There is no record of any Feenys in the Tithe Applotment Books for the Parish of Mayne. These books were compiled between 1823 and 1837 in order to determine the amount which occupiers of agricultural holdings over one acre should pay in tithes (a 10 per cent religious tax) for the upkeep of the Church of Ireland. Their absence from the Tithe Applotment Books suggests the family were probably farm labourers. If the family had leased any land during those years, it would likely only have been a small plot for growing potatos: potatoes and milk having been the staple diet of the agricultural labouring population until the great famine which decimated the population in the mid-1800s.
Only one Feeny is listed in the Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland for the Parish of Mayne. This valuation of tenements was compiled between 1847-1864 and was a uniform guide to the relative value of land throughout the whole of Ireland. It was used to calculate the amount of Poor Rate each occupier of land was liable to pay. The Poor Rate was effectively a tax for the support of the poor and destitute within each Poor Law Union.
The Valuation of Tenements printed in 1854 lists a James Feeny who rented a house, forge and garden from Reverend Thomas Smith in the Parish of Mayne, Village of Upper Coole, Westmeath. Church records show that James died in 1864. The record gives no indication of his age, marital or social status but simply states “1864, February, Jas Feeney, Coole”. At that time Coole was in the townland of Faughalstown (it later became the townland of Coole) and was also part of the Parish of Mayne.
Given the scarcity of Feenys in the church and civil records and, considering the timeline of the records found so far, it would seem safe to make some assumptions about the make-up of the family.
The family patriarch was Richard, who died in May 1820; age not given. Richard’s wife was Anne; maiden name not given. Anne, described as a widow, died in July 1837; age not given. According to the records, both Richard and Anne were parishioners of the local Catholic church and residents of Mayne Townland. Richard and Anne seemed to have had one daughter and three, possibly four, sons.
A son, Edward, first appears in the records as Edward Finey, a sponsor at the baptism of James Tormey in January 1815. According to Catholic Canon Law, a godparent had to be at least 16 years of age, therefore, Edward could not have been born any later than January 1799.
On 6 February 1829, a daughter, Elizabeth Feeney, married Laurence McGrath. The witnesses were John Reilly and Mary Tormey. Their daughters, Mary and Anne, were baptized on 4 October 1829 and 7 October 1829 respectively; no dates of birth given. Mary’s godparents were Francis Gordon and Mary Tormey, and Anne’s godparents were Terence Clarke and Mary Tims.
On 16 February 1829, Edward Feeney married Jane Thompson in Mayne on 16 February 1829 in the presence of the Reverend Francis Sheridan and the Reverend John Leavy. Jane Thompson was a recent convert to the Catholic faith. She made her profession of faith, and was received into the Roman Catholic church, on 2 November 1828 in the presence of Francis Gordon and James Hughes.
In April 1836, the records show a death for a Mary Feeney, married, from the Parish of Mayne, residing in Mayne Townland: no maiden name given. In April 1843 they show a death for an Elenor Feeny, married, from the Parish of Mayne, residing in Mayne Townland; no maiden name given. Presumably both Mary and Elenor had married one of Richard and Anne’s sons. Perhaps one of them had been the wife of James.
Tragedy struck Edward and Jane’s daughter Elizabeth very early in her life. Edward died on 17 July 1832, a mere 20 days after his daughter Elizabeth was baptized. No details apart from the date of Edwards death were recorded. While still in her teenage years, a second tragedy struck young Elizabeth’s life. The Great Hunger of 1845-1852 had a significant effect on the population of Mayne Townland, an area of 541 acres (about 219 hectares). According to the 1881 Census of Ireland (Province of Leinster), before the famine the population in 1841 was 193 people living in 31 dwellings. Towards the end of the famine in 1851, the population was 118 people living in 20 dwellings. Over the next ten years the population continued to fall and by 1861 there were only 56 people living in 12 dwellings.
Just short of one year after her arrival in New South Wales, Elizabeth married Samuel Slater, a former convict who had, having received a life sentence for housebreaking, received a conditional pardon two years earlier. That Elizabeth Feeney, wife of Samuel Slater, is the same person as Elizabeth Feeny, orphan immigrant, is beyond doubt. The only immigration record found in the archives of the State Records Authority of New South Wales that could possibly match Elizabeth’s arrival in the colony of NSW is found in the Assisted Immigrants Index, in the passenger records for the Tippoo Saib, which arrived in Port Jackson on 29 July, 1850.
According to NSW immigration records and Elizabeth’s death record, her year of birth is calculated as 1835; according to her baptism record and marriage record it is calculated as 1832. Her 1901 obituary[1] states Elizabeth was 69 years old when she died and had lived in the Goulburn district for more than 50 years. That would place her approximate year of birth as 1832 and her arrival in the colony before 1851. The original record of the Tippoo Saibship passenger manifest shows:
No. 97 Feeny Elizabeth, age 15, Dairymaid, Native of Mahan Westmeath, Church of Rome, neither read nor write[2].
The Immigration Board passenger inspection list, recorded before the passengers were permitted to disembark, corroborates the data on the ship passenger manifest and describes Elizabeth’s “state of bodily health, strength and probable usefulness” as “good”.
No.97 Feeny Elizabeth, 15, Dairymaid, Mahan W. Meath, parents Edward & Jane both dead, Roman Catholic, neither read nor write, no relations in the Colony[3].
The age discrepancy on her immigration documents may have been a clerical error, or Elizabeth may have lied about her age, particularly if the workhouse Board of Governors favoured selecting younger females for the orphan emigration scheme (her year of birth is calculated as either 1832 or 1835 on all the official records discovered thus far). A further possibility is that Elizabeth may not have known how old she actually was.
Elizabeth’s place of residence in Ireland is given as Mahan in County Westmeath, however, there is no Mahan found on contemporary maps of County Westmeath or mentioned in Griffiths Valuation of Tenements 1848-1864. Possible locations for Elizabeth’s place of residence in Ireland were Mahonstown, about 12km east of Mullingar, and the townland of Mayne (Irish: Maighean), located about 18km north of Mullingar. A search of the County Westmeath Catholic Church records was rewarded by the find of an Elizabeth Feeny, daughter of Edward and Jane, baptized in the Townland of Mayne in 1832. It is likely that Mahan was a phonetic spelling as heard by the ear of the record-taker.
