Lately I’ve been thinking about the relationship between academic and family historians. Is it an equal relationship? Do outsiders always bring a helpful perspective, or does their influence weaken the very personal and emotional tie family historians have with their orphan ancestor(s)? If authority is shared in the best possible way then everyone wins. I’m thinking here of David Fitzpatrick’s Oceans of Consolation and Tanya Evans’s Fractured Families. But it may not always be the case.
Let me test my belief that family historians should be given free-rein to write their particular orphan history. Only they can provide a very personal, passionate and lively engagement. Let’s test the hypothesis.
First is an interesting essay by Peter Hansen from New Zealand describing the effect his orphan(s) have had on him. My sincere thanks to Peter for allowing me to publish it.
PETER and his Irish orphan
It’s 30 years since I first came across Ann Trainer per Derwent as one of my ancestors. The initial shock impact of my discoveries has long gone. Information-gathering has been slow, in fits and starts, and very piecemeal. I’ve done most of the research along with three Whitford cousins, all of us descended from the two sons and the daughter of Ann Trainer/Whitford.
It’s astonishing how quickly families forget their recent family histories and ancestors. At least it is in Western societies. Here in New Zealand the indigenous people, the Maori, know their ‘whakapapa’, their genealogy, for 10, 20, 40 generations or more. I have a Syrian friend who could trace his family back to Adam.
In Ann Trainer’s case, was it because her family didn’t want to remember her because of her colourful history in the Victorian culture of that time? Who knows? Or was it because Ann died young at the age of 41 and there were stories untold to her children?
Or perhaps it was because her daughter Mary Jane Whitford/McKechnie died aged 36. My grandfather was 7 when she died and he and his siblings had little memory of their mother. Stories untold and lost. I don’t even know if any of them knew that their grandmother was buried in a nearby town. Or that she was Irish, and Roman Catholic?
But it’s left me with lots of unanswered questions, questions that perhaps haunt me, or have become obsessional. I have many ancestors I could research but Ann Trainer’s story is the one on which I seem to focus. It’s so out of the ordinary. Reactions from family and friends vary from having a giggle about a prostitute in the family to having a deep empathy for Ann’s life and circumstances.
I worked for many years in social services, chaplaincy and counselling, and am well-acquainted with sad and dismal stories. I was always objective. But that changed when I was affected personally. Subjective, not objective. There was an ancestor in my mother’s respectable family who was a bastard, a prostitute, a drunkard, and frequently in the courts.
It was compounded at the same time when I discovered my father’s Irish famine orphan ancestor in Sydney, NSW, was in and out of the courts and prison, a drunkard and a well-known prostitute. Disfunctional. How much did her earlier tragic life affect her in later years? All published in the media. It was a relief recently to finally learn through a DNA match that her husband was the actual father of my paternal gran’s mother. I could never tell my elderly parents any of this as they would’ve been too shocked. My siblings and cousins knew though.
My mother’s family, Scottish and Cornish were well-educated, liberal-minded, urbane and involved in politics and community. Her father was a bank manager in a prosperous rural farming district in South Canterbury, New Zealand. Very much the country gentleman and sportsman. His maternal grandmother, as I discovered, was Ann Trainer, born only 50 years earlier than he. What a stark contrast there was in their lives.
I’ve found it distressing reading the descriptions of Ann and her family in the Magherafelt Workhouse records, where the keywords are,
Bastard(s), mendicant, very wretched, destitute, no means of support.
It’s left me with an underlying grief, learning about my two Irish Famine orphans. Life was awful. My father’s orphan ancestor’s parents are likely buried in a mass grave in Athy, Kildare along with 10,000 others. Sobering.
The Famine has become very real and personal to me.
In 2015 I spent a week in Sydney researching my father’s famine ancestor. A highlight was visiting a museum, the former Hyde Park convict barracks used from 1819-1848 to house convicts transported from Britain. It was then used as an immigration barracks for Irish female famine orphans coming to Sydney 1848-1850. (Ann Trainer went to the Immigrants’ Depot in Melbourne)
Outside in the yard is a memorial to the Irish famine orphans sent to Australia. It’s stark but very moving and poignant. A metal table and stool, a bowl and spoon. This Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine was inspired by Mary Robinson, President of Ireland.
I sat at that table in the deserted yard and suddenly found myself overwhelmed and weeping, quietly. A grief welling up inside me for what my ancestors had endured.
Their lives still affect me but I’m more objective now in my search for facts. I’ve lots of questions! Who was Cathy Cassidy, mother of Ann Trainer? Who was her family? Why did she not marry? She had her first child when aged 30. That’s late. Who were these men that she had relationships with? James Trainer and a Mr Henry who sired two of her children. Are there secrets in their families?
What made William McKechnie buy the burial plot for a ‘fallen’ Ann Trainer/Whitford whose daughter he married a few months later? We know that he was a friend of Annie’s husband Captain George Whitford. William McKechnie was a well-known businessman, philanthropist and local politician on the West Coast of New Zealand. He was good friends with Richard ‘Dick’ Seddon, Prime Minister of New Zealand. Roman Catholic Bishop Grimes was a guest at William’s hotel in a goldfields town near Greymouth and Hokitika. My grandfather & his siblings used to tell me stories of these people.
This is the world of people that Annie’s daughter lived in. But there’s nothing about Annie Trainer/Whitford, who’s not far removed from these notables.
