Elizabeth Feeney, Orphan Girl

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.

On 27 June 1832, Elizabeth Feeney, the daughter of Edward Feeney and Johanna Thompson was baptized. (Johanna is a latinized form of Jane.) Elizabeth’s godparents were Anne Tembs and James Feeney. James was presumably another son of Richard and Anne, and the same James who appears in the 1854 Griffiths Valuation of Tenements. This child is the Elizabeth that we are interested in. In fact, Elizabeth was the only child of Edward Feeney and Jane Thompson.

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.

While still a teenager, Elizabeth Feeney experienced the horror of starvation, the degradation of homelessness and the grief of family loss; a trifecta of tragedy which was suffered by so many Irish during the Great Hunger. As a last refuge from starvation, perhaps with her mother, or other extended family members if any were still alive, Elizabeth sought the shelter of the Granard Workhouse in nearby County Longford. The Granard Workhouse covered an area of 217 square miles (about 532 square kilometres). Its catchment included 15 electoral divisions over 3 counties, including the Electoral Division of Coole, of which Mayne Townland belonged. It is not possible to confirm whether Elizabeth’s mother Jane or any other family members entered the workhouse with Elizabeth, as there are no surviving Poor Law Union records for the Granard workhouse for the famine years of 1848 – 1851.

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 Saib ship 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

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[1] http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article104423164, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article100407211

[2] http://indexes.records.nsw.gov.au/ebook/list.aspx?series=NRS5316&item=4_4786&ship=Tippoo%20Saib.

[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.

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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 50^th 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.

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[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.

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A later map of the Richlands estate shows that the Slaters were indeed tenant farmers on the estate. Their farm was close to Stonequarry Road on part of Portion 3, Guineacor Parish, County of Westmoreland. Just past the Stonequarry Cemetery is a sharp bend in the road that was known as Slater’s Corner[1]. It can be accessed from an unnamed road off what is now Golspie Road via Taralga.

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.

Of Sam and Elizabeth’s daughters, Mary Ann married Michael Barry from County Galway. He was a road maintenance worker who was “widely known and respected as an upright citizen whose kindly nature had endeared him to a wide circle of friends”[5]. Mary Ann died at Goulburn in 1930. Sarah (registered as Lydia but known as Sarah or Sadie) married Englishman Edward Searle. After starting their family at Taralga, they lived on Lord Howe Island for a time growing Kentia palms. From there, they lived for a short time at Captain’s Flat before pioneering in the Macleay District, where they established a prosperous farming property out of virgin scrubland. Sarah died at Macksville in 1942. Elizabeth Anne married David John McAleer, the son of an Irish immigrant. McAleer was a stockman to the Macarthur-Onslow family at the Richlands and Camden Park properties for many years. Elizabeth Anne managed the boarding house for workers at Camden Park for nine years. Miss Sibella Macarthur-Onslow sent a floral wreath when Elizabeth died in Camden in 1933[6]. The obituaries for all three daughters mention their kind dispositions; Mary Ann had “a wide circle of friends to whom she had endeared herself by her kind and charitable actions”[7], Sadie is praised for travelling “long distances on horseback on her errands of mercy”[8], while Elizabeth Anne’s “main pleasure in life was to help others”[9].

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.

The Catholic Press, 26 January 1901, p. 24. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article104423164

Headstone of Elizabeth Slater nee Feeney

and her husband Samuel Slater,

Stonequarry Cemetery, via Taralga, NSW.

The details given for Samuel are incorrect – he

died on 13 September 1869, aged 68 years.

Photo: Darrell Thornthwaite.

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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.

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REFERENCES/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Barclay, Barbara 2015, The Mayo Orphan Girls, viewed 2021, http://mayoorphangirls.weebly.com/orphan-emigration-scheme.html

Barclay, Barbara 2017, ‘It was like landing on the moon’: Finding the fate of Irish Famine orphans sent to Australia, viewed 2021,

https://www.thejournal.ie/mayo-orphan-girls-australia-3448701-Jun2017/

Fairall, Jonathon Relph 2019, Earl Grey’s Daughters: The women who changed Australia, SPSP Publishing, 2nd Ed.

Higginbotham, Peter, The Workhouse: The story of an institution: Granard County Longford, viewed 2022, https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Granard/

Irish Famine Memorial Sydney, Orphan Database, viewed 2021, https://irishfaminememorial.org/

McClaughlin, Trevor 1991, Barefoot and Pregnant?: Irish Famine Orphans in Australia, The Genealogical Society of Victoria Inc. (e-book)

McClaughlin, Trevor 2000, “Lost Children?”, History Ireland, viewed 2021

McClaughlin, Trevor 2022, ‘Trevo’s Irish Famine Orphans, blog pages viewed from 2021 -2022, https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/author/trevo1/

National Library of Australia, Trove (online collection), viewed 2021-2022, https://trove.nla.gov.au

National Library of Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI, Mayne, viewed 2021, https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0919

Radio Teilifis Eireann, Girls of good character: female Workhouse emigration to Australia during the Famine (Perry McIntyre), viewed 2022, https://www.rte.ie/history/post-famine/2021/0202/1194606-good-character-female-workhouse-emigration-to-australia/

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

https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/irish-orphan-girls-hyde-park-barracks

Taralga Historical Society Inc, 83 Orchard Road Taralga NSW 2580, conversations andcorrespondence with Mrs MaryChalker 2021, http://taralgahistoricalsociety.com.au

Williamson, Pat 2006, Guinecor to Bubalahla, Taralga Historical Society, Orchard Street Taralga NSW 2560

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[1] Williamson, Pat (2006). Guinecor to Bubalahla, Taralga Historical Society, Orchard Street, Taralga NSW 2560, ISBN 0958024936, page 116.

[2] Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 1 September 1939, Obituary, Mr Thomas Slater.

[3] Crookwell Gazette, 18 January 1950, Obituary, Mr Samuel Slater.

[4] Goulburn Evening Post, 9 January 1950, Obituary, Mr Samuel Slater.

[5] Goulburn Evening Penny Post, Wednesday 30 November 1927, page 2, Mr Michael Barry.

[6] Camden News, Thursday 13 July 1933, page 1, Obituary, ELIZABETH AGNES McALEER.

[7] Goulburn Evening Penny Post, Tuesday 1 April 1930, page 2_Obituary, Mrs Mary Barry.

[8] Macleay Argus, Tuesday 9 June 1942, page 2, OBITUARY MRS SARAH SEARLE.

[9] Picton Post, Wednesday 12 July 1933, page 2, Elizabeth Agnes McAleer.

[10] 1911 ‘The Late Mrs. Macarthur Onslow.’, Camden News (NSW: 1895 – 1954), 10 August, p. 5., http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article136639794.

[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.

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (78): my first dip in the water.

I hope this post will be of some interest; it is my first publication about the Famine orphan ‘girls’ that appeared in 1987 in Familia the Journal of what was then the Ulster Historical Foundation. I gather the Foundation still exists. See http://www.ancestryireland.com

There are another sixteen interesting articles in this particular issue including a review of Patrick O’Farrell’s Irish in Australia, Trevor Parkhill on Ulster emigration to Oz, Richard Reid on Irish chain migration, and Desmond Mullan on Father Willie Devine who among many other things was appointed as chaplain to the Australian forces in 1914 by Archbishop Mannix.

You will notice i had already decided on Barefoot and Pregnant? as a title for my work, a title that not everyone has understood. So let me explain once more. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the “Earl Grey Scheme” will know of Surgeon Douglass’s scathing dismissal of the young women in his charge. They were he said “professed public women and barefooted little country beggars”; some of them had had a child, and many were not orphans at all! See my earlier blogposts 43-47, beginning https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/earl-greys-irish-famine-orphans-43/

So the first element to my title is a question (note the question mark, Barefoot and Pregnant? How many of you noticed it? How many did not?) I’m simply asking, was Surgeon Douglass right in condemning the Earl Grey workhouse orphans as he did?