Elizabeth fared better than many of her orphan contemporaries. Because she was a dairy maid, it is likely that her time at the Hyde Park Barracks would have been short; girls with her experience would have been sent directly to a farming area rather than be sent out as domestic servants. From what we know of Elizabeth’s life, it seems that she was transferred from Hyde Park Barracks to the Immigration Depot at Goulburn, probably enduring a long and uncomfortable journey over the Great Dividing Range by bullock dray. From Goulburn, she would have been collected by her new employer and settled into her new life in the farming community at Richlands, about 45 km (28 miles) north of Goulburn. At that time the Richlands estate, including the estate workers’ village now called Taralga, was owned by William Macarthur and managed by his brother James, sons of the infamous John Macarthur – racketeer, entrepreneur, instigator of the Rum Rebellion and pioneer of the Australian merino wool industry. The Series NRS-5240 Registers and indexes of applications for orphans 1848-1851 held by the State Records Authority of NSW archives holds no details specific to Elizabeth Feeney, nor is there mention of indentures for any of the orphans who arrived aboard the Tippoo Saib in July 1850. The index for 1850 does, however, mention correspondence from the colonial Immigration Agent dated 21 March 1850 forwarding a letter from WJ McArthur of Goulburn “enclosing five Indentures completed and six for completion”. Further correspondence is mentioned in July 1850 from the Immigration Agent forwarding a letter from J McArthur Esq., Goulburn, “reporting the marriage of Mary Lanahan (sic) and Mary Leery (sic), Orphan Females per William & Mary”[4]. The J McArthur referred to was probably JF
[3] State Records Authority of New South Wales: Shipping Master’s Office; Passengers Arriving 1826 – 1900; Part Colonial Secretary series covering 1845 – 1853, reels 1272 [4/5227], 1280 [4/5244].
[4] The orphan ship William & Mary arrived in Sydney on 21 November 1849. Mary Lenahan was employed by William King of Goulburn at £8 for a period of 12 months. Mary Seery was employed by Thomas Capel, a brewer from Goulburn at £10 for a 12-month period. Mary, as Mary Saary, married John Steward on 1 July 1850 at St Saviour’s Church of England, Goulburn.
McArthur Esq, a Justice of the Peace and a sitting Magistrate on the Goulburn Bench. He, presumably, was acting on instructions from the Immigration Office in Sydney in the role of a local guardian.
Although the name of Elizabeth’s employer is not known, such correspondence confirms that young women from the Orphan Emigration Scheme had been sent to employers in Goulburn from at least 1849 onwards, as three orphans from the William & Mary are known to have been in Goulburn in early 1850[1].
Of the 297 orphan girls on board the Tippoo Saib, Elizabeth was one of only seven dairy maids, the other girls being mainly general house servants or nurse maids. Elizabeth may have been selected for employment specifically for that reason and employed either by Messrs Macarthur or one of their Richlands tenants, some of whom were dairy farmers[2]. Various birth, death and marriage records confirm that Elizabeth lived on the Richlands estate for the remainder of her life.
On 25 June 1851, one year after her arrival in New South Wales, Elizabeth married Samuel Slater at Richlands homestead, the home of the estate manager, Mr George Martyr. The marriage was conducted by William Sowerby, a minister from St Saviour’s Church of England, Goulburn. Samuel Slater had been assigned to James Macarthur in 1832 and worked between the Macarthur-owned estates of Camden Park and Richlands. On being granted a Ticket of Leave in 1841, Samuel was employed by the Macarthur family and soon relocated permanently to Richlands around 1842. Samuel received a Conditional Pardon in 1848.
At the time of Elizabeth’s arrival in the district, there were about 50 families living on the Richlands estate. They were all tenant farmers growing cereal crops such as wheat, oats and barley, or raising sheep, cattle, pigs and horses. The usual lease arrangements were 20-year leases for £15 per acre. Most of the lots averaged about 500 acres in size and were on what was widely considered to be some of the best land in the colony.
The marriage record of Samuel Slater and Elizabeth Feeney states that the groom was a bachelor, born in Derbyshire, a Stonemason, age 58 [according to the government records Samuel would actually have been 48], residing at Richlands, parents not listed. The bride was a spinster, born in Ireland, occupation not listed, age 19, residing at Richlands, parents not listed. The witnesses were George Martyr (the manager of Richlands estate), Angus Mackay (who would later become Instructor in Agriculture to the Board of Technical Education) and Elizabeth Weeks (wife of one of the tenant farmers), all of Richlands. The couple were married by banns. The bride signed with her mark[3].
The marriage of a 19-year-old girl to a man nearing his 50th birthday would be almost unheard of in our day and age, but at that time marriages were nearly always a matter of convenience. If love were to flower in time, all the better. In the case of Elizabeth and Samuel, the marriage would have been mutually beneficial. In marrying Samuel, Elizabeth would be working for herself and her future family; she need never be at the beck and call of an employer again. On the financial side, Samuel had been a wage-earner for almost ten years and, if he was not already a leaseholder, was probably well on his way to affording to lease his own farm on the Richlands estate. In marrying Elizabeth, Samuel had gained a young and healthy wife; as a dairymaid, Elizabeth knew her way around cattle and would contribute to the work of a farm, as well as provide Samuel with the creature comforts of home and companionship.
[1] In addition to Mary Lenehan and Mary Seery, Mary Ann Long (according to the Famine Orphan Database) on “14 Feb 1850 one of 4 orphans who absconded from Mr Peter’s dray on way to Wagga, returned to Goulburn Depot.”