Her descendants have done well overall and become good citizens in Australia and New Zealand–in all walks of life including the public realm. Though at times some of us have wondered if inherited characteristics from Annie and her husband have been responsible for some of our families’ misfortunes? Just a thought.
Peter J Hansen ( J = James as in James McKechnie, James Whitford & James Trainer)
Born & raised in New Zealand. Family history was important to me from an early age because I had no first cousins. A sense of loss not having extended family to connect into. Well-travelled in my younger days, living overseas for 11 years in the UK & South Asia. I’ve years of family research desperately needing to be written up, and digitised. Ensuring our stories are not lost to our families & communities. That’s my current goal & project. As C.S. Lewis said “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
Peter’s visit to the Irish Famine Monument at Hyde Park Barracks
I did find a couple more orphan stories tucked away in unlikely places on my computer. Before sharing them with you allow me to revisit two issues that have been troubling me lately. (1) How best can we encourage family historians to take up those things ordinary historians do? Things like setting one’s family history in a broader historical context, or even as mundane as referencing something found on the internet.
Here’s a post from May 2016 that will explain further what I’m on about https://wp.me/p4SlVj-Gf
Do click on the link. [I’m also trying to see how many people click on the links i provide, and how many use the search box widget].
Setting your Irish orphan into her historical context may be something you resist. Or you feel you don’t have the skill. I hope you give it a go, nonetheless. Launch yourself into space, a safety-net will appear. Take your time. Work up to it slowly. Maybe start with a blank piece of paper and writing down things you are curious about. It’s your piece of paper. No one but you needs see what you’ve written. Here are a few examples to start you off.
‘How did my orphan end up in a workhouse? That particular workhouse? Why was she in Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, or Aradale Hospital, or Goodna in the last years of her life? Why did relations between the Belfast orphans and the Matron, the Captain and the Surgeon on the Earl Grey turn sour? Where did the orphans who went to the Moreton Bay District after disembarking from the Thomas Arbuthnot get their feistiness from? Why was she still living in a tent in Ballarat in 1862? How did she manage with such a large family? How did they travel all that way to the Darling Downs? What was her family life? Why did she have so many husbands, and so many children? Was she religious? Describe her life on the Victorian goldfields, in Port Fairy/Bendigo/Bathurst/Balmain/Adelaide/the Clare Valley/Wollongong/Toowoomba [insert the place(s) where your orphan lived]? What emotional turmoil did she experience appearing before the Ipswich Petty Sessions court? Or living on a remote sheep station? How do i include First Nations people in my family history? May i suggest not being afraid to use ‘hypotheticals’? “Ed was in Brisbane town that day in January 1855, when Dundalli was executed. He came home physically shaken, and told me all about it. Every time i see a Wonga pigeon i think about it”.’ We may need to cast our net imaginatively to find information that fits into our history. Recognition and truth telling are vital characteristics of every family history.
You’ll think of other questions, peculiar to you, to pursue, I’m sure.
From The London Illustrated News
Historians involved in public history, teaching family history courses, or providing expert advice for television programmes such as “Who do you think you are?” will be very much in favour of your placing your orphan ancestors in their appropriate historical context. ‘Am I right, or am i right?’ as my stepdad used to say. Maybe we should ask some of them for tips, Naomi Parry Duncan at the University of Tasmania family history course, Rachel Murphy at Limerick, or Tanya Evans who recently was elected President of the Federation of Public History, for example.
Maybe look for a course you could enrol in. You’ll learn what kinds of questions to ask, what sources are available, and how you can question, and use them. It’s a great way forward.
A student at Macquarie University, Amanda Midlam, has written some tips for writing a Famine orphan ‘girl’s family history. I wonder how you might gain access to this. I believe Trish Power was trying to include it in the latest GIFCC newsletter. Check out the www.irishfaminememorial.org website.
My second issue (2) follows from the first, and concerns ‘ethics and family history’. As Alison Light put it in her Common People, “The central moral or ethical questions of historical enquiryare unavoidable and immediate infamily history:why does the past matter? How much and what do we owe the dead? “ I have also written about some of these ethical questions elsewhere in my blog.
Let me see if i can find what I’ve said via one of the Search boxes at the bottom of a post, even if it is just to repeat the message. Do any of you use the Search Box? Here’s the link to some questions I posed earlier. Do click on the link, and scroll down https://wp.me/p4SlVj-I0
Scroll down to the very end and read the comments people made. The suggestions from Jenny Coates, Barbara Barclay, Julie Poulter, Janeaology, and others are very helpful. Janeaology recommends that we ‘publish and be damned!’ and refers us to http://genxalogy.blogspot.com/2013/09/ethical-dilemmas-2-geneabloggers-open.html What a delight. You might like to follow her blog, yes?
I even entered the twittersphere and typed ‘ethics and family history’ into the Twitter search box. Jeepers, it really can be helpful. I found blogs, podcasts and even books. A discussion in the HistoryWorkshop via Julia Laite’s @julialaite podcast circa September 2021, or Penny Walters’ book, Ethical dilemmas in Genealogy are two to explore further.
Of course, you may be lucky, and never have to confront any kind of ethical dilemma in writing your family history. But it is something many of us will face at one time or another. I’m really interested in your take on this issue; how do you deal with ‘difficult’ stories? Do you exercise self censorship? Keep the ‘scandalous’, ‘unwelcome’, ‘contentious’ information private, for fear of hurting someone? Or do you forge ahead, providing evidence for what you are prepared to say? Let me know your views, please.
