Among my papers is a set of guidelines for writing oral histories, handwritten in the 1950s for members of a particular Tasmanian small town’s local history society.  The members used it when interviewing elderly locals. These interviews usually focused on local pioneering heroes.

I love pioneers and their world as it appears in popular media.  The idea of brave families travelling into the wilderness and recreating civilization always appealed.  But as an adult, I’ve learned a lot more about the world. I’ve met many people who have nothing good to say about pioneers. I’ve worked hard in my own garden to eradicate weeds that should never have been introduced to this country.  I’m aware of native animals on the verge of extinction. I know Indigenous people fighting to reclaim their traditional lands. I know the environmental damage caused by sheep and cattle. I am also aware of the huge absence in our local and national histories of whole swathes of immigrants from non-British countries, not to mention those who were already here.  I’m also quite aware that some of our great pioneers were actually absent pioneers who simply sent a workforce out with all the equipment required to build a mansion and set up a cattle ranch.  Those particular pioneers did not come out themselves until their current lifestyle could be maintained in their new homeland.

Pioneers even in fiction could be autocratic, racist and traditionalist. Was this a required characteristic? What were real pioneers like?

Was a pioneer really a good thing at all?

My copy of the oral history guidelines came from an octogenarian who recorded many oral histories of people now long deceased.  Forty years later in his turn he was interviewed by myself, and since he had nobody to pass his papers on to, they became a much valued part of my scarily large collection.

The guidelines include suggested questions.  One of those questions asks whether the interviewee was acquainted with any early pioneers of the district, what those pioneers were like and whether they had told any stories of their life and of the district.  Another asks if the pioneers had had any trouble with bushrangers or Aborigines.

The edge of native bushland near Mungo National Park New South Wales

As a family historian of the modern world, the wording of that question sort of made my blood run cold.  It’s a valid question and one that the local historian definitely wants an answer to.  It’s the way it was phrased that took my breath away.  There are a multitude of assumptions in there about the demographic of that early pioneer and the legitimacy of various lifestyles in colonial societies.  We’re talking almost seventy years ago, of course, about matters which are still burning issues today.  But it led me to consider the concept of the pioneer.

Google dictionary defines the word pioneer as (1) ‘a person who is among the first to explore or settle a new country or area‘ and (2) ‘a person who is among the first to research and develop a new area of knowledge or activity‘.  Both are applicable at times to our colonising ancestors, but chiefly the first definition is the one we are thinking of.

It’s a fair starting point, but people actually mean something different to this when they think of a pioneer.  For a start, wherever a colony is set up among indigenous people the first definition is actually invalid.  I went through a stage of thinking that the very word ‘pioneer’ was dodgy, with its connotations of domination and destruction. This was a matter of regret to me since I love the idea of a pioneer – someone who doesn’t give up, someone resourceful who manages to survive even without the support structures set up to enable survival.

A good example of English influence in an Australian inland city. Wangaratta 2017.

It’s very easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes. There are many pioneers among the Indigenous people of the world, who really were the first to settle in a new country.  I’d love to have heard their stories. Luckily the bushrangers had enough fans to have their lives recorded. Lately in Australia, people are starting to examine the lives of our Chinese and Russian pioneers.  The more aspects of society we have, the better the true picture of life in a particular time.

But a pioneer really isn’t just someone who got somewhere first. A pioneer is someone who transplanted themselves to a place that was culturally and materially barren for them, who then proceeded to retain much or all that they held dear, and to pass that on to their descendants. Well, this is how I personally define a pioneer.

Pioneers were courageous souls who may have chosen their path, but equally may have had that path forced on them.  They may have been explorers or wealthy families but they might have been convicts or famine victims, or orphan children who were shipped to the colonies to be domestic servants.  In some countries they might have been slaves, or displaced Indigenous people, or displaced due to war or religious conflicts or straightforward poverty.  They might have been shipwrecked. Whatever it was, the ability to hold on to one’s values and to create security in the midst of hardship is a remarkable skill.