[2] Dairy products had been produced since the earliest days of settlement in the Taralga district. The 600-acre property granted to Mr Thomas Howe, cheesemaker, in 1828 was later purchased by Edward Macarthur as it joined the northern boundary of Macarthur’s ‘Richlands’ estate. Richlands homestead and its various buildings were subsequently built there. Source: Taralga Historical Society Inc, 83 Orchard Road Taralga, NSW, 2580, Newsletter No 4, 2019, http://taralgahistoricalsociety.com.au/THS%20NEWS%204,%202019.pdf.
[3] NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages, Marriage 434/1851 V1851434 37B, Slater Samuel, Feaney Elizabeth, MC.
Elizabeth and Samuel were married for 18 years and had thirteen children together. Sadly, only seven of their children survived to adulthood. According to Samuel’s death certificate of 1869, two males and three females died in infancy (those births were not registered, which was not uncommon in the remoter areas of the colony) and toddler Samuel Junior, not yet two years old, fell into a well and drowned. Of the remaining seven children, four males and three females, all but Joseph married and had children of their own. The older children seem to have been baptized into the Anglican faith and the younger ones into the Roman Catholic faith. This may have been due to a lack of Catholic clergy in the area in the earlier years, as the first Catholic church built in the area was St Ignatius at Taralga in 1864, and even then, the priest was attached to the parish at Crookwell, 39 km (29 miles) away.
The four surviving adult sons – Thomas, Samuel Francis, Edward and Joseph – initially all lived in the Taralga area on or near the Macarthur Richlands and Guineacor properties; first as labourers, then later as tenant crop farmers and also raising horses, cattle and sheep. The Slater brothers’ personal stock brands were registered and published in the NSW Government Gazette between 1890 and 1921. Thomas, who “was of a retiring disposition” and “well-liked by all who knew him”[2], married Norah Foran, a farmer’s daughter and assisted immigrant from Glasclune, County Clare, Ireland who had arrived in 1881 per Clyde. Thomas and Norah eventually pioneered at Redground, to the northeast of Goulburn. Of Thomas and Norah’s children, three daughters and one son married siblings from the neighbouring Skelly family, whose parents were both of Irish descent. Thomas died at Goulburn in 1939. Joseph remained a bachelor and died at the Rydalmere Mental Hospital in 1944. Samuel Francis, a “widely known stockman”[3] and who was “well known and highly respected throughout the community”[4], married Norah Foran’s younger sister, Catherine. Catherine (known as Katie or Kate) was also an assisted immigrant, arriving in 1886 per Port Victor. Sam and Kate bought a 200-acre grazing property at Wombeyan Caves to the northeast of Taralga in 1910, which they called Wattle Flat. Sam worked his property until shortly before his death at Goulburn in 1950. Edward married Mary Lennam, a nurse, also of Irish descent. He is believed to have died in Tasmania.
One can only imagine Elizabeth’s delight when three of her sons married Irish brides and two of her three daughters married Irish-born or Irish-descended men. Did they speak Gaelic and reminisce about the old country when they were together? Did they sing Irish folk songs and share stories around the fireplace? Perhaps it helped to ease any homesickness or sadness at separation from family, perhaps the Irish commonality strengthened the bond of extended family ties.
Samuel Slater died in 1869, leaving Elizabeth a widow at a relatively young age with seven minor children to care for, one of whom was just a babe in arms. Elizabeth did not remarry, as many of the other Earl Grey orphans were forced to do to ensure some kind of security for themselves and their children. According to Elizabeth’s 1901 newspaper obituary, many years earlier she had been granted a farm free of rent for her lifetime in consideration of the Slaters’ long and faithful years of service to the Macarthur family. That farm and house would have been the property on Portion 3, where the Slaters had been farming and raising stock for some years. This act of generosity was undoubtably at the hand of Mrs Elizabeth Macarthur-Onslow (James Macarthur’s sole child and heir) and would have occurred at the time of Samuel’s death. Mrs Macarthur-Onslow had a reputation as a kind and generous person who had great concern for her employees and their families and “was always devising ways to give them better homes and brighter lives”[10]. Elizabeth remained a widow for 31 years.
In January 1901, Elizabeth contracted influenza resulting in pneumonia. After a nine-day illness, she died in her home at Richlands on 14 January 1901, having been well cared for by her family and attended to by her parish priest. Her death certificate states she was 69 years old, born in County Westmeath, Ireland and that her time in the colony was 56 years[11]. Elizabeth’s son Edward was the informant; however, there are errors in the information he provided. Edward mistakenly attributed his own father’s trade of stonemason to Elizabeth’s father and gave the name of Elizabeth’s mother as Elizabeth instead of Jane. Although Elizabeth did not name any of her daughters after her own mother, three of her granddaughters were given Jane as a middle name (Elizabeth Jane Barry, Bessie Jane Slater and Clara Jane McAleer). It is likely that Elizabeth was, herself, generally referred to as Bessie. Elizabeth was buried on 16 January 1901 in the Catholic section of the Stonequarry Cemetery (now Taralga Cemetery), off Golspie Road near Taralga, NSW.
The day after Elizabeth’s funeral, her house and its entire contents burned to the ground due to an accidental fire. Elizabeth’s orphan box may well have been among the contents destroyed in the fire. That same little box, made to a regulation size of 2 feet long x 14 inches wide x 14 inches deep (61cm x 35.5cm x 35.5cm) and with her name painted on the front, that accompanied her to Australia and was full with treasure in the form of clothes and personal items, all brand new and of good quality in accordance with a list prescribed by the Emigration Commission which was pasted inside the lid.
Only one of the boxes issued to the 4,114 girls participating in the Orphan Emigration Scheme in NSW is known to have survived and was on display in the Hyde Park Barracks Museum in Macquarie Street, Sydney in 2021.
Box belonging to Margaret Hurley from Gort, Co. Galway per Thomas Arbuthnot (arrived Sydney 1849).
Owned by her great-granddaughter, Rose Marie Perry. Photo: Darrell Thornthwaite.
Elizabeth’s obituary was published in The Catholic Press and the Goulburn Herald.