Personally, I’m doing a bit of soft shoe shuffle at the moment by letting family historians speak for themselves. The advantage is that descendants are engaged with their orphan ancestor in ways others of us are not. It is a very personal, sometimes passionate engagement. Have a look at the orphan stories that appeared in https://www.tintean.org.au between September 2019 and July 2020 and you’ll see what i mean.
A few more stories
Most of the stories i have remaining on my computer did make their way to the www.Irishfaminememorial.org website
Here’s one by Rebecca Mahoney, about her ancestor “Fanny” Young. Alas I have lost touch with her, and she did send a pic with her story. Ah, found it. What a fine looking couple.
I previously put up Frances’s ‘family reconstitution’ at bogpost 31 see https://wp.me/p4SlVj-Ji
[You may wish to click on the link and have a look at some of the other family reconstitutions that are there, Bridget Fallon, Sarah Hare, Anne Maroney, Ann Nelligan, Sarah O’Brien, Bridget Dowd, for example.]
Frances Young per Tippoo Saib
by Rebecca Mahoney
“Frances Maria Young was 17 when she was selected from the workhouse to be part of the famine orphan scheme in 1850. She was a Protestant, and both her parents had apparently died that year in Mt Nugent, County Cavan. I’m having some difficulty tracing them but having visited famine sites in Ireland. I know that many victims were not officially buried. Some went into unmarked mass graves, and there are accounts of corpses being eaten by dogs etc. In this context, one shouldn’t be surprised that records aren’t easily found, I suppose.
Frances, known as Fanny, was illiterate. She worked, presumably in domestic service, until her marriage in October, 1856. Her husband, William Melbourne (the surname is sometimes transcribed as Millborn when traced back through preceding generations in England) was a free settler from Stebbing, a village in Essex.
According to my grandmother, William owned a property in Parramatta and was a dray driver. She said he was the first man to deliver milk to the Sydney area. After his marriage, he decided to move to Yackandandah, following a friend that he had met on the “Garland” on his passage to Australia in 1851. The lure of the area was gold, according to my grandmother. Although he didn’t make a fortune, both he and his friend bought land there and settled. Fanny apparently didn’t travel overland on the dray as William did, but went by ship to Melbourne first. On this journey, she was robbed of all her possessions. Together, they had ten or eleven children. There is possibly a child born in Sydney in addition to the ten born in Yackandandah. Their second son, Sydney (yes, his name was Sydney Melbourne!!) was my maternal great grandfather. Fanny and William went on to have 73 grandchildren, one of whom was my grandmother.
The above is a combination of documented data and oral history, some of which is contradictory. I found it interesting that in the oral history, there is no mention of the Irish Famine Orphan Scheme. In fact, my grandmother, who was born and raised in Yackandandah, was sure that she had been told that her grandmother Fanny and grandfather William had been married in England prior to coming to Australia. She knew Fanny was Irish, but not the orphan / workhouse part of the story. I’m wondering if Fanny saw this as something embarrassing and not to be discussed? About forty years ago, I had my Nanna write down what she knew about her family’s background and I have kept it. She was as sharp as a tack and had a great memory, so she wouldn’t have forgotten something like the Famine Orphan Scheme if she had ever heard of it”.
Rebecca Mahoney
Eliza Christie from Armagh per Diadem
Allow me to include this one by Di Samter. Di sent it some time ago, about the same time as another friend was having great fun getting in touch with relatives throughout the world by means of her DNA tests. Gerry even had me travel St John’s point in Donegal and take pictures of a Bronze Age burial site near Dunkineely.
Bronze Age tomb at Dunkineely, County Donegal
I haven’t included Di Samster’s family tree but you will detect her enthusiasm for DNA analysis, something family historians are using more and more these days. Have you tried doing a DNA test? What test would you recommend?
Eliza’s Legacy by Di Samter
“My family history has, in one leap, taken me back 20,000 years, when recently I had a section (referred to as HVR1) of my maternal DNA analysed. With the more readily available access to DNA analysis, my apprehension gave way to excitement when I decided to give it a go. Having traced my ancestors’ journeys from Europe to Australia for many years, I thought this was a completely different way of gaining information. As a young child I always wanted to know how, when, from where and why my ancestors had come to Australia. In 1981 my Aunt (my father’s sister) introduced me to family history and from that moment on I was hooked on genealogy. During the mid 1980s another Aunt (my mother’s sister) started tracing my maternal ancestors. On my direct maternal/maternal line Eliza Christy is as far back as we could find.
It is my understanding that research has shown that most native Europeans have descended from seven ancestral mothers. These mothers have been given fictional names and I wondered – to which “Mother” did I belong? I used the internet to find a company that provided a DNA analysis service by Googling ‘family tree DNA sequencing’. Having decided which provider to use, I placed my order over the internet. Two swabs were posted to me to scrape a sample of DNA from the inside of my cheek and then return to them. About two months later I received the results revealing “Helena” to be my ancestral mother. I was able to access this provider’s DNA database and find others who identically matched the mutations of my maternal DNA sub-group (sub-clade). Although “Helena” represents around 41% of native Europeans, those who exactly match my sub-clade appear to be quite small – so far. This small group trace their ancestors back to Ireland, Scotland, England and one from France. Some people did not know the origins of their maternal ancestry. One such person comes from Australia and has chosen not to be contacted by other users. I am now having a further section of my maternal DNA analysed, referred to as HVR2 – and with hindsight I possibly should have done it all in the first instance.