Another element, though perhaps not so pertinent for everyone nowadays, stemmed from my being a fan of a number of singers, Bob Marley, Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, and Joan Armatrading, for example. Do you remember Joan Armatrading’s “Barefoot and Pregnant”? It had particular moment for all the women who were fed up being kept ‘barefoot and pregnant’, and ‘in the kitchen’.

The third interpretation of my title then, and i was hoping people would think about how the title was phrased, that they would ask for themselves, did these Famine orphans come from a society where their choices and opportunities were limited? Would there be greater choices and opportunities for them in Australia? Or would social structures, lack of economic opportunities, and the weight of cultural mores limit what they could do in Australia also? Could they become literate? What chances did they have of going to a university? Could they buy land on their own? Could they pursue a career of their own? Could they vote? Could they sit in parliament? Or were they sent into another confinement (pun intended) by the patriarchal nature of Australian society?

Alas i think i failed with that title.

What follows is the short piece i was urged to write by the then Deputy Keeper of the Public Records of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Dr Brian Trainor. I had just spent a short period of study-leave among the archives testing out my theories of how to find the Famine orphans among the workhouse records that have survived. It is thanks to Brian Trainor that so many of the Indoor workhouse registers have survived. Without his understanding and agitation many would have ended up in the tip. Sadly, present day politicians and bureaucrats in Australia are allowing our precious records to perish. 21/6/21 Fingers crossed. There may be some last minute funding on the way.

It is a tentative effort, and concerns only the first vessel, the Earl Grey, that arrived in Port Jackson 6 October 1848 . Nowadays thanks to heaps of people, writers, historians, genealogists, family historians, archivists, holders of the public records torch, much more is known about the Irish Famine orphans. One error that struck me in this piece was my inclusion of the Ramillies to Port Adelaide as part of the ‘Earl Grey scheme’. The error carried over to Volume one of my Barefoot. That ship may indeed have carried a number of Irish born workhouse women but they were mostly from Marylebone workhouse in London, not from any Irish workhouse. I remain to be corrected on this.

Bloomsday is upon us.

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (68): Lucia’s Podcast (2)

Thankyou Luci. You are a legend!

Luci continues working with material gathered from her conversation with me at the end of 2018. Luci, I’ll see if I can add this second episode to post 65 where the first one appeared. https://wp.me/p4SlVj-2cy

That way we can keep them all together. I’m very impressed with what you have achieved. Congratulations, and best wishes, Trevor.

Let me see if i can create a fallback link in case people cannot go directly to the Soundcloud one. I must be doing something wrong. doh.

https://soundcloud.com/irishfamineorphans/irish-famine-orphans-2?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email

Lucia’s Podcast continues…

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (57): Another orphan history…herstory

Most readers will know of the recent death of Tom Power a man who played such a crucial role in the creation of the monument to the Great Irish Famine at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney http://www.irishfaminememorial.org/ This wonderfully evocative artwork was a commemoration and a memorial to all the Irish people who fled the Famine and came to Australia. Its symbolism gave it universal significance. It became a tribute to everyone fleeing famine and catastrophe anywhere in the world. Tom knew that public monuments die by neglect. His hope was that this one, ‘his’ one, would be a living monument, life breathed into it by the descendants of orphan girls memorialized on the glass panels in Hossein and Angela Valamanesh’s beautiful sculpture.

This can happen in a myriad of ways,

on an Irish Language television channel, TG4, with Barrie Dowdall and Siobhán Lynam’s TG4 series, “Mná Díbeartha/ Banished Women” http://www.convictwomenandorphangirls.com/Convict_Women/Home.html

in the creative imagination of an artist.  Jaki McCarrick’s “Belfast Girls” will be shown for the first time to an Australian audience, later this year 2018, in the middle of May. http://htg.org.au/htg-presents-belfast-girls-an-australian-premiere/

in cyberspace with the Keeper of the Orphan database, the inimitable Perry McIntyre, http://irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/database/

There’s a host of other ways. Maybe readers would mention them in a comment to this blogpost?

In homage to Tom Power I’d like to present another brief ‘herstory’. It is based on information provided by a descendant, Alan Buttenshaw. Alan provided me with a file of information relating to Winifred Tiernan and her husband, David Masters when I met him in 2003.

My starting point for up-to-date information on the Earl Grey orphans is always www.irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/database

So for

WINIFRED TIERNAN/TIERNEY FROM ROSCOMMON per TIPPOO SAIB

there is the following,

• Surname : Tiernan (Tierney)
• First Name : Winifred
• Age on arrival : 16
• Native Place : Ardcarney [Ardcarn], Roscommon
• Parents : James & Margaret (both dead)
• Religion : Roman Catholic
• Ship name : Tippoo Saib (Sydney Jul 1850)
• Workhouse : Roscommon, Boyle
• Other : Shipping: house servant, reads, no relatives in colony. 1858-9 Report, appendix J No.150, 29 Nov 1850 indentures cancelled with Mr J Caruthers, South Head Rd, for insolence & neglect of duty, sent up the country, WPO; Im Cor 50/917, 16 Dec 1850 Maitland; mar David Masters 7 Jun 1853, St James, Morpeth; then to Mitchell’s Island nr Taree, farming husband’s property; 15 ch; she died 12 May 1909. Photo p.289 Barefoot & Pregnant, vol.2. Heather Peterson: cadie[at]ace-net.com.au; Alan Buttenshaw: abuttens[at]bigpond.com.au; Darlene McGrath, email bounced, please contact us

Further down this post you will see the family reconstitution form I constructed after meeting with Alan. Alas, I never developed her history as either of us had hoped. Here is a brief version of ‘herstory’ anyway. It may assist other family historians writing her story if they haven’t done so already. It appears there were fourteen, not fifteen children born to the couple. Both were residing in Bolwarra Parish at the time of their wedding in St James Anglican church in Morpeth in 1853. I can’t help noting how long a child-bearing life Winifred had.

Some of the information in Alan’s file had been passed to him by other family members, including the transcript of a tape by Winifred’s granddaughter. It was a tape recording what Winifred had told her granddaughter about the Famine and the death of her parents. According to this, Winifred’s mum, Margaret Conlon died in 1846, followed by her dad and brother James the year after, in 1847.

Let me quote from the transcript,

“At the end of 1846 Great Grandmother Margaret, took ill. Her husband tookCatherine [Winifred’s younger sister who came to Australia in 1856] and James with him and slept in the hayloft above the cowshed. Each morning he took the milk and whatever else could be found in the way of food and left it on the kitchen doorstep. But he never went inside the house. The mother died, the two girls laid her out. … At the end of 1847, this time the father and the son James were stricken. A cart came to pick up any dead, and a neighbour told the men to call on the way back. The father was already dead, and by the time they returned the son would be also. There weren’t any records kept of who had died they were all buried in a large hole. This left the three girls orphans, Mary 15 yrs, Winifred, 12 and Catherine 9″.

One of the fascinating things about the transcript is the way we humans construct our memories to suit ourselves. In the transcript there is no mention of Winifred ever having been a workhouse and no mention of her indentures being cancelled or being sent up the country to Maitland.

See entry number 150 of the table relating to cancelled indentures in  blog post 22.

https://wp.me/p4SlVj-vf

On the contrary, the tape gives a sanitized version of Winifred’s coming to Australia.

“…Grandma wanted to emigrate-the fare was only £1, but she had to wait until early 1850 when she would be 15, in the May of that year. She even had her birthday while on the ship. Her uncle (Owen Conlon) allowed her to leave then because of Bridgett Quigley her cousin.

Bridgett Quigley came with her, Grandma was a pretty girl, and Bridgett was charged with the the responsibility of looking after her. They sailed in the Tippoo Saib…Winifred went into Catherine Chisholm’s Camp and a position was found for her as a nursemaid for the children of a Mr and Mrs Morcom, school teachers at Bolwarra, Morpeth”.

There was no Caroline Chisholm ‘camp’ for Winifred to go to in 1850. And to be eligible for the Earl Grey scheme she had to be in a workhouse, for however short a period of time. Uncle Owen Conlon may well have had influence with Boyle Workhouse Guardians and officers, enough to get Winifred into the workhouse and on to the list of those chosen to go. People in Ireland were aware the scheme was coming to an end which added to their sense of urgency. But all that is merely hypothesis. We have no independent verification of any of it.