Elizabeth Feeney and Samuel Slater had at least 40 grandchildren. Their descendants include pioneering farmers, stockmen, graziers, votaries, health care professionals, public servants, servicemen in the armed forces and fire brigade, schoolteachers and businesspeople. Although there is little in the surviving records to tell us much about Elizabeth as a person, we can safely deduce that she was level-headed and not fearful of taking big steps to ensure her own survival against huge odds; that she was a dedicated wife and mother who knew the pain of losing some of her children at far too young an age; that, as a young widow, she was physically and emotionally strong enough to bring up her children alone; that her surviving children loved her and cared for her in her old age; that she had a most generous benefactress who deemed Elizabeth, even though she was not yet 40 years old, deserving of farmland and housing free of rent for the rest of her life; that she had brought up her children to be good, kind and charitable people who were well thought of by all who knew them; that she was a woman of faith; and that she was well respected within her community because her funeral was “very largely attended”. Elizabeth will be remembered by her descendants as one of the 4,114 Irish orphan females landed in NSW who truly became the ‘mothers of Australia’.
Researched and written by Caroline Thornthwaite, 2022.
For my husband Darrell and his three brothers, Dennis, David and Bruce; fourth-generation descendants of Samuel Slater and Elizabeth Feeney.
State Records Authority of NSW, Assisted Immigrants (digital) shipping lists 1828-1896, Tippoo Saib 29 July 1850, viewed 2021, https://indexes.records.nsw.gov.au/ebook/list.aspx?Page=NRS5316/4_4786/Tippoo%20Saib_29%20Jul%201850/4_478600555.jpg&No=6
State Records Authority of NSW, Immigration – Registers and Indexes of Applications for Orphans 1848-51, Item 4/4716, Register 1850-51, Volume 3, Reel 3111.
State Records Authority of New South Wales: Shipping Master’s Office; Passengers Arriving 1826 -1900; Part Colonial Secretary series covering 1845 – 1853, reels 1272 [4/5227], 1280 [4/5244].
Sydney Living Museums, Irish Orphan Girls at Hyde Park Barracks, viewed 2021
[11] NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages, Death 3217/1901, Slater Elizabeth, Taralga.
My thanks to Caroline Thornthwaite who has kindly allowed me to put into my blog, her well-researched and finely written orphan story, that of Elizabeth Feeney from ‘Mahan, Westmeath’ per Tippoo Saib. She hopes readers will find it either interesting or useful, or both.
A while back when i asked people to think about how discovering a famine orphan in their family had affected them, I had no idea how rich and varied their response would be. The magnetism of Peter’s Ann Trainer, Brenda’s giving her Julia the dignity and protection she lacked in life, Kaye’s desire to know and understand her Bridget, are now joined by John’s mapping and IT creativity. I’m chuffed that he found something useful in my blog. Here’s John’s suggestions not just for his own orphan and the Earl Grey orphans generally but for all genealogists and family historians.
Part 2: A foray into Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
by John Moon
A GIS Approach (with a little bit of Genealogy)
In his #37 of 24 July 2016 our blog host, Trevor McClaughlin, asked the question “Can we create interactive digital maps?”
He continued, Let me demonstrate how this map business might work. Here is a map of the orphans in Queensland c. 1861. I’ve entered a few numbers. If we had an interactive map, what might appear if we clicked on numbers 1 and 2, at Ipswich?
Could we do something …, such as clicking on the dots in the map to bring up all the information we have about the orphan who resided there at that particular time? Maybe there are some probate records? [or maybe a photograph?]
The short answer is “yes”, as is demonstrated in the following screen shots taken from an application of the free GIS software package QGIS for the nine orphans in Trevor’s example.
In earlier blog posts #12 and #17 Trevor asked further questions related to maps, “scattering” and “family reconstruction”.
<#12.> “In the last post <#11> I mentioned a possible use for completed family reconstitutions viz. maps showing the location of the orphans at particular times in their lives. Here’s a couple I used in Barefoot 2–the location of the orphans in Victoria in c.1861. This one is based on the birth records of their children. The second one is the location of the orphans in Victoria at the end of their lives c.1890-1901; this one is based on their death certificates.” In # 17 similar maps for Queensland and NSW were shown. Towards the end of this blog is Trevor’s map of the three states for 1861.
<#17> Under the title Orphan “scattering”, Trevor mentions that I’ve already mapped the origin of the orphans based on the workhouses they were from (see blogpost 4). Could maps be drawn which show their more precise origins in Ireland, as well as their place of first employment in Australia”, and makes the plea “Is there not a computer programme that would allow us to map their movements over time? We could follow them between places of employment, and through marriage, birth and death records for much of their life.
Again, the short answer is “yes”, as is demonstrated in the following screen shots taken from another application of QGIS. (In fact some of the above maps would be relatively easy to develop if the relevant data, including latitude and longitude of the towns, were available in an Excel spreadsheet. Although there may be a – solvable – problem of displaying an orphan’s details when more than one orphan has the same latitude and longitude).
The following map shows Jane Hutchinson’s movements (as discussed in part I of this blog), numbered 1-7, from her arrival at Melbourne to her death in Wangaratta. As a base map an old geofererenced Map of Victoria, including the Pastoral Runs has been used.
As with all “short answers” there is a “BUT”, in fact many buts.
Some of the “buts” relate to the following questions:
(a) “do you want to develop the map for your own use”?
In Trevor’s post 17 of 25 May 2015 he notes that Barbara Barclay has made excellent use of maps in her study of Famine orphans from County Mayo. (see <http://www.historicalballinrobe.com/page/the_mayo_orphen_gilrs?path=0p3p> http://mayoorphangirls.weebly.com/ ). In a comment on the post Barbara noted that I did my two simple maps with my basic grasp of ArcGIS. Any proficient user of GIS mapping software could easily produce the types of maps you suggest – given the data.
Barbara suggests that to answer this question there is a prerequisite of being a proficient user of GIS mapping software. Whilst not wishing to discourage anybody from using say QGIS (free) or ArcGIS (paid) there is a “learning curve” for them that can be steep. However, there are a lot of good YouTube tutorials available to help going up the curve.
(b) “do you want the map as part of a website (e.g. Trevor’s WordPress Site)”?