With this new information to hand, my next step was to reassess our research back to Eliza Christy(ie). Years ago we had found the marriage of my gg-grandmother, Mary Jane Jones to William Bright in 1872, which gave her parents’ names John Jones and Eliza nee Christy, but we have never found Mary Jane’s birth entry, which would have divulged more clues about her parents’ origins. I knew the Jones family had settled in the Clunes area and I decided it was worth further investigation into the Victorian State Registers of Births, Deaths & Marriages to see if I could discover if Mary Jane had any siblings. I searched for the births and deaths of children with the surname Jones and the father John – the mother Eliza with maiden name Christy (varying the spelling of her maiden name). Being able to search the State registers on-line and have an instant entry downloaded to my computer made the process very easy. I found and bought a number of downloadable birth and death entries of the siblings of Mary Jane Jones. Mary Jane, born in 1854, is listed on the subsequent birth entries of her siblings and this is where I discovered that Eliza Christy had come from Armagh in Ireland and her husband John (Fras/z/er) Jones from Liverpool. Their ages and date and place of marriage in 1852 in Kilmore, Victoria were stated on the birth registers. The family tree below shows Eliza’s female line descendants coloured in red – these relatives should have the identical comparative DNA sequence to mine. (However, I guess it is possible there has been a mutation from Eliza to myself, but apparently this section of DNA is very stable and doesn’t often mutate). The sons, coloured in pink, should also inherit the identical section of maternal DNA to mine, but it is only mothers who pass it on to their offspring. Eliza and her husband John Jones had 12 children that I know of – the youngest being George Edwin Jones born on 3.6.1877 in Clunes, and died the 30.8.1916 on a WW1 battlefield in France.
Eliza’s family had unexpectedly captivated my attention. Through the wonders of the internet, I managed to make contact with Trevor McClaughlin – author of “Barefoot & Pregnant?”- who has written about the orphaned Irish girls who were shipped to Australia following the Irish Famine. He kindly provided me with more information about my Eliza. She was described as “thinly dressed” and came from Charlemont, Killalyn, Armagh. She entered the Armagh Workhouse on 9th January 1849 leaving 4th October 1849 for Plymouth to set sail for Australia. Eliza arrived in Port Philip, Victoria on board the Diadem on 10th January 1850, along with other orphaned girls from Ireland.
As time went by, many of Eliza’s children and grandchildren migrated to NSW. Eliza’s grand-daughter, Mary Ann Oberg (nee Bright), my g-grandmother, went to NSW with her husband, Malcus, in the early 1890s. The large family eventually settled in Inverell, where my grandmother, Tyra, was born. My grandmother was always keen to talk about her Swedish father, but was evasive about her mother’s side of the family. Both my elder sister and I recollect that – when we were quite young – and she was once again telling us about her father – we asked her “where does your mother’s family come from”? She pensively stated “France” then completely changed the subject. When I mentioned to her, in the 1980s, that her mother was not French and on her mother’s paternal side of the family we have two convict ancestors, her face looked ashen and she was lost for words – it was unprecedented for her to be speechless! I tactfully left the subject alone, as she was clearly upset about these skeletons creeping out of the cupboard. Hence the subject of her mother’s family became taboo and I never managed to talk to her about it again.
I am still hoping to find out more about Eliza and her husband John Jones. I did find a death entry for an Eliza Jones (her parents names unknown, lived 53 years in Victoria) who died on 23.10.1902 in Maryborough Hospital, but her age was stated as 10 years older than I expected her to be – the age could of course be an error and this may really be my Eliza, but at present I am uncertain. No records have been found of the death of John (Frazer) Jones, nor do I know when he arrived in Australia, but it was obviously before his marriage to Eliza in 1852. John’s middle name Fraz(s)er was only used occasionally on official documents. I would be pleased to hear from someone if they are connected to this family, or know of details about the deaths of Eliza (nee Christy) and John Jones. Although my Mother and Grandmother have passed away, their maternal DNA identifies and connects the generations, being passed down through the female line descendants, ensuring the continuity of Eliza’s daughters.
b. ca 1823-8
b. ca 1833/4 Charlemont, Parish of Loughgall, Armagh – Presbyterian – signed her children’s birth registrations
Liverpool Lancashire
Armagh Workhouse BG2/G/3 Eliza 16 years old Presb – thinly clothed from Charlemont Killalyn entered workhouse 9.1.1849 left 4.10.1849
Carter/Digger
m. 1.4.1852 Kilmore Victoria Australia
his children’s birth regs
Arrived in Port Philip on 10.1.1850 on the “Diadem” which sailed from Plymouth [Assisted emigrant passengers] Eliza Christie aged 16
Upon arrival in Melbourne she was apprenticed to Thomas Scales for a year at 6 pounds
? d. 23.10.1902 Maryborough Hospital- 1 day in hospital- Heart Failure, Injury & neglect- parents & marriage details not known- 53yrs in Victoria – age stated 78 -but believe this could perhaps be my Eliza
“
Catherine Moriarty
Finally, a family history that Mike Vincent sent to me way back in the noughties. It is the story of Catherine Moriarty from Dingle in county Kerry who travelled with her sister Mary on board the Thomas Arbuthnot under the care of one of the best Surgeon Superintendents in the ‘Earl Grey scheme’, Surgeon Charles Edward Strutt. The Moriarty sisters were to prosper in their new home in what was to become Queensland. {I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if any of you use the search box to look for Catherine Moriarty and her sister Mary elsewhere in my blog}.