Nonetheless it does seem Winifred was related to Bridget Quigley.

On Bridget Quigley see http://irishfaminememorial.org/media/Bridget_Quigleys_life_in_NSW_24_Nov_2012.pdf

The account of Winifred’s emigration to Australia in the transcript was more personally acceptable than the reality of her having spent time in a workhouse or being sent up country after cancellation of her indenture for ‘insolence’. People often hid the fact they had spent time in a workhouse. It was a badge of undeserved shame. I’d suggest we may need help separating what the grandmother said, and what the granddaughter added to that transcript.

All this raises a question about the reliability of oral evidence, and how we go about appreciating its value. It is worth exploring. Simply type ‘Oral HistoryAssociation of Australia‘ into your search engine and you will find some helpful links. For the enthusiast who would like to take this further, there are some brilliant essays in The Oral History Reader edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, 1998.

Winifred Tierney/Tiernan and David Masters

Winifred married Sussex born David Masters in an Anglican church in Morpeth in 1853. David had come to Australia with his parents and siblings in 1838 on board the Maitland, a voyage which saw 35 deaths, 29 of them children, mostly from scarlet fever. None of David’s family died.

The Masters family settled in the Hunter Valley, and it was in the same area that Winifred and David’s first two children were born. Sadly, their first child, Mary, died in infancy. According to ‘our’ transcript and the barely legible notes of my conversation with Alan, the family, sick of being flooded out so frequently, moved north to the Lower Manning Valley. There, too, their first farm on Jones’s Island was subject to flooding, forcing a move to higher ground on Mitchell’s Island. It was here the rest of their children were born. Winifred was surrounded by, and absorbed into families from Sussex. David inherited a farm of thirty acres to which he added a purchase of another forty-four acres.

Here’s is Alan’s map showing where they lived. Their children were born, lived, married and buried in the same area, in Ghinni Ghinni, Wingham and Taree, most of them returning to Mitchell’s Island to be buried.

Alan and I talked about the importance of putting Winifred and her family into context, into a ‘place’. And finding local histories and local historians who might help with that. Luckily the area is well served for anyone wanting to develop the story further. I managed to note down the following, W. G. Birrell, The Manning Valley, Landscape and settlement 1824-1900, Jacaranda Press, 1907(?); Helen Hannah, Voices a Folk History of the Manning Valley, Newcastle, 1988, and importantly, the excellent local history, John Ramsland, The Struggle against Isolation A History of the Manning Valley, Library of Australian History in association with Greater Taree City Council, 1987. In the early days of white settlement, the Manning was a cedar getting area and later one of dairy-farming. Most of those who settled here, says John Ramsland, were not people of capital.

John Ramsland’s work tells us how in the period Winifred and her family settled in the Manning Valley, the main urban centres were beginning  to take shape. ‘The first shelters in Taree (where many of Winifred’s children were to live) were temporary huts made of locally collected bark or tents made of calico. These were soon replaced by split slab huts with bark roofs and dirt floors. And soon after sawn slab huts made their appearance with shingle roofs, and wooden floors and glazed windows‘ (p.49).

It wasn’t till the twentieth century that Winifred and David’s family went further afield. Alan’s own impression was of nutritionally good stews, kitchen and pantry built together, refrigeration coming late, of spartan and relatively ‘isolated’ living.

According to John Ramsland the lower Manning Valley was  a very Protestant area. The Masters had a strong Methodist connection but by way of ‘compromise’, our transcript tells us, David and Winifred’s children were baptised in an Anglican Church. Winifred,  a young Irish Catholic lass, was absorbed into mainly Protestant Sussex families who had migrated together on the Maitland and the Argyle. Nonetheless she kept a link with Ireland through her younger sister Catherine. Catherine arrived by the Cressy in 1856.

“Catherine often visited the farm on the Manning River. If one of the girls was being married, she would arrive with all the materials and know-how to help with the trousseau. If it was one of the boys then her present was £50 towards his own farm. In 1894 Catherine and her husband (William Hillas) went for a trip to England and Ireland. While she was there she visited the site of the old home. She went by cab, and took a cut lunch. Only the fireplace, front and back doorsteps and the stone grating in the kitchen floor remained. She could remember which flag had to be lifted so her father could get into the cellar where he made his corn liquor…”.

Not a third-class or fourth class dwelling then, to use the terminology of Ireland’s census takers. I wonder in what ways this trip of Catherine’s may have influenced Winifred’s own memory of things, and what appears in the transcript.

Unfortunately I have been unable to make contact with Alan again. He has rich pickings for a good extended family history, one that that would do Alison Light proud. [Type Alison Light into the search box that appears after the comments to this blogpost to see what I’m on about ].

For me, Winifred’s story is another little life breath demonstrating how adaptable and resilient an orphan ‘girl’ could be. Our orphan histories are as diverse as the human condition itself. Maybe we should think of adding some more. That Hyde Park Barracks  monument should be kept alive.

——————————————————————————————

Post Script.

I’m currently reading a powerful, poetic, tragic, brilliant work of fiction about a young girl during the Famine, which I heartily recommend, Paul Lynch’s Grace, Otherworld, 2017.

She looks around the table, sees the way the youngers stare at her, sees what is in …the whites of all their eyes and the who they are behind that white and what lies dangerous to the who of them, this danger she has feared, how it has finally been spoken, how it has been allowed to enter the room and sit grinning among them” (p.14).

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (53): Skibbereen and beyond

More stories

Skibbereen and beyond

For this post, I found myself facing something of a dilemma. How could I remind people of the conditions that sent the Famine orphans fleeing from Ireland, and at the same time, how could I draw attention to the commemoration of the Port Phillip orphans held at Williamstown in mid November, 2017? They were two separate  subjects.

I decided to put the Eliza Caroline in my cross-hairs. She was the last Earl Grey orphan vessel to arrive in Port Phillip, filled with young Famine refugees from all over the country, from Tipperary, Sligo, Wexford, Carlow, Waterford, Dublin, Cork, Donegal and Kilkenny. Fittingly, she was one of two vessels carrying young women from an area that symbolizes the Great Irish Famine, the area in west Cork around Skibbereen. The other vessel was the Elgin the last orphan vessel to arrive in Adelaide. Alas, we do not know the names of those on board the Elgin who came from Skibbereen.

News of the Famine around Skibbereen

Many of you will be familiar with the engravings of James Mahoney and others in the London Illustrated News making its readers aware of the tragedy unfolding in Cork. This one perhaps?

A funeral in Old Chapel Lane Skibbereen

or this one?

From London Illustrated News 1847

These two youngsters were scratching the ground with their bare hands looking for potatoes. Cahera is about four miles north of Skibbereen on the road to Dunmanway.

Or perhaps,

Woman begging for a coffin for her dead child, near Clonakilty

Woman begging for a coffin for her dead child, near Clonakilty

Clonakilty is about twenty miles to the west of Skibbereeen.

Skibbereen has passed into Irish folklore, and into the identity of the ‘Rebel’ county. Try typing the town’s name into your browser and see what you come up with. Here’s a couple of results to sample

http://skibbheritage.com/great-irish-famine/

http://www.skibbereeneagle.ie/uncategorized/skibbereen-witness-to-the-great-famine/

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/disturbing-remains-a-story-of-black-47-1.3365683

Of course it wasn’t only Mahoney’s engravings that made an impact on middle-class sensibilities. It was the accompanying articles as well. Along with the pictures that appeared in February 1847, in the middle of that terrible winter, came the report, “Neither pen nor pencil could ever portray the misery and horror, at this moment, to be witnessed in Skibbereen”.

The reporter quoted from the diary of the resident medical officer, Dr Donovan, describing the Barrett family who had ‘literally entombed themselves in a small watch-house‘ in the cemetery in Skibbereen. “By the side of a hut is a long newly made grave…near the hole that serves as a doorway is the last resting place of two or three children;…in fact the hut is surrounded by a rampart of human bones…and in this horrible den, in the midst of a mass of human putrefaction, six individuals, males and females, labouring under most malignant fever, were huddled together, as closely as were the dead in the graves around”.