This is possible but has resource implications. These include the costs (monetary and person-power) of setting up and maintaining the data bases and software as well as those of hosting of a website.
Concerning WordPress Trevor, in a reply to a comment in blog #37 noted that wordpress.com is different from wordpress.org. The latter is where the map plugins are. (In other words, Trevor’s blog is on wordpress.com so the map plugins can’t be used).
(c) “do you want something inbetween (i.e. a map that is not connected to a website but be can displayed in your web browser).
Many GIS software packages have the facility to publish GIS data to “the web”. In QGIS, the plugin is QGIS2Web. Whilst I haven’t used it, I understand that it generates a set of files and folders that can be zipped and shared with others. Once unzipped, it has an index.html file which, when clicked, displays the map in your browser. This map has all the features included by the developer for example the ability to click on the dots in the map to bring up the information on an orphan.
A major advantage such an approach is that one does not need to be a “proficient user of GIS mapping software” to click on the dots in a web browser. Presumably one could have a link to the zip file in Trevor’s blog.
Whilst this approach makes it easier for the user it still has the person-power costs of setting up and maintaining the data base. I also suspect that the size of the zipped file may become quite large as the number of images of orphan’s information increases (if there was only text data associated with each orphan, then the zipped file size would probably be acceptable – one would have the same facility to click on dots however, it would only be text that is displayed).)
A Genealogical Approach (with a little bit of GIS)
In another blog (#11), Trevor mentions that “One of the research tools I used for the Earl Grey Famine orphans was a modified form of what demographers know as ‘family reconstitution‘.
Family reconstitution is the technique of linking records of demographic events, usually of an ecclesiastical nature, within and between individual lives, in order to recreate individual life histories and the histories of families. While genealogists have always pursued such linking, the intent of demographers is not simply to record chains of descent and marriage but rather to compile information on the demographic rates pertaining to the population of which the individuals and families were a part. E.A. Hammel, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001. (Most social scientists invent new words for the old ways of doing things in an attempt to differentiate their “new” product.)
I pick-up Hammel’s phrase “genealogists have always pursued such linking” and ask myself whether a genealogical software package (with a – limited – GIS capability) may be a better alternative to a full-blown GIS package. Such an approach should in fact have a gentle learning curve as I presume that many readers of Trevor’s blog are familiar with genealogy websites such as Ancestry, My Heritage, Findmypast, Familysearch or WikiTree. I am however thinking of something like the free genealogy software package “Gramps”.
The following screenshots show the output of “Gramps” for Jane Hutchinson, her husband and their children (“family reconstitution” and “scattering”).
The first screenshot shows Jane’s movements from her arrival in Melbourne, employment in Merri Creek and Campaspe River, marriage in Melbourne and movements to Taminick and North Wangaratta. If one clicks on any of the pins a pop-up box appears with details of the events at that pin.
The second screenshot expands the movements to all of Jane’s family including the deaths of two of her children, one in Queensland and the other in New Zealand. Again, clicking on a pin gives details of the event at the location of the pin.
The third and fourth screenshot shows the pop-up box of events at Wangaratta and North Wangaratta.
Jane’s family WangarattaJane’s family North Wangaratta
Further, Gramps can produce various reports and charts and reports including family trees and fan charts as illustrated below.
So, returning to the question “Can we create interactive digital maps?”
As indicated above the answer is “yes”. However what we can display in the maps depends upon the data available. Further, the the development time of such maps depends upon the format in which the data is presented, the preferred format being electronic such as a spreadsheet or other readable database (hard copy printed data, in tabular form, can also be scanned and extracted then read into a database).
An example of a database is that at the Irish Famine Memorial which includes the fields: First Name, Surname, Native Place, Age on Arrival, Parents, Religion, Ship Name and Details (although there are some spelling issues for Surname and Native Place and it is not clear whether the Details field is a text field or a concatenation of other fields such as Employer, Marriage etc.).
Similarly, if the original data from which Trevor drew the maps frozen at specific points in time (1848-50, 1861 and c.1890-1900) for Barefoot vol.2 were available, then these data could be recombined with that at the Irish Famine Memorial to produce a set of general statistics such as age on arrival, age at first marriage, age at death, number of children etc.
They could also be used in a map to view questions such as:
Show me all the girls who arrived on <name of ship>
Show me who married a convict “exile”
Show me which girls were married in <church name>
Show me which girls came from <county or workhouse> in Ireland
Show me first employers and their location
“Family reconstitution”.
The “modified form of what demographers know as ‘family reconstitution‘” that Trevor used for his orphan data cards (see example below) can equally well be represented in a genealogical software package such as “Gramps”. The added advantage of such a package is that various charts and reports can be generated including family trees and fan charts as well as being able to follow the movements of orphans and their families.
Given that such packages are “user friendly”, perhaps their use could also encourage descendants of orphans to provide data on their “family reconstitution”.
John’s suggestions are inspirational. Have a look again at his paragraph just before the last map. A couple of nights ago, about 3am, I even found myself thinking about the possibilities. (It’s an age thing. No it’s not. I spent a lifetime, going through the next day’s teaching in my head during the night.)
One of the interactive digital maps that set me off in this direction some years ago was about the spread of North American railways. The Stanford university interactive map was captivating. I imagined the lives of the orphans could be displayed like that too. Look at the map above. Can you see how the discovery of gold in Victoria has affected where the orphans spread?
Maybe a simpler map to begin with is the way to go. Can we map the movement of the orphans during their lifetime? We have one of the workhouse origins of the orphans already. As John suggests, I’m sure we canalsodraw onerepresentingwhere exactly they were first employed.
Kiss (keep it simple stupid). By happy circumstance my 1991 Barefoot & Pregnant? became part of the Untapped research project out of the University of Melbourne. One result of which is that all the books in the project are being republished by Booktopia. That hard copy should be easier to work with and be the means of identifying the Port Phillip orphans’ first employer. We can then place them on a map of Melbourne and its surrounds, or further afield.