European crops in Australia

A pioneer did not necessarily recreate that which he or she had left behind.  Successful pioneering required adaptation. Different crops, different clothes, different working hours in extreme heat or cold.  Different language, different financial system. Even today in my state of Australia, a wood paling fence is a rare thing because of termites. Surviving early fences are stone or brick.  This is a practice that must have been learned the hard way.  That said, sometimes the pioneer did successfully import something from their home.  The manor house for example.  Immense parliament houses. Paved roads. Village markets and wedding dresses and musical recital nights.  Just what came and which adaptations were made is one of the fascinating things we can learn from the lives of the pioneers.

Plus, sometimes the pioneer left nothing behind at all except a descendant or two and perhaps their grave (if we are lucky). This is quite enough to qualify them for the title. The Indigenous people that I know do not use the word ‘pioneer’ much, but they number many of what I would call pioneers among their ancestors who left a strong legacy of knowledge and skills.

As blog posts go, this one is a little bit shorter and a bit different to most of my others, but I felt a need to tackle this subject because I do consider many of my ancestors to be pioneers, but I am deeply aware of the downside of their circumstance – that probably, someone with a greater claim to that bit of country was displaced by my ancestors’ arrival.  The story of that displaced person or people is a part of my ancestor’s story whether my ancestors knew it or not.  If I can learn those stories, I will include them in my family history. But it doesn’t negate the remarkable qualities my ancestors possessed which I still admire today.  It’s simply a bigger and more nuanced picture.

Murray River at Tocumwal.

Over the past twelve months, many useful Irish records have become accessible via the internet.  Principle among them, at least for the history of Dillane, are the Irish Catholic Parish Records.

Our branch of this family has puzzled my cousins and I for at least fifty years. We always had a rich oral history regarding the Australian branch – they arrived in 1856 and became successful pioneers of the Cygnet district in the south east of Tasmania. Three brothers, transported as convicts for burning down a haystack.  There is a blog trilogy regarding this line starting here.  The first post is actually about the Woulfe family with the second and third focusing on Dillane.

But to summarize for those who don’t wish to read the earlier posts – Edmund, John, Timothy and William Dillane were all brothers in Athea in West Limerick.  All four married in Athea.  Edmund, John and Timothy were arrested and transported and their name morphed into ‘Dillon’ via the convict records.  William remained in Ireland where he raised a large family and kept the surname Dillane.  The Athea parish records begin in 1827 and until the past year or so we could only rely on transcriptions of the data.

Luckily, those days are over!  Here are a couple of very interesting details from the parish baptisms.

Baptism of John Dillane 05 Feb 1842 in Athea

Baptism of James Dillane 28 Oct 1843 in Athea

Baptism of Michael Dillane 14 Aug 1844 in Athea

In 1838, the most excellent Father Luke Hanrahan began work at Athea.  Actually, I’m sure the others were excellent too.  But Father Hanrahan was wonderful in that he added the residence of his parishioners as he wrote out the records.

The above three baptisms are for the sons of Edmund and William giving their residence as Glanduff.  This marvellous detail has not come to us before.

Map of Limerick with relevant locations highlighted and added. Public domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABaronies_of_Limerick.jpg

This is a crowded map but it is hard to find one that can be legally used.  Glanduff, the residence of at least two of our Dillane brothers, is the red dot in the far south.  Athea, the place where their children were baptised, is the red dot in the upper left.  Although not a huge distance by today’s standards, it is a distance of about twenty miles.

The townland of Glanduff -also known as Glenduff and sometimes Glinduff – was mostly the property of Eyre Massy at the time of these baptisms. It was and still is part of the parish of Monagea.

In the 1820s, a detachment of the 40th regiment was stationed at Glanduff and was later replaced by a detachment of the 42nd.  Some very interesting stuff was happening there in the 1830s and 1840s.

The trouble with stepping a generation back – as we do in family history – is that we find ourselves at the end of a long piece of action.  It’s like starting a movie in the last half hour.  But for the sake of tracking the record it has to be done this way.  So apologies if it gets confusing.