The ‘malignant fever’ may have been brought on by any of the Famine diseases, relapsing fever, typhus and dysentery being the most common. In typhus for example, a host scratches and releases bacteria from an infected insect into their own bloodstream. The small blood vessels are attacked causing a spotted rash and delirium. Eyes become bloodshot, muscles twitch and the delirium deepens to stupor. With dysentery, bacteria is transmitted by rotting food, fingers and flies, bacteria that multiply, inflame and ulcerate the intestines, bringing about painful and exhausting straining, violent diarrhoea and the passage of blood. The ground is often marked with blood. In both cases the death rate is high.

Knowing your parents were dead, Bridget Driscoll, you had even watched them become delirious, fall into a stupor and crawl into a corner to die, it’s okay to fear the worst and forever worry about what will become of you. You’d need to have the skin of Tollund man not to be concerned. So many Earl Grey orphans would be affected psychologically by their Famine experience.

Were the orphans from Skibbereen more vulnerable than other orphans because of their unique circumstances and experience? Were they more likely to become casualties in Australia? Or was the experience of other orphans, in other places, you Mary Kearney from Dingle, or you Mary Carrigge from Ennis, equally traumatic? Clare Abbey

“I ventured through that parish [Clare Abbey] this day, to ascertain the condition of the inhabitants, and, although a man not easily moved, I confess myself unmanned by the extent and intensity of the suffering I witnessed, more especially amongst the women and little children, crowds of whom were to be seen scattered over the turnip fields, like a flock of famishing crows, devouring the raw turnips, mothers half naked, shivering in the snow and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, whilst their children were screaming with hunger; I am a match for anything else I may meet with here, but this I cannot stand”. (Letter from Captain Wynne, District Inspector for Clare to the Chairman of the Board of Works 24 December 1846, cited in M. Kelleher, The Feminization of Famine, Cork U.P., 1997, p.27.) Clare Abbey is close to Ennis.

Dingle

“About a fortnight ago a boy named John Shea of Tullaree died of starvation–such was the verdict of a jury. On yesterday week his sister died, entirely from the same cause: she lay naked and uninterred on what had been the hearth, for four days, during which time she had been gnawed by rats. On Friday evening last a brother of hers died of dysentery, brought on by hunger,and on Saturday the father also fell a victim to this desolating scourge. They had no food for many days…The door was hasped on the outside, and the famishing family abandoned by every relative”. (John Busteed, Surgeon attached to the Castlegregory dispensary, in the Kerry Evening Post, 24 February 1847, cited in Kieran Foley, “The Famine in the Dingle Peninsula”, Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, p. 401).

We haven’t heard of these so much: the contemporary media did not direct our attention there. As today, we’ve heard more about a hurricane in Puerto Rico and Florida, and little about what happened to Barbuda or Antigua or other small Caribbean islands.

Understanding the psychological baggage the orphans brought with them to Australia is not an easy task. Did some ‘friendless’ orphans become more vulnerable than others when they faced the harshness of the Australian environment?

I thought I’d look into this a bit more, first turning to the Irish Famine memorial database for the Eliza Caroline. You can find it here, http://irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/database/

Mary Coghlan again

And lawdy, lawdy what jumped out at me were two names I knew only well, Mary Coghlan and MaryMinahan, both from Skibbereen. I was alerted to Mary Coghlan’s history by her descendant Barbara Borland back in 1990.  I’ve written about Mary before, towards the end of blog post 22 on ‘Cancelled Indentures’. You can read it here, http://wp.me/p4SlVj-vf

Mary was the victim of the most shocking domestic abuse by her husband James Walton. Barbara was descended from the couple’s eldest daughter who had married a Swedish seaman. She wrote that she was “happy her great grandmother had a rewarding marriage and descendants to be proud of which makes Mary Coghlan’s life seem to be of some worth”.

Mary Minahan

Mary Minahan‘s history has been researched by her descendant, Kathleen Newman. Kathleen told me about her in 2000. A synopsis of Mary’s story appears on the Irish Famine memorial database. Only one of Mary’s eight children survived. All the others died young. Was that sad history of childbirth related to her Famine experience, i wonder? Or indeed her history of petty crime?

• Surname : Minnahan [Minahan]
• First Name : Mary
• Age on arrival : 17
• Native Place : Skibbereen, Cork
• Parents : Not recorded
• Religion : Roman Catholic
• Ship name : Eliza Caroline (Melbourne 1850
• Workhouse : Cork, Skibbereen
• Other : shipping: house servant, cannot read or write. Empl. John Hopkins, farmer, Mercer Vale [now Beveridge] 24 miles from Melbourne, ₤8, 6 months; convicted many times (by 1899, 32 previous convictions) for a variety of misdemeanors (assault, vagrancy, being idle and disorderly, soliciting) and under a variety of aliases (Brown, Sorento, Freck, Coutts)’ & sent to Melbourne Gaol. She had 8 children, the first by Henry Wallace, the next 4 by Charles Joseph Pruen, the last to Charles J Brown (the same man?). By 1867 only 1 child, David William Minahan, had survived. Her death not located. kathleennewman[at]optusnet.com.au

Kathleen tells us, her gaol record in 1878 described her as “5 feet 3 inches tall with a fresh complexion, red hair and hazel eyes.”  By the time of her court appearance in 1894, (Richmond Guardian 24 November), she was “a wretched looking old woman…charged with having no lawful means of support”.

Maybe these were  exceptional cases. To check I looked through some of my family reconstitutions which are biased toward stable family histories. Here’s two I have.

Jane Leary

Jane Leary was also from Skibbereen. She married twice, had a family of nine children but lived to the ripe old age of eighty. [Thanks to R.M. Reilley for alerting me to Jane. I’ve gone back to my original forms; that’s were i recorded names of those who sent me information. In some cases I still had access to vital statistics that allowed me to add  precise dates. That precision was necessary for a demographic analysis.]

Ellen Fitzgerald

Ellen Fitzgerald, likewise from Skibbereen, also married an ‘exile’ per Maitland. Thanks to Jenny Dedman for this one. Ellen and William had all of their eleven children on the Victorian goldfields. It looked to be a stable family. But wait, how did she die? Of malnutrition! How on earth did that happen? What exactly does that mean? Did she not have enough food? Was she suffering from some kind of illness?

This prompted me to look carefully at the other Skibbereen orphans on board the Eliza Caroline. And found Catherine Coughlan, who had numerous convictions for drunkenness and vagrancy, and died in 1869. c. 36 years old: Mary Donovan married well; her husband was later a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, and she too became a social activist. But she died in 1866, also c. 36 years old. Julia or Judy Driscoll died in Ballarat Hospital, aged about 39. And Mary Hicks‘ husband deserted her and their eleven children in 1866. This was not a particularly happy outcome for these West Cork orphans. Maybe there is some substance to the claim West Cork orphans were especially vulnerable, after all.

Let me continue with this in the next post. https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1G0 I’d advise against making up your mind about this argument just yet.

May I finish by reminding you of the Irish Famine Orphan commemoration in Williamstown on the 19th November? Thankyou Chrissy Fletcher for this.

“SAVE THE DATE
Irish Famine Orphan Girls Commemoration – Melbourne
Sunday 19 November 2017 – 3pm start
Standing Stone Famine Rock, Burgoyne Reserve, The Strand, Cnr Stevedore Street, Williamstown”.

“…She fainted in her anguish, seeing the desolation round
She never rose, but passed away from life to mortal dream
And found a quiet grave, my boy, in dear old Skibbereen”.

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (39): Irish Famine women, a challenge or three

IRISH FAMINE WOMEN; a challenge or three+

Some people may have read the centre-piece of this post already. It is the talk I gave at the International Irish Famine commemoration in Sydney in 2013. Tinteán published an edited version sometime later. https://tintean.org.au/2014/03/06/irish-famine-women-a-challenge-or-three/

Today, I want to ask other labourers in the vineyard if they would take up some of my ‘challenges’. Is it true that Van Diemen’s Land bore the brunt of Ireland’s Famine misery? What do we know about the 4-5,000 single Irish women who arrived in South Australia c. 1855-56? Who were they? Where in Ireland did they come from? What happened to them? Over fifty years ago Cherry Parkin included them in her Honours thesis. As far as I know little has been done since.