My sincere thanks to Mike for allowing me to reproduce his family history here. Parts of it are in Kay Caball’s Kerry Girls, should anyone have a copy. Best wishes Mike for recovery from your operation. The little gym i go to, Active Seniors, has some gentle exercises on YouTube at “Active Seniors exercise online”. There might be something there which helps. I took the liberty of removing your phone number and address from your original family history. I hope that’s okay. Fingers crossed my technologically challenged attempt at formatting holds.
“Catherine Moriarty from Dingle per Thomas Arbuthnot
by Mike Vincent
ORIGINS
Catherine Moriarty was born in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland on March 17, 1831 to Maurice Moriarty and Margaret Cahalane(1), who had married at St. Mary’s Church Dingle on February 21, 1827.(2) A brother John had been born on May 31, 1828(3), a sister Mary April 8, 1833(4) and a brother James on February 28, 1836, all at Dingle.(5) Nothing has been found about these brothers.
By 1849 the sisters were classified as orphans and were residing in the workhouse in Dingle. They were sent to Australia on the Thomas Arbuthnot, arriving in Sydney on February 3, 1850. At this time Catherine and Mary were actually aged 19 and 17 years respectively, and had been previously employed in Dingle as a house servant and a nursemaid. Catherine could neither read nor write, but Mary was able to read.(6) After a short stay in Sydney (11 days) they moved to Brisbane, on the steamer Tamar(7), where after 13 days Catherine was employed by John Bruce at North Brisbane.(8) By the 9th of June 1852 Mary had met and married James (Samuel) Brassington, a resident of Ipswich. Catherine Moriarty was a witness at this ceremony in St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Brisbane.(9) Catherine Moriarty and Thomas Elliott were the sponsors at the baptism at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Ipswich, of Mary’s first child on February 15, 1853.(10) On June 7, 1853 Thomas and Catherine were married in St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, Brisbane.(11) They returned to live in Ipswich where their first child was born on June 7, 1854, and baptised Thomas James at St. Mary’s Church on June 25.(12)
Thomas James ELLIOTT
In the June sessions at Westminster assizes, Thomas Elliott, apprentice tailor, aged 15 years, was found guilty of ‘larceny from the person’, as pickpocketing was then known, and was sentenced to imprisonment for four months.(13) Baptised Thomas James Elliot on August 16, 1818, at St. Clement Danes Church, London, his parents were James Elliot and Mary Ann Whitaker(14). He was caught again for pickpocketing, tried in the Westminster sessions on June 25, 1835, and acquitted for lack of evidence.(15) However on a third occasion, though calling himself James Elliott, his previous conviction was noted, and he was again found guilty of ‘larceny from the person’ in the Central Criminal Court, Middlesex, on August 15, 1836. Since he had a previous conviction, he was sentenced to 14 years transportation.(16) He was held in prison until, on March 29, 1837, along with 199 other convicts, he sailed in the 403 ton barque Lloyds from the Downs.(Offshore from the town of Deal, just north of Dover.)(17)
Thomas James arrived at Port Jackson, Australia, on July 17, 1837, where his description was recorded thus – ‘ 5 feet 4 inches tall; brown hair and eyes; brown complexion; missing front tooth in upper and lower jaws; M E inside lower right arm; T J inside lower left arm; able to read; single; trade – tailor.'(18)
He was then assigned to work for Charles Kelly at Ham Common in the Windsor district of New South Wales.(19) By 1841 it seems he had left the employ of Kelly (20), and in 1848 was residing in the Parramatta District when granted his first ticket-of-leave, No. 48/181, on May 31st. This was cancelled in September 1850 for his ‘being absent from the District’, but later that year this was reissued after this absence had been explained. He again had his ticket cancelled then reissued in January 1852 presumably for the Parramatta district.(21) He must have been somewhat successful in Sydney, probably as a tailor, for by November 1852 he was working as a tailor in the town of Ipswich, to the west of Moreton Bay. At this time still holding a ticket-of-leave, he was arrested for some unknown minor offence, and sentenced to a month in Brisbane prison, being released on December 18 for ‘good conduct’, after serving three weeks.(22) He returned to Ipswich where he was soon to meet his future wife, the young Catherine Moriarty.(10)
PROSPERITY
After their marriage the Elliotts continued in the tailoring trade in Ipswich for more than 20 years, until at least 1874. But they also invested in land, and rented out houses they had built. In may 1855 Thomas purchased an acreage allotment (no. 103) in Williams Street, West Ipswich, for £21(23), and another (no. 85) in the same street in November 1857 for £22-16-9.(24) These blocks were in a rural area of West Ipswich which did not develop quickly, and have been subdivided for suburban housing in only the last 30 years. (Details of the Elliott properties are shown in Table 1.) He next purchased a 32 perch town allotment in Ellenborough Street for £27 in 1858, but this was resumed when the railway line came through the town in 1865.(25)
By 1861 the Elliotts (Details of the Elliott children are shown in Table 2.) were living in Waghorn Street and renting premises for the tailoring business on 16 perches in Bell Street from Mr. F E Bigge. With the advent of the railway and associated construction of Union Lane, the address of this building in Bell Street was changed to Union Lane by 1865, and later to Union Street.(26) Meanwhile Thomas had also purchased a cottage in Pelican Street, North Ipswich, which he was renting to Walter Male in 1863, as well as a block of land nearby in Canning Street.(27) By 1865 allotment 85 in the western suburbs had been sold to George Frost, and allotment 103 divided and sold to W Duggan and J Flynn.(28)