Most of us who research Irish ancestry will know about the conflicts which occurred there, the whole England and Ireland thing with protestants coming in and taking Catholic land.  That’s an oversimplification of course.  There were people possessed of the favour of one monarch who were given land that used to belong to the people favoured by the former monarch, regardless of their religion.  There were people with money on all sides, including Catholic, who managed to keep their holdings and summon armies.  Each county has its own stories, its own armies who fought its own enemies.  It was a complicated thing.   So to research ancestors in the county of Limerick, it isn’t enough to know a general history of Ireland.  It helps to know the history of Limerick.  It’s probably a life’s work really.

King John’s Castle – Limerick City taken by William Murphy 2011. CC 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Some rights reserved. No changes made.

The siege of Limerick (the castle/city of Limerick that is) occurred in 1691.  The obituary of an elderly Woulfe in the 1920s (born circa 1830) stated that his ancestors had proudly served in the castle holding off the attackers.  This is an indication that stories about that event were still part of oral history across the next few centuries.

The city of Limerick was an urban environment – by 19th century Irish standards – whereas the area to the west was wild with very little infrastructure.  As late as 1820, many of the roads lacked bridges and were impassable after heavy rain.  There wasn’t much travel happening at all.  There was a lot of poverty and a lot of crime, some of it deadly.

The Dublin register reported the following on 09 February 1822:

Four men of the 40th Regiment, who were left at Glanduff to give up the Barracks, were surprised on Tuesday morning. While two were carrying the furniture up to Glanduff House, a party rushed in suddenly, and overpowering those left in the Barracks, got clear off with the entire of their arms, ammunition and accoutrements.

It was a time of violent secret societies on a mission to defend the powerless Irish tenants against their oppressors.  Two of these societies were the Rockites – led by a succession of ‘Captain Rock’s – and the Whiteboys who were based in Cork.

The same newspaper gave the following reports amidst a large number of other incidents.

A party of Whiteboys went into Drumcolliher on Monday night, firing shots, after which they retired, saying they were not sufficiently prepared. On Tuesday night they attacked several houses, and succeeded in getting twelve stand of arms from different inhabitants in the town.

On Monday night another party went into the town of Abbeyfeale.

Wednesday, at two o’clock in the day, three men in women’s apparel went into a field at Dobile near Rathkeale, and shot a horse engaged in ploughing, belonging to a farmer named Scully; the three fellows announced themselves as Lady Rock and her suite, and mentioned that if Scully did not leave the country they would serve him as his horse.

On the above map, Drumcolliher is to the right (the east) of Glanduff.  Abbeyfeale is close to Athea.  Our Dillane ancestors were living right in the middle of all this action.  Knowing their future and the personalities of later Dillanes, they were probably a large part of it.  There are disputed reports that the first Captain Rock was one Patrick Dillane of Croom who to avoid capture apparently escaped into the wilds of West Limerick in the 1820s.

It was a long and convoluted trail which led me to Croom – in fact, a DNA match with another Woulfe descendant.  She descends from a Sheehan of Shanagolden who married a daughter of Patrick Maurice Woulfe.  They were actually married in Athea, but since her husband’s parish was given as Shanagolden I followed them in the records and began to find more Dillanes including the following marriage.

Marriage of John Dillane to Maria Wolfe of Athea at Croom 15 June 1808

I am fairly sure that this is our line and that we have two generations in a row of a Dillane marrying a Maria Woulfe.  It would help explain why so many distant cousins are showing as a bit closer than they should.  Why Croom?  It’s so far away that I still feel the need for another corroborating detail to confirm it.  I was pretty sure given the children’s names that the mother was going to be a Bridget, which is not borne out by this record.  That said, they all have an elder daughter called Mary as well so this fits too.

I’m also pretty sure that I have found John’s baptism and a couple of his siblings were also married in Croom, which makes it more likely that this is he.

Baptism of John Dillane at Monagea 30 Dec 1789

So here we have another few useful details, including the residence of Meenileen – known to us also as Meenoline – the home of a well established branch of our Woulfe family.  Meenoline is marked on the above map, just south of Sugar Hill.  In the 1828 tithe applotment books, one Edmund Dillane can be found residing at Sugar Hill.