There are no pretty or informative illustrations in this post. I’ve omitted them because i wanted to emphasize the importance of ‘words’. I hope you will ponder them. Note, too, there is one more example added to the end of my talk. I hope it tells you why i think this is important.

 

page 1 Irish Famine Women; a challenge or three

a chairde

Sul a gcuirfidh mé tús leis an léach seo, ba maith liom a chur in iúl an meas mór atá agam ar muintir na Cadigal don náisiún Eora, agus na shinsear a thánaig rompu a bhí i bhfeighil an dúthaigh seo. (Thank you Tom and Sinead and Síle)

One of the most striking achievements in Irish scholarship during the last eighteen years or so is the sheer range and depth of works on the Great Irish Famine. After years of relative neglect the sesquicentenary of that tragic event seems to have opened the scholarly floodgates. Yet surprisingly, there seems to be no major study of women during the famine. It’s as if a big piece of the jigsaw is missing. There are a number of excellent small pieces but no comprehensive study of Irish Famine women. An exemplary work, the closest yet to what I have in mind, is in fact a work in comparative literature; Margaret Kelleher’s The Feminization of Famine: Expressions of the inexpressible.(1997)

Professor Kelleher claims that “where the individual spectacle of a hungry body is created, this occurs predominantly (tho’ not exclusively) through images of women” [8]. [or Lysaght, 99] Think about that for a moment. If I say “Famine” to you, what mental image comes to mind?…..

For me, it’s an image of Sudanese and Somali women who appeared on our television screens last year. Victims of famine and drought, those women decided to take their hungry and sick children and walk for miles and miles in search of help.

It is an image that is echoed in the very moving stream of consciousness essay by Connell Foley at the end of that brilliant Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, [Cork Up, 2012, p. 678]

…and if you are a woman subsistence farmer in a remote part of the congo

or niger and you have five extra mouths to feed because your brother died

2 of hiv and you are looking at the sky and you are looking at your land

and you are calculating if there will be too little rain too late or too much

so that your basic crop will be ruined and you do not know how you will feed

your children or pay for some medicines but you get up every day

and you do what you can… [Beckett] You must go on…I can’t go on…I’ll go on.

And for the Irish Famine, it’s James Mahony’s London Illustrated News images of women. You probably know “A Woman Begging at Clonakilty”, for money to bury her dead child (Feb ’47), or “Bridget O’Donnell and her children” recently evicted from their holding near Kilrush. (Dec. ’49).

Yet looking thru/over my own research notes, what struck me is not women’s victimisation –but their agency, their stoicism and determination in the face of catastrophe –and the variety of their coping strategies. Women were the leaders in workhouse riots and protests in Cork, Limerick and Tipperary [BGMB records] asserting their entitlement to better treatment and better food. In 1848, 600 women rose en masse in Cork workhouse and attacked the visiting Poor Law Inspector, “having armed themselves with stones, tins and bottles”. In Nenagh, women were the leading characters…dashing saucepans, tins and pints of stirabout to the ground and smashing windows”. In Limerick, [in April 1849,] there was a riot of women screaming and throwing pints of ale at workhouse officers. These women were probably in the second of Professor Lawrence Geary ‘s three famine phases, the protracted period of “resistance’ which came after the initial “Alarm” phase and before the final phase he calls “Exhaustion”. The second phase, according to Professor Geary, saw the slow disappearance of community generosity and focus shifting away from ‘family’ to personal survival.[Mike Murphy lecture]

Women have always been given due/proper attention by historical demographers. Women’s age at marriage, their marital fertility rate and their mortality rate are crucial to any study of famine demography.

Of particular interest here is that more men than women perished during the famine. Women had what Kate McIntyre calls “a female mortality advantage”. An interesting twist to this is David Fitzpatrick’s suggestion, that –since women were in effect the principal guardians of comfort and succour, the primary suppliers of care and affection, they became the holders of the only entitlement, love, that may have been inflated by famine [67]. The mere thought of trying to examine the history of affection during the famine will no doubt be the stuff of nightmares for traditional historians.

If the evidence collected by the Irish Folklore Commission is to be valued,— [there is some debate about the reliability of that evidence, since it was collected long after the event itself. However, it’s too easy to dismiss/Nonetheless, I think we should learn to appreciate the skills of oral historians and the sophisticated ways they assess their source material. Such evidence can tell us something of what it was like to have been there. [O’Grada, Black ’47](Why were women in the oral tradition perceived as suffering the worst of consequences?) ] If the folklore evidence is to believed, women during the famine had a good reputation as providers of charity. The renowned Peig Sayers recounted to the Commissioners the story of a Kerry woman, Bridie Shehan, who tied her dead daughter to her back with ropes, and carried her to the local graveyard where two men helped her bury her daughter. When Bridie made her way back home, her neighbour, Nora Landers, called her in and gave her seven of her own precious seed potatoes. [ O’Grada’s Black ’47, 200-01]

A female outsider, an American visitor, Asenath Nicholson, a widow, who wrote about her travels through Ireland, also has a well deserved reputation for charitable good works. It is from her that we learn of an Irish Famine woman’s task of closing the door on her family’s grave. If I may quote from her work, (Annals of the Famine in Ireland)

A cabin was seen closed one day…when a man had the curiosity

to open it, and in a dark corner he found a family of the father, mother

4 and two children, lying in close compact. The father was considerably

decomposed; the mother, it appeared, had died last, and probably

fastened the door, which was always the custom when all hope

was extinguished, to get in to the darkest corner and die, where passers- by could not see them.

Such family scenes were quite common, and the cabin was generally pulled down upon them for a grave.[ Kelleher, 85]

Clearly then women were very much present in famine times. They were there in the workhouse [in Limerick, Cork, Nenagh (or wherever,)] rioting against their treatment and poor quality food. They were there inside the cottier’s cottage, their domestic domain, when the pile of potatoes on the table grew smaller and smaller and decisions had to be taken as to who got what, and how much. They were there around the family hearth when the decision was made to send their sons and daughters abroad, or to decide if the whole family should emigrate. And women were most likely there, at the very end when they could still close the door to their cottage, their family grave.

This then is our first challenge: a full blown study of Irish women’s role during the famine.

What part did women play in Irish society and economy? What work did they do in the fields, at sowing or at harvest time? Did they help dig ditches, gather sticks, dig turf, feed cattle, pigs and poultry or groom horses by lantern, late on a winter’s night? Was their work confined to a kitchen garden, washing, weaving, cooking, sweeping the yard and cleaning the house? How did all this differ from class to class or region to region before, during and after the Famine?

What exactly was women’s role in family life? Were women the chief providers of affection? What was their sense of moral value? Were they protectors and promoters of religious belief? Did they act as guardians of oral tradition and transmitters of language and culture? Did the Famine overturn traditional family structures and throw traditional mores into disarray? Did women have to find and procure food for themselves and their desperately hungry children by whatever means, travelling miles, begging, and stealing if needs be. [These are some of the questions that spring to my mind. I’m sure you will think of others.]

Without an understanding of women’s role, may I suggest to you, our knowledge of the famine will always remain incomplete?

Our second challenge then is a full-scale, comprehensive study of Irish-Australian Famine women. The important thing, as before, is that we view these women through the lens of the Famine.

When I was preparing Barefoot & Pregnant? in the 1980s I was concerned about identifying people who knew an driochsheal, people who had first hand experience of the ‘bad life’, the ‘bitter time’ of the Famine. The young women who came here as part of the Earl Grey scheme were exactly what I was looking for. These young women obviously are essential to any study of Irish-Australian famine women.

But I think it is now time to cast the net more widely –to include, perhaps, some of the landlord assisted immigrants from the Monteagle estates in Limerick or the Shirley estate in Monaghan, for example– Or at least, the young women who came from workhouses in Clare and Cork to Hobart on the Beulah and Calcutta in 1851 –Or to Sydney, on the Lady Kennaway from Cork workhouses in 1854. These last, I’m sure you know, were the occasion of a fascinating political brouhaha here in NSW from the mid to late 1850s.