The tailoring business was continued in Union Street until moving to premises in East Street in 1874.(29) This business must have been successful, for between 1854 and 1874 it was able to support his wife and eight children, and allow him to purchase and improve various properties around the municipality. Founding his business in the very early days of the town must have helped establish his reputation as a tailor, for he did not advertise in the local paper, The Queensland Times, nor anywhere else, so he must have relied on word of mouth and the passing customers for his trade. His tailoring business also provided training for his elder daughters, while his contacts enabled his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, to obtain employment at Cribb and Foot’s dressmaking department, where by 1906 she was supervisor.(30) Tailoring and dressmaking became traditional family skills for which even his grand-daughters were noted.(31)
About 1865 he sold the cottage in Pelican Street (32), and on the Canning Street property built a wooden house, which was rented in turn over the next two decades to Joseph Harrower, James McGaw and Joseph Halstead.(33)
Thomas decided to leave the tailoring trade, and to retire to the more comfortable hotel accommodation business. Ipswich had always been a centre for accommodation and hotels, and in 1859 for example, when Brisbane had 18 hotels, Ipswich could boast 26.(34) To this end in 1874 he obtained an hotel licence and rented large premises on three adjoining allotments, each of 32 perches, in East Street, Ipswich, from George Thorne. These comprised an hotel and other buildings, one of which was used for the tailoring business for a short time. This hotel was The Cottage of Content, which had been occupied by Godfrey O’Rourke since before 1859.(35) The Elliotts ran The Cottage of Content as an hotel for three years(36), then in 1877 took up the licence of The Carriers’ Arms, which he transferred to The One Mile Hotel, which he had rented from Robert Cribb. This hotel was at Little Ipswich, now known as West Ipswich, on the corner of Brisbane Street and Moore Lane, now Hooper Street. This old brick building was at a major intersection, diagonally opposite the Ipswich pound, and overlooking the One Mile Bridge across the Bremer River.(37) This was the area where in the earliest days of Ipswich the bullock wagons halted on their journeys to and from the Darling Downs. There is a One Mile Hotel on the same site, and the pound is still diagonally opposite in June 2000.
In the period between 1866 and 1875, the family also lived in rented homes in Elizabeth Street opposite St. Mary’s Catholic Church.(38) During the 1870s they also owned a residential allotment in Pine Street, North Ipswich between Fitzgibbon and Lawrence Streets.(39)
On September 17, 1874, while renting The Cottage of Content, Thomas had purchased at a crown land auction, a block of land in Brisbane Street, one allotment west of Waghorn Street. This 32 perch allotment cost £20 pounds, with an additional deed fee of £1, and a survey fee of 12 shillings. The original ledger book recording these details shows the signature of the purchaser as ‘Thos. J. Elliott’, in very shaky handwriting.(40)
By 1878 with nine unmarried offspring ranging in age from two to 24 years, the family had sufficient experience, confidence and staff to invest in the hotel business. They took out a mortgage for £200, at ten percent interest, with the newly formed Ipswich and West Moreton Permanent Building, Benefit and Investment Society, on the 5th of February, to build a wooden hotel on the Brisbane Street land, purchased four years before.(41) This must have been a substantial building, for at this time a typical wooden house, including detached kitchen, cost £100 to build.(42)
This was licensed as The Prince of Wales Hotel, and was located next to James Real’s Ipswich Hotel, which had been built on the corner of Brisbane and Waghorn Streets in 1875.(43)
One young lad, Bernard Gallagher, had come down from the Bundaberg district to begin work in the Railway Department at Ipswich. His mother (another Irish orphan?) wrote to Catherine Elliott asking her to look after him while staying at their hotel. His stay was worthwhile, for in 1882 he married the Elliotts’ second eldest daughter Margaret Jane, and his job in the railway became a lifelong career, in which he became Supervisor of Railway Stores in Queensland.(44) At least three other daughters, Mary, Elizabeth and Catherine also married railway employees, while all three Elliott sons began their careers in the railway as well.(30, 31, 44, 45)
It is also of interest that two children married into hotel families. Catherine into the Real family, who had hotels and shops in Ipswich(46), and George into the Lynch family, who at one time held the licence of The Bull’s Head Inn, at Drayton.(47)
At the end of 1879 the licence of The Prince of Wales was not renewed, and until 1888 the building in Brisbane Street was operated as a boarding-house, no doubt providing useful ’employment’ for some of the seven daughters in the family.(48) During this period one of the guests announced that he was unable to pay his substantial accommodation bill. Thomas Elliott proceeded to have him thrown into the street, but the quick thinking lodger suggested that the building needed a coat of paint, and that he would apply it in exchange for his accommodation. An agreement was reached, the guest’s dignity was preserved, and the wooden boarding-house was repainted.(49) About 1885 the family moved into the Canning Street residence with Margaret and Bernard Gallagher, while the boarding-house was managed by a Mrs. Cook.(50) With a large family of eight, apparently little income from the renting of the boarding house, and Tom’s failing health, the Elliotts’ financial circumstances declined during the 1880s, and they found it necessary to secure additional mortgages on the Brisbane Street property from the Building Society.(51) These were as follows:- in 1879 £40; 1885 £45; 1886 £20; 1887 £20; 1888 £50; and 1889 £60.
