Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (8): Photos and forms, some well-known descendants

SOME FOTOS AND FAMILY RECONSTITUTIONS

Just an attempt to improve my use of WordPress.  Hope these are of interest whilst I begin work on my next substantive post, called “ARRIVING”.  As always, my thanks to descendants of the orphans who sent me photographs to use.

I’m having a little trouble aligning these pics. Once I enter a caption they take on a life of their own. I’ll try adding some more  a little later.

In the meanwhile, let me put up a family reconstitution or two. Hope you can read these and they don’t give you eyestrain.

First an Earl Grey orphan, Violet Primrose Lackie, who went to Brisbane. Those who went to present-day Queensland tended to live longer than the others.

Gosh, you should see the mess on the page I’m working on but it seems to work okay on the post you will see.

You might like to find out a bit more about the orphans mentioned in this post. You can do so at www.irishfaminememorial.org

Now for another family reconstitution, that of Sarah McMullen and her husband, Daniel Burdett. I wonder if it is possible to work back from the present using this sort of thing. I imagine it would be a massive project, unless of course one used only a direct line of descent. But that would defeat the purpose; it would lose valuable demography. She is another Earl Grey orphan. She remained in Sydney.

The Earl Grey Famine orphans tended to have large families, as long as their health was good and they survived the child-bearing years. My impression is that their families were larger than other Irish female immigrants, in the same age range, arriving in Australia in the 1850s. But that would need a lot more research before being confirmed.

Here’s a few more pics giving us a ‘long’ view.

Johanna Kelly from Kilkenny per Panama; five generations in Australia. Photo taken c. 1917.

(As you can see I’m far from mastering WordPress).

In recent times, a number of conservative politicians, and at least one illustrious journalist, have discovered an Earl Grey orphan in their family tree. Make of that what you will. Who comes to mind? The late former Senator Steve Hutchins of the Australian Labor party; Senator Barnaby Joyce of the National Party, former Leader of the National Party in the Federal Parliament; Mike Baird, erstwhile Leader of the Liberal Party and Premier of New South Wales. His sister Julia Baird, is an illustrious historian, author, journalist and broadcaster who regularly does an excellent job ‘chairing’ an ABC programme, “The Drum”. I’ll invite you to put your own ‘spin’ on that.

Here is a pic reputedly of Eliza Mahon of Carlow per Lady Peel, the orphan ancestor of Mike and Julia Baird.

Let me finish with another kind of ‘success’ story. This young orphan, Letitia Connelly from Enniskillen, married William Hayes, a storekeeper and astute businessman. The family became wealthy on the dividends from the Goldsborough Mining Company in Victoria. His estate was valued at £7,487 in 1890. To the best of my knowledge,  the family has yet to identify their descent from an Irish Famine orphan.

Until next time….