6

Let me give three examples to show what can be done—first, Irish female convicts transported to Tasmania, second, government assisted family migrants to NSW and Victoria, and thirdly, the immigration of c. 4-5000 Single females to South Australia in the 1850s.

At the beginning of the 1840s, about 1,000 Irish convicts were transported to Van Diemen’s Land each year. By the famine years, the annual intake had risen to 3,000. The transportation of female convicts, unlike that of males, did not stop during those years. “Tasmania thus bore the brunt of Irish famine misery ”, says Professor Richard Davis [9]. Not everyone would agree. Rena Lohan, a postgraduate student, in her study of Grangegorman, the women’s prison in Dublin, for example, found that most of the prisoners were already hardened criminals. Any link between Irish female convicts and the famine is tenuous, she argued. As always, the issue is complex and open to debate.

Were Irish judges more lenient in their sentencing during the famine? Knowing the difficult circumstances people were in, were they more prepared to accept as a defense, that crimes were committed “on grounds of want”? One such was the Exchequer Baron, John Richards who was willing to send convicts to Tasmania especially when he learned they had nowhere to go and would be without support when their prison term expired. Needless to say, not all judges and juries agreed on this matter. There was no consistent policy.

Did more women commit more crimes in order to be transported? Can we establish a strong link between the famine and the types of crimes they committed? Among the crimes recorded against the names of Irish women arriving in 1849 and 1850, for example, we note, “stealing a turkey’, ‘stealing a sheep’, ‘stealing a cow’, ‘stealing fowls’, ‘killed her child by a bandage, a little girl one month old’, ‘house burning’, which in itself carried a life sentence. Do we really need to distinguish between 7’intention’ and crimes born of desperation? Yet what of those women with criminal records stretching before the famine years?

Assuming we can identify female Famine convicts, what became of them in Tasmania? Were they different from other convicts? Were they less likely to re-offend? Were they less likely to be rebellious or to ‘resist’ the convict system, more likely to be ‘accommodationist’, and willing to accept their lot? Or did Australian conditions rather than their Irish famine background determine what became of them? The issues are complex are they not? Yet Tasmanian convict records are so rich it should be possible to answer many of these questions.

A second category of Irish-Australian famine women might include those who came here as part of their family’s emigration strategy. Richard Reid’s excellent work, Farewell my Children [Anchor, 2011], draws attention to the quite elaborate ways families in Ireland used Government assisted schemes to come to Australia during the famine years and the years immediately after. Manoeuvering the intricacies of bureaucratic regulations, filling out forms, collecting the required references from householders, from their local priest or magistrate or doctor, waiting for notification and arranging to join a ship in England, required skill, patience and detailed planning. Working the system, bending the rules, required a different kind of skill.

As family members discussed their emigration prospects around the hearth, in the domestic sphere, I am sure Irish women made their voice heard. One can surmise how influential women’s strength and determination and emotional clout was, in deciding how the family’s emigration strategy would be played out. Strikingly, Irish emigration to Australia in the 19^th century was to achieve a gender balance. But in the famine, and years immediately following, many more women than men arrived as government assisted immigrants.

Dr Reid emphasises that it is a mistake to think of these young women, or the young 8sons and daughters in a family, being thrust into the unknown. They were often supported by an extensive and intricate network of family, friends and neighbours, sometimes stretching back to earlier convict days or bounty emigration schemes, sometimes needing a network to be established anew, set-up from scratch. We might ask did daughters play as important a role as sons in establishing these networks, not just for their own nuclear family but for their extended family and other members of their local community as well? Or were they less likely than men to nominate family and friends or manipulate Remittance regulations to their own advantage?

If I might illustrate the complications of this family emigration planning further, with an example form the work of an excellent family historian in Victoria, Anne Tosolini. I’ve used this example before in an article published in Descent in September 1999, [137].

Siblings and cousins (sons and daughters) of the Frehan and Gorman families came here from the parish of Lorrha in Tipperary between 1849 and 1854, some of them to Port Jackson and some to Port Phillip. They were to regroup in Melbourne during those years, the men renting and purchasing properties in neighbouring streets in Richmond, close to people who had been their neighbours in Lorrha. The women, however, settled some distance away, in Geelong. When they married, and their husbands later selected land, they were scattered throughout different parts of Victoria, –their strong bonds of kinship thus becoming slowly and perhaps more easily weakened. Was there a ‘gendered’ difference in the colonial experience of the first generation of migrants? Did the women adapt more readily? Were women more willingly acculturated? Were they more independent in their choice of marriage partners? Was the regrouping of their family more likely to be ‘transitional’ than that of Irish men? These are questions about women’s role in their family emigration strategy that can, and still need to be addressed.

My third example of Irish-Australian Famine women is the circa 4-5 thousand young women who sailed into Port Adelaide in 1854, 1855 and 1856. Boatload after 9boatload of young single Irish females—by the Europa, the Grand Trianon, the Nashwauk, Aliquis and Admiral Boxer, for example,—came to South Australia in the mid 1850s as part of what I would call ‘ their flight from famine and its aftermath’. The Famine had opened the floodgates. Like the Earl Grey female orphans, they too might be considered famine refugees.

So many came in such a short time, so many were allegedly ill-suited to the work required of them, so many demanded food and accommodation in immigrant depots, and so many had been sent to Adelaide under false pretences (they had been told in London they could easily walk to Melbourne and Sydney) that South Australian government authorities established a government enquiry into what they called “Excessive Female Immigration”. Lucky for us they did so. In the minutes of evidence to their report we hear the voice of some of the young women themselves. The women called before the enquiry were asked why they came here. Their answers were what we would expect;–ambitious, independent, hopeful, banal.

[“February 15^th 1855 Frances McDowell called in and examined, 32]

What induced you to come out here?—I do not know.

Had you received letters from friends? –I have no friends in Australia.

Did you think you would benefit yourself by coming to this Colony?–I was induced by the published statements to think that I might do well here.”

Some of these women were part of a network already here, and soon left South Australia to join their family and friends in Sydney and Melbourne. But my general impression is that the majority did not belong to such a network. ..Still, until there is an in-depth and thorough study of these women, our conclusions should remain tentative. This surely is a tempting research project for someone living in Adelaide.

Some excellent work has already been done on aspects of this so-called “Excessive” female immigration, –by Cherry Parkin, Eric Richards,Ann Herraman, Stephanie James, Marie Steiner to name a few. After acknowledging the initial troubles these young women had, –some walking 16 miles in the heat of the day, barefoot, to go to a situation, others returning to depot sunburnt, blistered, overworked and cast out after harvest was finished, some found crying, disappointed, despondent and depressed at their prospects—the view of most Australian writers is that these Irish women were generally well cared for and absorbed successfully into South Australian society. Areas of thickest Irish settlement …such as Paddy Gleeson’s Clare Valley were the first to accept and absorb them. The Seven Hills marriage registers demonstrate just how quickly they were accepted.

Other writers, outside Australia, are less upbeat. To quote from two, “The young women settled in badly and most left as soon as they could”. “Those sent into the outback as agricultural labourers barely survived”. (Akenson)

Who exactly were these young women? Which parts of Ireland did they come from? Where did their confidence, –or desperation, come from? What became of them? Were they being realistic in their expectations? Were they disillusioned? In fact, the same sort of questions may be asked of all of our Irish-Australian famine women, whether family emigrants, workhouse women, foundling orphans, convicts or convict families.

Is it possible to view them through the lens of their famine experience? Or at least try to view them from their own perspective? Look at their history through their own eyes, follow in their footsteps? This is my third challenge.

It’s not an easy thing to do. Finding out about the famine in our subject’s locality and even surmising the impact it might have had on our subject’s psyche, and subsequent life, are approaches we may need to take. It especially means our not accepting official sources at face value. They provide only a limited and slanted view of things –which is not that of the women themselves. Dig deeper. Read the sources “against the grain” [perhaps in the same manner as postcolonial Indian historians of the 1980s.] If necessary, rearrange the mental furniture we normally use in studying the past.

