Family History WA

from The Irish Scene May/June 2021 Edition

Shamrock Rovers

Somewhere in County Cork

THE SEARCH FOR THE BIRTHPLACE OF CATHERINE O’BRIEN

BY ROBYN GRAHAM

Growing up in Australia I had only minimal contact with my father’s family. All I knew was that Grandfather Kelly’s family had lived in Wollongong, NSW and Grandmother Betts’ family had lived in Gooloogong, NSW. As an adult I felt the urge to find out more about unknown ancestors. We had no Internet back then, no fancy search engines that could mine whole libraries of data in a mere second. I started researching the old-school way, visiting libraries, archives and family history centres, purchasing birth, death and marriage certificates, including the marriage between Thomas Campbell Betts and Catherine O’Brien, my greatgreat-grandparents, held at Bungerellingong, Lachlan River, NSW in 1864. Thomas was a blacksmith, aged above 21 and residing in Goolagong, NSW. Catherine O’Brien was a spinster, aged under 21 and residing in Goolagong. The witnesses were Hugh Hurst and Margaret Stack. They were married by James Adam and the religion was recorded as Presbyterian. Thomas and Catherine’s birthplaces were both recorded as “unknown” as were their parents! I had no places of birth, no parents and no ages. Why were they married at Bungerellingong, a large pastoral property between Cowra and Gooloogong (formerly spelt Goolagong)? Was this, like many other colonial marriages, a case of romance between the pastoral worker and the domestic servant? I’ve also wondered why they were married by a Presbyterian clergyman. James Adam was a pioneering Scottish Presbyterian minister in the Upper Lachlan Valley, travelling widely to perform his ministry. Catherine was baptised as a Catholic, but perhaps James Adam was the only marriage celebrant to ever visit the area. Local folklore states that James Adam was once held up by the notorious bushranger Ben Hall and that it was only the polite, patient manner in which he treated the bushranger that allowed his release without harm. It could be that James Adam used that same polite, patient manner to convince Catherine that a marriage blessed by the Presbyterian Church was better than no marriage. After their marriage, Thomas and Catherine lived on several pastoral stations in the Lachlan district and for a while followed the gold prospecting trail in central NSW. Pastoral stations and prospecting camps were often isolated and had few amenities. There would have been no easy access to registry offices and although Catherine gave birth to six children, only two of the births were registered. Fortunately, one of those birth registrations, as well as Catherine’s death record, gave enough information to establish Catherine’s birth place as County Cork and an approximate birth year of 1844. This still didn’t give me a lot to go on. Catherine O’Brien is a very common name in County Cork and even knowing an approximate birth year, without parents’ names, the task was nearly impossible. So, I filed Catherine in the “too hard basket” for a number of years. Enter Genealogy DNA matching as a tool for family historians. DNA testing gave me the breakthrough I needed when it revealed a match with previously unknown cousins in the USA. Correspondence with these cousins led me to focus my O’Brien research in Kilworth Parish, County Cork. Searches through Kilworth Parish records and the 1851 census showed that Catherine had been born in Kilally West and lived with her parents, one sister and three brothers on a small tenant farm. Perhaps Catherine had an adventurous spirit and decided that life in a new country on the other

“Irish Research – Challenging, not impossible!”

is the motto of the Irish Special Interest Group (ISIG) of Family History WA (FHWA). In this intriguing story, long-serving ISIG committee member Robyn Graham outlines some of the twists and turns on the road to learning more about her nineteenth century emigrant ancestor Catherine O’Brien’s family back in Ireland.

Left: Richard Stack’s sponsorship of Catherine O’Brien’s emigration, as recorded in the 1860 Immigration Deposit records. Below: 1851 census transcript for the O’Brien household in Kilally West, Cork.

side of the world was preferable to living in a tiny village where her life would follow the traditional pattern. On the other hand, life may have become increasingly difficult for the O’Brien family on a small rural holding and the older children could have been encouraged to search for other opportunities. Catherine’s older sister Margaret had made the journey to Australia several years before her and it was Margaret’s husband, Richard Stack who sponsored Catherine’s voyage. Richard Stack’s experience is an encouraging example of a poor Irish man doing well in the “new country”. Richard was a convict from County Limerick and after serving his sentence he gained stable work in rural NSW. He must have been doing reasonably well to be able to sponsor Catherine’s voyage. Filling in the gaps to find Catherine’s birthplace has taken several years of research but I’m now happy to be able to identify Kilally West as being that “somewhere in County Cork”.

THE IRISH SIG IN 2021

In 2021 the Irish Special Interest Group continues to meet online via Google Meet until the Covid-19 restrictions permit more people in our meeting room (the limit is currently just 31). Next online meeting will be on 18 July and we hope to meet face to face on 17 October if possible. Thirty-five participants attended our April online meeting in which we focused on how to navigate irishgenealogy.ie, the Irish government supported official website offering free online access to the civil registers of historical births, marriages and deaths and some church records. In future meetings we will continue to demonstrate other useful sites for finding your ancestors, including aids for locating parishes, townlands and registration districts. New members and visitors are always welcome to our meetings - simply book your place using the online booking site TryBooking, details at right. At this stage you can book for the July meeting only. Immediately after each quarterly meeting, bookings for the next meeting will open. Those who have booked will be sent a link to the Google Meet shortly before the 2pm meeting. FamilyHistoryWA also hosts lots of other exciting online events - some for beginners, and others for experienced researchers, so check out the full suite of presentations, workshops and meetings. Nonmembers and new members are welcome to join in from home. See the link right to FamilyHistoryWA homepage and choose the ‘Events’ tab. A small payment may be required for some events. We invite you to visit the FamilyHistoryWA’s extensive library and resource centre at 6/48 May Street Bayswater, but it is wise to phone ahead to check on the building’s current capacity restrictions which may vary with the ebb and flow of the pandemic. Opening hours are given on the FamilyHistoryWA homepage. Happy and successful researching!

CHRISTINE TIMONEY

ON BEHALF OF THE IRISH SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

MORE INFO

ROBYN O’BRIEN, Convenor Irish Special Interest Group E irish.sig@fhwa.org.au Book a place at the next IRISH GROUP MEETING at TryBooking: .trybooking.com/BLPZM Book for FUTURE FHWA EVENTS at trybooking.com/eventlist/genealogy?embed=1 Go digging for resources at FamilyHistoryWA’s

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