To repeat what John suggested above,thereafter, using my family reconstitutions and the work of family historians, it may be possible to identify where the orphans were, at two or three year(?) intervals, via the birth registration of their children. There are drawbacks of course. How do we find where the married orphans went after their child-bearing years? Maybe their descendants via the Port Phillip Orphans FaceBook page would provide the necessary information? The other most important go-to place, and most up-to-date, is the Irishfaminememorial database.
Some time ago I asked John Moon would he like to write something for my blog, something about his orphan ancestor, Jane Hutchinson, and something about how finding ‘his’ orphan has affected him.He very kindly sent me the following. I’ll keep the two parts he sent, separate. The second one I’ll put up a little later; it’s a little gem of creativity.
Part 1: Jane Hutchinson, Earl Grey Irish Orphan, “Derwent”, Melbourne, 25 February 1850
The basic facts about Jane Hutchinson are contained in her summary at the Irish Famine Memorial Website (which incorporates data from Trevor’s Barefoot and pregnant?). Given the dearth of accessible information about Jane’s life it is difficult to expand upon this summary without repeating some of the more general experiences of other Orphans. Thus all we can do is add some observations and speculations by considering two people living around her which by association adds to her story. These two people are Thomas Buckler, the man she married, and to a lesser extent Michael Madden, her first employer after “disposal”.
Name: Jane HutchinsonNative Place: Londonderry [Derry] [Desertmartin]
Age On Arrival: 16
Parents: Not recorded
Religion: Roman Catholic
Ship Name: Derwent (Melbourne Feb 1850)
shipping: house servant, cannot read or write;
Magherafelt PLU PRONI BG23/G/1(3032), Jane Hutchinson, aged 13, single, RC, servant, from the Union at large, deserted, no means of support, came in with her mother, Ellen, aged 50, widow, mendicant with William 15, Nancy 11 & John all healthy but no means of support, entered 31 Oct 1846, left 6 Jan 1847; (6670) Jane Hutchinson, 15, single, RC, healthy, Desertmartin, labourer, entered 9 Jun 1848, left 30 Oct 1849
empl. by Michael Madden at Merri Creek, £9, 6 months;
married Thomas Buckler (seems to be convict to VDL per Maitland Jun 1846) on 25 Oct 1852, St James CofE Melbourne; 12 children;died 25 Jan 1908 Wangaratta, Victoria. (source https://irishfaminememorial.org/details-page/?pdb=7582
Great Irish Famine Monument, Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney
Jane and Thomas were the “guinea pigs” of two different nineteenth century socio-political experiments. In the case of Jane, it was Earl Grey’s Irish Orphans scheme, and in the case of Thomas it was the “separate system” of the 1839 Prison Act , implemented at Pentonville prison.
Thomas was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England on 3rd December 1826.
From the available records and newspaper reports, it appears that the Bucklers were a “family in distress”. At the age of 12, Thomas’ second sister Rebecca died in the Chilvers Coton Workhouse and by the age of 15, the 1841 Census suggests that his mother and two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, were resident in the same Workhouse. Neither Thomas nor his father appear to be in Nuneaton at the time of this Census which raises the question of where they were, or did they not take part in the 1841 Census.
After a a number of run-ins with local magistrates, Thomas, in December 1844, was tried, along with Joseph Martin (alias Randle), at the Coventry County Assizes for stealing 17 pairs of boots and shoes (value £3. 10s.), a small quantity of cheese and butter and a pair of scissors (value 10d.) and sentenced to 10 years transportation.
He arrived at Pentonville 23 December 1844 and was subjected to discipline under the “separate system”.
“The distinctive characteristic of the discipline was the COMBINATION of severe punishment with a considerable amount of instruction and other moral influences. The elements relied upon for severe punishment were, rigid separation , and a protracted term of eighteen months’ imprisonment, followed by transportation. The moral or reformatory elements were, frequent visitation by superior officers, a considerable amount of moral and religious instruction, combined with industrial training [in Thomas’ case shoe-making], and a reasonable prospect of earning an honest livelihood in the colony, upon the sole condition of steady good conduct. At that time, these elements of severity and kindness were combined at Pentonville in a higher degree than they have ever been combined in any other prison in Great Britain”. See Results of the System of Separate Confinement: As Administered at the Pentonville Prison – available for download in Google Books.
After around 18 months at Pentonville, Thomas boarded the Maitland as an exile, bound for Australia, arriving Melbourne 6 November 1846.
Thomas has the distinction of appearing in a House of Commons Parliamentary Paper, not by name but by number (#741), for the offenses he committed whilst on route to Australia. These included:
17 June 1846 Selling his clothes to a seaman in the prison for a chew of tobacco – put in irons five days.
10 August 1846 Chewing tobacco in the prison and spitting on the deck after bed-time. The second time he has broken through the rules – Bread and water, and made prisoner below for fourteen days.
So much for the intended behavioural changes of Pentonville – or was it a reflection of the severity of the punishment for what would now appear to be minor infringements?
As an exile, Thomas stepped on the shores of Port Phillip as a free man, “on condition that they do not return to “Our United Kingdom during the remaining term of their respective Sentences of transportation”. Initially, he went to work for a well-known auctioneer, founder of Kirk’s Bazaar and prominent turf club member, James Bowie Kirk of Bourke Street Melbourne.
We hear no more of Thomas until his marriage day in 1852.
Whilst I do not have a copy of Thomas and Jane’s marriage certificate (at $20.00 per certificate genealogy can become an expensive hobby), I understand that it states that they were from Campaspe River. So the question arises as to ‘how did they get there?’
For Thomas, as indicated above, we have no information. For Jane, one speculation is that she went there with the Maddens family (her first employer). In this respect, an obituary of Patrick Madden (son of Michael) in the McIvor Times and Rodney Advertiser, Thursday 7 June 1906 reported that:
The late Mr Patrick Madden, whose death was reported in your last issue was the oldest resident of Mia Mia and district. He was born at Campbellfield [Merri Creek], near Melbourne, on the 15th March, 1843, and came to Mia Mia with his parents on 1st February, 1851. … His father (the late Mr Michael Madden) was travelling with his stock from Melbourne to Mia Mia on 6th February 1851 (Black Thursday) and had some trouble to save them from being burnt.