In the end, our sources may never allow us to get ‘inside the head’ of individual women. We may never get close enough to know them ‘in the round’–except perhaps through intelligent creative fiction. Which is why I’m very much looking forward to reading Evelyn Conlon’s Not the same sky [Wakefield Press, 2013]which is being launched later this afternoon.

Finally, our challenge is also about taking care with the language we use. Language is a loaded gun. If I may explain this by means of a few phrases, [–‘the Atlantic slave trade‘, the ‘Holocaust‘ and ‘pauper immigration‘.]

My first full-paid university appointment in the 1960s was in the West Indies. For me, a phrase such as “the Atlantic Slave trade” is a Pandora’s box, full of memories and meanings. But at its core is the 12 million people bought and sold like chattel, bought and sold like pieces of farm machinery or livestock, people denied their humanity.

One of the last courses I taught at Macquarie University before I retired included the Holocaust, the industrial mass murder of 6 million Jewish people. It was a subject that troubled me greatly. I found myself insisting upon saying Jewish people as a means of recognising the victims’ humanity. Without that recognition of our common humanity, it can happen again and again, as it did in Cambodia, in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia.

Even a seemingly innocuous/straightforward phrase such as “pauper immigration”, [still current in some quarters when writing about the Earl Grey famine orphans,] –has different layers of meaning. It carries a class interpretation. It implies that some immigrants are of less value than others, and hence, as human beings. Many of the young famine orphan girls who came here were bilingual, especially those from the west of Ireland. They spoke both Irish and English. The Irish word “bochtán” –‘poor person’– contains within it recognition of the poor person’s humanity in a way that the phrase, “pauper immigration” [Madgwick, chpt.X] does not. As those young women accommodated themselves to their new Australian circumstances they lost that language, and that world view; they lost that way of looking at the world. [There is a v. interesting essay, on this very subject by Mairead Nic Craith, Legacy and Loss, towards the end of that brilliant work, Atlas of the Great Irish Famine. p.580]

Today, I wish to add a third phrase, “the Irish potato famine” which is gaining currency these days. It is a phrase which many Irish people find insulting. Why is that? What’s wrong with those words?

Sure, failure of the potato crop is a very important part of what happened but as I said in post no.4 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-3I

famine is always about more than shortage of food and starvation. In that post I mentioned the work of Amartya Sen. Do search for him on google and for his colleague with whom he wrote about famine and poverty, Jean Drèze. I see one can even download the whole of Sen’s Poverty and Famines: an essay on entitlements and deprivation from more than one place. Even if you do not agree with his theory of entitlements applied to the Irish case you will realize how complex famines are. Poverty, over-crowding, a vicious land system, poor housing, underemployment, hoarding, thieving, price gouging, gombeen men, ‘culpable’ neglect on the part of government, the quarter acre clause, betrayal of one’s neighbours, and the unstoppable march of disease, are all in the mix. A phrase such as ‘the Irish potato famine’ misdirects our attention and fails to understand the complexities involved. “The Irish Potato Famine”–no; “The Great Irish Famine”–yes.

Let me put this another way. I’ll use the final words of David Nally in his Human Encumbrances.

“How are catastrophic famines to be prevented? One possible answer is provided by those who resisted famine policies in the 1840s: stop creating them”. (231)

Do please think about the words you want to use  before uttering them.

Is minic a ghearr teanga  duine a scornach (it’s often a person’s tongue/language cuts his throat)

My thanks to Tom Power, and  Tom and Sinead McCloughlin for this saying.

Careful as you go. Mind your language.

Trevor McClaughlin 24 August 2013

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (38):some useful websites and links

USEFUL WEBSITES and links

Whilst I make up my mind whether to continue with this, revise what I have with a view to publication in hard-copy, or just abandon it, I thought you might like to play with some of these web links. It’s only in the last fifteen years or so that the internet has become a useful research tool for most of us in Australia. One day we may have internet access as reliable as people in South Korea and Japan. (Tell him he’s dreamin’).

As I’m sure everyone is aware, what’s available on the web is still only a tiny fraction of what exists in archives.  For instance I don’t think all the Reports of Immigrant ships into Port Jackson are digitised yet. State Records New South Wales (SRNSW) has 4/2823 (Lady Peel); 4/2907 (John Knox); 4/2914A (Tippoo Saib). Am I right or am I right? The encouraging news is how many more records are becoming available minute by minute, day by day. What I find most impressive is how easily and how quickly we can communicate with one another. There’s a downside too but we’ll not worry about that just now.

I’ve put together a selection of links I hope you’ll explore. Most of them appear somewhere on my blog. One or two do not. They are in no particular order, except that two and three tell you about the ‘Gatherings’ in Sydney and Melbourne that celebrate the Earl Grey orphans each year. Most are both educational and informative. And lots are merely entry points for you to do your own research. Happy surfing! Hope you’re waving, not drowning.

http://wp.me/p4SlVj-oE

Home

Irish Ambassador at Famine Rock Commemoration 2015

http://mykerryancestors.com/sharing-your-kerry-ancestors

http://mayoorphangirls.weebly.com

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/the-famine-girls/4857904

https://viewsofthefamine.wordpress.com/

http://www.dippam.ac.uk/eppi/

http://trove.nla.gov.au

http://registers.nli.ie

http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Ireland/

http://www.convictwomenandorphangirls.com/Convict_Women/Home.html

http://www.irelandsgreathunger.com/about.html

http://ighm.org/

http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/irish-orphan-girls-hyde-park-barracks

Mapping the Great Irish Famine – Mike Murphy from Geobits Ltd

http://tobinfamilyhistoryaus.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/stephen-tobin-ch9-sister-ellen-tobin.html

http://jakiscloudnine.blogspot.ie/2015/02/the-genesis-of-belfastgirls-at.html?m=1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rj1

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine orphans (31):family reconstitutions-family histories

Family reconstitutions-family histories

Just to complete my previous post, here are some more family reconstitutions for your perusal.

(See  http://wp.me/p4SlVj-zv for more information about this ‘revolutionary’ demographic technique. Scroll down the link to the “Introduction” of Professor Wrigley’s book).

Some Port Phillip arrivals; double click or ‘pinch’ to make larger

Bridget Fallon per Pemberton 1849

 

Sarah Hare per New Liverpool 1849

 

 

Ann(e) Marony per Eliza Caroline 1850

 

 

Ann Nelligan per Pemberton 1849

 

Eliza Nelligan per Pemberton 1849

 

 

Sarah O’Brien per Pemberton

 

Fanny Young per Tippoo Saib

 

Some who went to the Moreton Bay district

 

Bridget Dowd per Thomas Arbuthot 1850

 

 

 

Mary Fitzgibbon per Thomas Arbuthnot 1850

 

 

Bridget King per Panama 1850

 

Jane McGarry per Earl Grey 1848

 

 

 

Catherine Moriarty with husband Tom Elliott and other family members c. 1886. Thanks to Mike Vincent.

 

Catherine Moriarty per Thomas Arbuthnot 1850

 

Mary Anne Weatherall per Lady Peel 1849

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (19):Telling Orphan stories, authenticating photos

 ANOTHER ASIDE;

some orphan pics and stories

Some years ago I jotted down notes for an essay provisionally entitled, “Telling Stories: Irish Famine orphans in Australia”. Here’s a small extract: I was jotting down things at random.

It soon became apparent there were a number of interesting historiographical issues to confront.

• How should we fill in the silences and the gaps in our orphans’ stories?
• What do we know about these family photographs? Are they authentic?
• How can we test and verify oral testimony, family stories and the like?
• Were these women ‘pioneers’ or is this word too value-laden, too triumphalist? Perhaps ‘female white settler’ is a better, more ‘neutral’ description.
• What was these women’s relationship with Aboriginal people, one of the most common gaps or silences in family histories? Fiction it may be, but Kate Grenville’s Secret River at least addresses this shortcoming.
• How exactly should we flesh out the historical context of the orphans’ lives in Australia? How might we take account of changing historical circumstances during the nineteenth century and beyond?
• How did they cope with illness? What was their material life–their dress, their dwelling, their work and their economic condition?
• How are we to ‘situate’ them in a particular place?
• What do we know about their emotional makeup, their relationship with their spouses, their children and their grandchildren, and their friends and neighbours?
• And if we have no direct evidence of any of this, should we make a guess? And how then, should we decide whether that guess was an informed guess, a starry-eyed guess or pure fiction?