When Tom died of cancer of the jaw at his Canning Street residence in August 1888(52) there were arrears of rates owing on that property (£4-5-3), and the boarding-house (£6-13-9).(53) When his will was proved for probate, leaving all his possessions and property to his wife Catherine, she signed an affidavit stating that at the time of his death he had less than £10 in cash(54) The mortgage figures and rate arrears indicate that this was probably a fair assessment of his financial situation. Catherine retained possession of the Canning Street home and the boarding-house, which continued to operate.(55) She was now responsible for five daughters and two sons, between the ages of eight and 23 years, and though some of them were employed and she obtained a loan for £60 in 1889, there were still rates of £7-15-7 and £11-18-7 owing on the two properties in 1890.(56) During the next two decades, daughter Lucy entered the Sacred Heart Convent at Dalby, and the other children were married (see Table 2), most moving away from Ipswich. The Canning Street residence was sold about 1900, and Catherine later moved into a house in Martin Street with her youngest daughter, Elizabeth O’Grady, who had married in 1908.(49) It was here that Catherine died as a result of a gastric infection in August 1909.(57) On her death the boarding-house passed into the possession of the Ipswich Building Society, and was run for a year or two by Mary Hammill, before being sold in 1911 to Matilda Rae.(58) After passing through several owners, the site, along with the corner allotment, was purchased in 1962 by the Caltex Oil Company, who erected a petrol station there.(59)
The Ipswich daily newspaper, The Queensland Times, carried the following notices in its edition of Tuesday, August 24, 1909.(60)
DEATH.
ELLIOTT.- On the 23rd August, at
her residence, Martin-street, Ips-
wich, Catherine Elliott, relict of
the Late Thomas James Elliott,
aged 76 years.
FUNERAL.-The Friends of Messrs.
T. J., G. P., and J. A. EL-
LIOTT, are respectfully invited to at-
tend the Funeral of their Deceased
Mother, CATHERINE ELLIOTT (re-
lict of the late Thos. James Elliott),
to move from her late Residence,
Martin-street, at 3 o’clock, THIS
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, for the
Ipswich Cemetery.
J. W. REED, Undertaker.
Plate 1 The Elliott family about 1886.
This photograph shows some members of the family taken about 1886 (as estimated by their ages) by George Patrick Elliott. Seated are the parents, Thomas James and Catherine(Moriarty). Standing are some of their children. From left to right they are (most likely) John Alexander, Margaret Jane(Gallagher), Agnes, Thomas James junior, and Catherine. The location is probably the rear of the Canning Street residence.[Copy from original glass negative in possession of Monica Elliott, of Brisbane, grand-daughter of George Patrick Elliott.]
A glimpse of the Elliott family,(though inaccurate in some details and spelling; reproduced exactly as in the newspaper), can be gained from Catherine’s obituary in The Queensland Times. (7)
THE LATE MRS. ELLIOTT
The late Mrs. Catherine Elliott.. ,.. whose death was recorded in our last issue, arrived in Sydney in the ship Thomas Arbutnott, coming to Bris- bane in the Tamir the same year. She was married in 1851, her hus- band predeceasing her by 20 years. She leaves 10 children-three sons and seven daughters. The sons are Mr. T.J. Elliott ( Childers ), Mr. G. P. Elliott (Brisbane), and Mr. J. A. Elliott (Ipswich); and the daughters are Mrs. T. J. Hurley, Mrs. B. Gal-lagher, and Mrs. S.Murphy (Brisbane), Mrs. J. Real (Clayfield), Mrs. S. Tur- ner (New Zealand), Mrs A. O’Grady (Ipswich) and Sister Mary Scholastica (Convent of the Sacred Heart, Bowen-ville), besides 42 grand children, and three great-grand children. The funeral took place yesterday afternoon, and was largely attended, amongst those pres- ent being a considerable contingent from the railway workshops at North Ipswich-where Mr. J. A. Elliott is employed-and representatives of the Ipswich Technical College committee of which he is a member. The rite at the graveside was performed by the Rev. P. J. Murphy. Wreaths were forwarded by Mr. G. Evans and fam-ily, Mr. And Mrs. S. Palmer, Miss Ethel Sheppard, Mr. and Mrs. Little-ford. Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Bunnett, carriage, trimming, and saw-mill em-ployees, (Ipswich Railway Workshops), Ipswich and West Moreton Rugby Un-ion, and Goods-Shed employees(Ips- wich railway station). A great many telegrams and messages of sympathy were also received.