Michael Madden perhaps rented some land from a pastoralist/ squatter in the area to keep his stock. In January 1854 (after Jane was married), Michael Madden and his wife had taken over the license of the Mia Mia Inn. Michael died a couple of years after purchasing the license to the Inn and is buried in Kyleton Cemetery.
The speculation here is that Michael Madden’s farm, where Jane may have been living, was located somewhere between Kyleton and Mia Mia on the Campaspe River.
Jane and Thomas were married on 25 Oct 1852 at St James CofE Melbourne [I notice from Trevor’s blog #58 a contributor stated that “St James in Melbourne was both Catholic and Anglican in the one church” – does anybody have any details of this arrangement?]. Following their marriage, it would appear that they went to Wangaratta, working for the pastoralist/ squatter Benjamin Warby Jnr. on his 23,000 acre run ‘Taminick’ (estimated grazing capability 700 cattle or 4,000 sheep).
It was at Taminick that Jane’s first two children were born – Sarah Jane in 1853 and William 24 March 1855 (details of the births of her remaining ten children are shown in the family tree below…see part 2).
Their third child Abraham was born in North Wangaratta in 1857, suggesting that they moved from Taminick to North Wangaratta some time between 1855 and 1857.
The obituary of William Buckler (son of Thomas Buckler) in the Wangaratta Chronicle, Saturday 1 September 1934, reported that:
The late Mr. [William] Buckler was born at Taminick and at the age of three [maybe two, as Thomas’ second son Abraham was born at North Wangaratta in 1857] he was taken to North Wangaratta by his parents, to property which was afterwards known as the “Old Buckler homestead”.
Here his father was first to grow wheat in the district, and the first year there there was obtained just one ear, and in the following year the whole of the previous year’s production was planted, to gain about one bushel of wheat [probable a little poetic/ journalistic licence]. The ground was tilled by a wooden plough made by Mr. Thomas Buckler.
Details of Thomas’ land acquisition are probably held in the bowels of the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) the location of which could possibly be identified in Nelson, P. and Alves, L. “Lands Guide: A guide to finding records of Crown Land at Public Record Office Victoria”, Public Records Office Victoria, Melbourne, 2009. However, without access to PROV we rely on scattered newspaper reports.
A commission of enquiry into applications for land under the forty second section of the Amending Land Act, was held on Thursday (25 October 1866), at the Plough Inn, Tarrawingee. The commission consisted of Messrs Gaunt, P.M., and Mr H. Morris, District Surveyor. The proceedings commenced shortly before eleven o’clock [one of its decisions being]:
PARISH OF CARRARAGARMUNGEE
Thomas Buckler applied for eighty acres. He has a wife and six children. He has seventy-one acres of purchased land, but none leased – Recommended.
Thus by 1866, Thomas had purchased seventy-one acres and had been recommended for the lease of a further eighty acres.
On his death Thomas had 302 acres of which 282 acres were transferred to Jane and 20 acres sold to his son Abraham (blacksmith) for £70.
By 1879, Jane had had twelve children, eleven of whom lived long lives.
Whilst Jane could neither read nor write (even her will dated 20 December 1907 was read to her before witnesses and signed with her mark), the education of the children was not neglected. In 1867, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser, reported on the examination of pupils attending Wangaratta National School. The subjects examined included: reading, writing and spelling, arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, English composition, Latin, and mental arithmetic as well as a prize for girl’s needlework.
Jane died on 25 January 1908 and is buried with Thomas at Wangaratta Cemetery.
Jane, who in her adolescence was a pauper, lived to the age of 75, bore 12 children and owned a farm of 282 acres. This must have been beyond the wildest dreams of the adolescent Jane. When I look at this brief sketch of Jane’s life, I cannot but think “very brave girl and a true Australian pioneer”. When I look back to the Magherafelt Workhouse, I also cannot help thinking that she took advantage of the third Earl Grey’s Irish Orphans scheme, and was not a victim of it.
Thomas on the other hand did not have much choice. He grew-up in a family under stress and once he was caught for stealing the boots and the cheese the system of the day determined his future. After arriving in Australia however he rose to the challenge and through hard work was able to make a success of his life – another true pioneer.
(As a footnote, it is observed that while in Wangaratta he seems to have had only two run-ins with the law: one for being drunk for which he was cautioned and discharged and the other a traffic infringement “leaving a horse and dray unprotected in the public streets” for which he was fined 2s 6d, with 5s costs).
Just a reminder about this year’s annual gathering at the Famine monument.
Readers will be aware that my last few blogposts are concerned with encouraging people to write ‘their’ own orphan histories, asking them to think about ethical issues, historical context, and the like, as they go. My view is that the primary authority for orphan histories lies with descendants themselves. An outsider, academic or otherwise cannot provide the personal, lively, and passionate engagement that only a descendant can, no matter how helpful the outsider may be. Had i still been teaching I’m sure we could have had some interesting discussions, and disagreements, about this. If you know the saying attributed to Socrates, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living‘, then you’ll understand why I’ve been encouraging some Irish Famine orphan descendants to examine their relationship with ‘their’ orphan, and her effects/affects (easy to confuse these) upon them. There are plenty of different ways of doing this. You don’t have to follow the same path as Kaye or Peter or Brenda (see my recent blogposts, for some very interesting examples).
I hope many of you are familiar with the wonderful story written by Kaye Schofield that appeared in last month’s Tinteán. Here’s the link, in case you aren’t, or just wish to read it again.
I’m also going to put the following essay into this month’s issue of the free online magazine. It’s only fair that Tinteán‘s readers get the chance to read Kaye’s response to the question,
How has Bridget Hopkins affected me?
By Kaye Schofield
The question posed was: How has ‘your’ orphan affected you. This was a question I had not thought about, and I was not convinced that it was even a question worth exploring. I wondered what the point of it was and pushed it away, but it was persistent. I finally succumbed to the siren song, and here is my answer.