I did set the project aside, thinking, ‘Get a grip’,  that’s far too serious; it will  discourage anyone thinking of writing their orphan history.

You can imagine how pleased I was to see two recent books that addressed some of these concerns. The first is by Libby Connors. Her Warrior was launched a month or two ago. It’s about a great Aboriginal leader, Dundalli (Wonga Pigeon). I’m very much an admirer of Libby’s sense of justice, and her extraordinary ability to see things from both an Aboriginal and European perspective.  The second is by Tanya Evans. Her Fractured Families was launched last week (June 2015). Focussing on the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, Tanya has worked closely with family historians. I’m really looking forward to reading it. I suspect she’ll make me reconsider what I said in an earlier post about orphans’ ‘success’ and whether coming to Australia was the best thing they could have done. If you go to www.amazon.com you can sample excerpts from both books. Just  go to ‘Books’ and type in the author’s name and click on their book. May I  suggest you ask your local library to acquire a copy or two? Good historians need all the encouragement they can get.

Some orphan photographs

Let me upload some orphan photographs descendants kindly sent me some time in the past; a new generation of descendants may be interested to have them. I’ve accepted these at face value, knowing how difficult it can be to authenticate and describe the provenance of every family photograph in one’s possession. I recently inherited a collection of photos from family members, myself, only to realize I have no idea who most of the subjects are. There are sites such as www.myheritage.com/old-family-photos  that may help. But I’ve never used any of them.

I do understand that family historians are very creative when it comes to pursuing their history. The very long view provided by DNA analysis looks fascinating. I’ve even had a Canadian friend find distant relatives by studying photographs and identifying common physical features. So, if someone wants to look at orphan photographs and see profound sadness in their eyes, or put words into their mouths, I have seen things I’ll never forget, and will never tell you, it’s not for me to say, you can’t do that.

The first photographs are of Bridget Hartigan (1834-1914), originally from Newmarket in County Clare. I received them from Roy Dunstan many moons ago. They tell a story in themselves.  Bridget was one of the Thomas Arbuthnot orphans who travelled overland with Surgeon Strutt and was hired out at Yass. She had the gumption to complain about her treatment at the hands of her employer, and to marry twice. She is pictured here with her second husband William Hine, a miner at Vaughan, and later a successful newspaper owner.

Bridget Hartigan/Downey/Hine and daughter Caroline c. 1862

Bridget Hartigan in the early 1880s taken in Melbourne

Bridget Hartigan aged 77 photo c. 1911

I must confess this middle one looks like it’s been extracted from the one below.

Bridget Hartigan with d.Caroline, granddaughter Ruby and gt.granddaughter Carrie. Photo taken 1912

This next is of Catherine Kean also from County Clare and also by the Thomas Arbuthnot. Sometimes details of where the photograph was taken can help authenticate it and tell us more about its provenance. Catherine married Michael Featherston whose brother Luke also married a Famine orphan, Maria McDermot per Lady Peel.

Mary Casserly or Cassidy from Longford with her daughter Rosanna c. 1885. Mary daughter of Patrick Cassidy and Ann Skelly came from Newtowncashel, in Longford. She was baptised 4 February 1833 and died near Reefton on the South Island of New Zealand in 1895. Her name is on the Irish Famine Monument in Sydney as Mary Casserly.

Painting of Margaret Driscoll from Cork per John Knox. She married Henry Hill in Berrima in 1862 and died in Newtown, Sydney aged 74. Large numbers attended the funeral for this “prominent Catholic woman”.

 

Mary Kenny from Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny per Lismoyne. Mary Kenny’s photograph was sent to me for volume one of Barefoot way back in the late 1980s. Mary married Henry Johnson a sailmaker, later a lighthouse keeper at South Head in Sydney.

And finally, one of Mary Anne McMaster from Rich Hill, Co. Armagh. She died at Deep Creek, Wynard, Tasmania, 28 December 1914. For more information see the Irishfaminememorial.org website http://irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/database/?surName=mcmaster&firstName=&age=0&nativePlace=&parents=&religion=0&ship=7

Mary Anne McMaster per Diadem

I do have some more pics but I’ll keep them for another time. If anyone does have a photograph they would like me to upload, please feel free to send a copy.

That should be enough for now. Let me get back to wrestling with the reasons for the Earl Grey scheme coming to an end. It looks simple enough; a clamouring opposition in colonial Australia and embarrassing questions in the House of Commons in England was enough to finish it off. But I suspect there is more to it than this.

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (18):blog contents (incomplete)

Blog Contents

This list will should make it easier to navigate the blog. Some of the bits and pieces, photographs, maps, graphs and family reconstitutions et al., are meant to illustrate what I’m saying in other posts. Clicking on the http:// link should take you directly to that post.

At the end of each post, after the ‘Comments’ there is a SEARCH BOX. Type in what you wish to search for and you will see if I’ve said anything about what you are looking for

1. Origins of the Earl Grey Scheme http://wp.me/p4SlVj-3

2. Organization of the scheme http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Z

3. Organization of the scheme (continued) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-2p

4. Who were the female orphans? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-3I

5. Who were the female orphans? (cont.)http://wp.me/p4SlVj-4X

6. Hiatus: Graphs and family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-6Z

7. The Voyage  http://wp.me/p4SlVj-7z and http://wp.me/p4SlVj-8Cand  N.B. 7c http://wp.me/p4SlVj-7X

8. 1. Some Fotos and Family Reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-cs 

9. No Rose-Tinted spectacles http://wp.me/p4SlVj-dQ

10. Some Pics (Oz online Libraries)http://wp.me/p4SlVj-fE

11. Family Reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-gbMaps (orphans in Victoria)http://wp.me/p4SlVj-gJ

12. Government preparations again http://wp.me/p4SlVj-g4

13. Some more Pics http://wp.me/p4SlVj-jt

14. “Belfast Girls”http://wp.me/p4SlVj-k0

15. Arrival and Early Days http://wp.me/p4SlVj-h8

16. Orphans “Scattering” (maps and graphs and photos)http://wp.me/p4SlVj-nv

17. Blog contents http://wp.me/p4SlVj-oE

18.      Another Aside:orphan pics and stories http://wp.me/p4SlVj-p7

19. British Parliamentary Papers: orphan emigration returns http://wp.me/p4SlVj-rc
    

20. Why did the earl Grey scheme come to an end? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-q8

21.                                Cancelled Indentures http://wp.me/p4SlVj-vf

22.                  Orphans and their families in Australia http://wp.me/p4SlVj-yU

23.                   Some more orphan family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-zv

24.                                     Suey Taggart http://wp.me/p4SlVj-AB

25.                        NSW Parliamentary Enquiry 1859 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-BT

26.                 I’ve found an orphan (Jane Troy) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Di

27.                      H.H. Browne and VPLA NSW 1859 Report http://wp.me/p4SlVj-D6

28.                  Where to from here? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Gf

29.                           Implications http://wp.me/p4SlVj-I0

30.                  Family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Ji

31.                Unfinished stories (1) Mary McConnell http://wp.me/p4SlVj-JQ

32. Unfinished stories (2) Mary McConnell http://wp.me/p4SlVj-LL

33.                      Another Aside; Register of applications for orphans http://wp.me/p4SlVj-OI

34.       More snippets; notes from VPRS115 Superintendent in corresp. http://wp.me/p4SlVj-P4

35.            Unfinished Stories (3); Bridget McMahon http://wp.me/p4SlVj-PV

36.          Digital Maps? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Sw
37.                                     Useful websites and links http://wp.me/p4SlVj-TK
38.           Irish Famine women : a challenge or three+ http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Ut
39. Addendum (South Australia) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-V4
40. Famine Rock 2016 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-XE