TABLE 1 Details of properties owned and/or occupied by the Elliott family in Ipswich, Queensland
LOCATION DESCRIPTION AREA USE TENURE SOURCES
A:R:P
Williams St. West Ipswich Alot. 103 3:8 land owned 1855 – c. 1864 2, 13, 15
Williams St. West Ipswich Alot. 85 2:2:6 land owned 1857 – c. 1864 2, 14, 16
Ellenborough St. Ipswich Town Por. 4 Alot 20 32 land owned 1858 – c. 1864 2, 17
Bell/Union St. Ipswich Town Por. 2 Alot. 12 16 cottage, shop rented c. 1861 – 1873 2, 11, 3, 5
Waghorn St. Ipswich Town Por.? Alot. ? 32 house owned? c. 1861 – 1862 10
East St. Ipswich Town Por. 1 Alot. 10, 11, 13 Cottage of Content 2:16 hotel, shop rented 1874 – 1876 2, 12, 6
Pelican St. North Ipswich Por. 4 Alot. 20 32 cottage owned c. 1863 – c. 1865 1, 19
Canning St. North Ipswich Por. 9 Alot. 16 40 house owned c. 1863 – c. 1900 2, 18
Pine St. North Ipswich Por. 16 Alot. 9 1:32 land owned c. 1876 – c. 1878 2, 20
Brisbane St. Ipswich Town Por. 28 Alot. 2 Prince of Wales 32 hotel owned 1874 – 1909 2, 21
Brisbane St. Little Ipswich Alot. 16 One Mile Hotel 1:0:0 hotel rented 1877 1, 8
and Moore Lane
Elizabeth St. Ipswich Town Por. 10 Alot. 13 32 house owned c. 1866 – c. 1868 2, 4, 9
Elizabeth St. Ipswich Town Por. 10 Alot. 14 32 house rented c. 1868 – 1875 2, 7
SOURCES
1 ITM 1875, A 1/16. 9 IMC RB 1866, B/321 no. 327. 17 Ibid. p 146.
Clara Alice 16- 1-1876 c 1960 16- 5-1903 S Turner 4, 8 Alma
Elizabeth Moriarty 25- 6-1880 5-10-1960 18- 5-1908 A T O’Grady 4, 9 Veronica(nm), one male(di)
Sources. Personal records and/or birth, death and marriage certificates held by #1 Rolly Burgman #2 Mike Vincent; Josie Gleadhill. #3 Nell Ries #4 Inscriptions in prayer book of Sr. M. Scholastica; Monica Elliott #5 QBDM Marriage 1892/928; Robert Lingard Snr(dec. 1995) #6 QBDM Marriage 1891/B14969; D Frawley; Jim Lyon #7 E Duncombe #8 QBDM Marriage 1903/1042; Obituary C. Elliott 1909 #9 QBDM Marriage 1908/1193; Vonie O’Grady, 1985(dec. 1987). For details contact author. KEY: nm not married; ? nothing known; (Lee 4) married Lee 4 children; d died; di died as infant; nc no children.
SOURCES
1 Baptismal Cert. Catherine Moriarty, St. Mary’s Parish Dingle, 1831
2 Marriage Cert. M Moriarty & M Cahalane, St. Mary’s Parish Dingle, 1827
3 Baptismal Cert. John Moriarty, St. Mary’s Parish Dingle, 1828
4 Baptismal Cert. Mary Moriarty, St. Mary’s Parish Dingle, 1833
5 Baptismal Cert. James Moriarty, St Mary’s Parish Dingle, 1836
6 Immigration Board Inspection Sheet – Thomas Arbuthnot. February 6, 1850. AONSW Reel 2461 p 4/4919.
7 The Queensland Times, Ipswich, August 25, 1909, p 4.
8 Reid, R and Mongan, C 1996 ‘a decent set of girls…’, p 108, Yass Heritage Project: Yass.
9 Marriage Cert. James Brassington & Mary Moriarty, 1852, NSW BDM.
10 Baptismal Cert. S W Brassington, 1853, NSW BDM.
11 QLD BDM Letter addendum to Baptismal Cert. T J Elliott (junior) 1854.
12 Baptismal Cert. T J Elliott(junior) 1854, QLD BDM.
13 Criminal Convictions Middlesex 1833-1836. HO/26 Series 40, p 74, 78.
14 Baptismal Record, no. 2081, T J Elliott 16/8/1818, St. Clement Danes Church, London.
55 QPOD 1888, p 53a; PUGH 1889, p 97; PUGH 1890, p 106.
56 IMC RB 1890, B/344 nos. 1219, 2311.
57 Death Cert. Catherine Elliott, 1909, QBDM.
58 ICC VR 1910/11, West Ward A/27991 no. 335.
59 Certificate of Title, Queensland, Vol. 1697 Fol. 175, transferred from Vol. 244 Fol. 136.
60 The Queensland Times, Ipswich, August 24, 1909, p 4.
ABBREVIATIONS
£ pounds-shillings-pence
Alot. allotment
A:R:P acres roods perches (land area)
c. about
HO Home Office
ICC VR Ipswich City Council Valuation Register
IMC RB Ipswich Municipal Council Rate Book
IMC VR Ipswich Municipal Council Valuation Register
ITM Ipswich Town Map
NSW BDM New South Wales Births Deaths And Marriages Registrar
Por. portion
PUGH Pugh’s Almanac and Queensland Directory
QBDM Queensland Births Deaths and Marriages Registrar
QGG Queensland Government Gazette
QPOD Queensland Post Office Directory
QSA Queensland State Archives”.
Thanks Mike. Please let us know if there is anything you’d like to correct, or to add.
My very best wishes to everyone about to plunge into the joys and frustrations of researching and writing their family history.
A tweeter asked recently what is the best first line/last line in any book you’ve read? I took ‘line’ to include ‘sentence’ and answered with the last sentence of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds.
“He went home one evening and drank three cups of tea with three lumps of sugar in each cup, cut his jugular with a razor three times and scrawled with a dying hand on a picture of his wife good-bye, good-bye, good-bye“. A bit grim?
trevo's Irish famine orphans 
You must be logged in to post a comment.