I have known the name of my great-great-grandmother Bridget Hopkins for around 15 years but she was just another one of those many family ghosts who floated around in the background of my own very busy and peripatetic life. Some 5 years ago, Bridget became the subject of my first serious family history effort. She was a demanding subject who did not yield up her secrets readily.
I started with the usual official reports: Select Committee on Poor Laws; Poor Law Boundaries Commission; Poor Law Commissioners’ Reports; Papers on the State of the Unions and Workhouses in Ireland and the like. Anyone who has ever read a parliamentary report will understand how much is omitted and how colour and movement is erased by the officialese. As the Great Famine in Galway and Connaught more broadly began to take a form in my head, I had a creeping sense of shame that I had lived so long and not really thought about it in any way beyond the superficial. Bridget urged me to seek a greater contextual understanding of the circumstances that likely led her to her admission into the Castlerea workhouse in County Roscommon.
I dived into a range of Irish historians such as Cormac Ó Gráda, Alan Fernihough, Christine Kinealy, Brendan Ó Cathaoir, Ciarán Reilly and David Fitzpatrick as well as Colm Tóibín’s marvellous essay Erasures. I became interested in the political economy of the Great Famine as well as its social dimensions and impact. I read various theses of variable quality and realised that writers from Ireland, England, Australian, Canada and the United States bring very different perspectives to the Great Famine, emigration and immigration. I read accounts which challenged the notion of women as passive spectators or victims of the Great Famine and emphasised female agency. I read the debates about whether the Great Irish Famine was an example of genocide and the arguments that the Great Famine was an Irish Holocaust. I found the powerful poem “What Shall I Wear, Darling, to The Great Hunger?” by Paul Durcan and other such creative works that have been described as famine satire, and read discussions about whether the Great Famine was a suitable subject for satire anyway. Navigating my way through such complex debates was challenging and I wondered why I was doing this at all, since it would take a lifetime of study to really come to any seriously informed point of view. After all, I was just an amateur skating over the surface of a relatively brief if totally transformative period in Irish history to write up ‘my’ Earl Grey orphan.
Bridget then suggested that I take a break and go really local. I have been a fan of oral history since I first read the work of Studs Terkel in the 1970s so I did not take much urging. I found the Irish Folklore Collection and began searching for all things Galway, Roscommon and Castlerea. Eventually I came across the book Famine Echoes– Folk Memories of the Great Irish Famine: An Oral History of Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy by Cathal Póirtéir. I remember distinctly the very moment when I read the recollections of the son of Johnny Callaghan, a baker in the Castlerea workhouse during and for many years after the Famine, and who had worked alongside his father. Amongst other things, he recalled ‘The Black Room’ where the sick were allowed to die, after which the corpse was allowed to slide down boards into the pit beneath and lime was put over the corpse, along the boards and along the wall of the gable. This caused the wall to go black and gave the name to the ‘Black Gable’. When I first read this, I paced up and down my hallway, muttering to myself that surely this cannot be so? Vivid images of Bridget’s parents, grandparents, brothers or sisters sliding down boards into a lime pit kept recurring. I was rendered speechless with deep rage.
From that moment, I became hyper-aware of all things Irish, past and present. In trying to recover her memory, Bridget has taught me to notice all the big things like the Corn Laws and also the small things like the properties of Indian maize and the Lumper potato when in combination with buttermilk. She led me to look at the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, the landlord system, resident and absentee landlords, Catholic and Protestant landlords, the Gregory clause, evictions, clearances and emigration and to find out about Richard D’Arcy of New Forest, the landlord of Glen village where I believe Bridget came from. She sent me searching through the fine print of Irish and English newspapers for any sliver about the Castlerea Poor Law Union and its Castlerea workhouse. She thought I should know more about Lieutenant John Henry R. N., the Emigration Agent for the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission who selected her in September 1848, along with 19 other orphan girls, for emigration to the Australian colonies and whether he was decent or not (yes, I think he was).
Having led me a merry dance around both the wood and the trees, I finally felt I had a good enough but certainly not perfect feel for Bridget’s time in Ireland. But before I could put pen to paper, I had to know everything I could about the ship Digby that carried her to Sydney. Then with my forensic skills now sharply honed, I laboriously ploughed my way through the next 66 years of her life, dealing with the tedium of publican’s licenses in Bathurst, the seemingly endless array of boarding houses in Bourke, and marriage, divorce and bankruptcy laws in NSW.
All this research took the best part of six months and only then did I feel I could start writing, which took another six months. Much of my research never actually made its way into my written accounts as I tried to focus on a narrative that others might find accessible and interesting. The research was not wasted, just living in a backroom.
Researching Bridget has occupied a big chunk of my life over recent years, teaching me a good deal about the history, geography, economics and politics of Ireland and of NSW. I have become somewhat obsessive about getting the details right while placing them in a wider context, endlessly fearful of the banal or trite which can come with too little knowledge. And just when I think I have got everything just so and write it up and put into the public domain, Bridget throws me another curve ball and it all starts again. I feel sorry for my 15 other great-great-grandparents. They are all getting short shrift unless, that is, they too are Irish.
BRIDGET’ S GRANDSON CORPORAL ALBERT EDWARD CARROLL #385 19TH BATTALION ORANGE NSW ON LEFT STUDIO PORTRAIT TAKEN SHORTLY BEFORE THE 19TH BATTALION DEPARTED FOR GALLIPOLI ALBERT THE SON OF WILLIAM BERNARD CARROLL WAS KILLED IN ACTION IN 1917 AT THE SECOND BATTLE AT BULLECOURT AGED 23. PHOTO COURTESY AUSTRALIAN W AR MEMORIAL
Kaye Schofield AO has very recently retired after a 55-year career in education, initially in schools and then tertiary education and later advising on Australia’s international development programs in the Indo-Pacific. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees and an honorary doctorate in education. Her DNA ethnicity estimate is 46% Irish. Her passion for family history is relatively new but her original training in history and geography has proved helpful. Her family is a little bemused by but grateful for her obsession.
trevo's Irish famine orphans 
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