To hastily conclude this blog post since it is getting rather long, here is the marriage of Edmund Dillane and Margaret Dunworth.

Marriage of Edmund Dillane and Margaret Dunworth 15 Jan 1789 in Monagea.

I have found a few children now for Edmund and Margaret – as well as John, there are daughters Mary, Catherine and Julia (Juliana).

This will not be conclusive for some time yet, until I can piece the whole extended family together and figure out why a Dillane from Monagea might have travelled as far as Croom to marry a girl from Athea.  Maybe it was a runaway match?  This was also the era of marriage by abduction, something else which the papers were full of.  But it is all guesswork just now.

At the very least, I have a likely hypothesis for myself and other researchers to work from.

The first concrete evidence of George Richards is his marriage in 1828 to Ellen Cummings. He comes through records as little more than the husband of the more visible Ellen and as the father of a bunch of children.  Recent DNA matches have confirmed my ancestral line back to George and Ellen, so maybe he is about to appear clearly to us at last.

Those who read my blog will have become familiar with a few regions of Tasmania by now, particularly the districts around the townships of Hamilton, Kempton and Port Cygnet.  George Richards lived further north, in Launceston.

For geographical context:, here is Van Diemen’s Land 1852 with the regions marked which have been referenced in my blog:

Map from Wikimedia Commons

In the beginning of white settlement, each region was its own discrete world.  People certainly travelled between regions, trade was conducted between regions and they were all administered by the same Colonial administration.  But the local flavour in each area was very strong, heavily influenced by those who lived there.

So far, this blog has focused on the south of the colony.  But there was a north too, with different settlers, different discrete regions and very different flavours.   The north of Tasmania has its own unique history.  So now to bring all readers up to speed in a few short paragraphs!

Right from the beginning of British control of Van Diemen’s Land there was debate over where administrative government should be placed. It was briefly in Risdon Cove (now a suburb of the present day city of Hobart), then transferred north to Port Dalrymple (later Georgetown), then to Launceston and then back to Hobart Town where it then remained. All of these shifts were in that first decade of settlement. Risdon Cove was settled by Britain in 1803, Port Dalrymple and Sullivan’s Cove (Hobart Town) in 1804 and lastly Patersonia (Launceston) in 1805.  These initial settlements were basically a few shiploads each of handy colonists, soldiers and some cattle. They came off the boat into heavy forest, cold weather, much rain and mud.  Over the next three years, building work began, streets were laid down and jetties were built. We’ll now focus on the two northern settlements of Georgetown and Launceston which had received these names by 1810.

I don’t want this post to be a heavy read but a few elements of the epic tale of early settlement are relevant.

The neighbouring colony of New South Wales began in 1788 and by the start of the 19th century it was  a proper little settlement.  The administrations of the two colonies had a brotherly relationship and were each governed by England, but each colony was required to achieve self sufficiency on its own.

Here’s a map showing Sydney (in the colony of New South Wales) and Port Dalrymple (in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land).

Location of Rum Rebellion of New South Wales and of the Van Diemen’s Land settlement of Port Dalrymple (Footnote 1)

In 1808, a famous military coup was staged in New South Wales by soldiers who felt the place was being dangerously mismanaged.  This mismanagement stemmed in part from a circumstance where coinage had not been established and was rare in the colony. With no way to buy or sell using coins and no way to pay soldiers their wages, rum became the accepted substitute. Soldiers were in a perfect position to receive new shipments of rum which they could purchase at good prices and then sell on with a profit.  Price gouging, alcoholism and an unhelpful balance of power ensued.  A newly appointed colonial governor was given orders to correct the situation.  The result was outright rebellion.  This event is known in history as the Rum Rebellion.

The rebellion took a while to quell but once this was achieved, the problem of what to do with the offending soldiers needed to be resolved.  England didn’t want them back but they were now a properly networked and coherent group who might rebel again.  The soldiers were court martialed en masse, but these guys had all lived together in a small community for years and they were deemed to have acted with good intention. It was decided to separate them to a multitude of small new settlements.

Some were offered land grants in the new settlement of Port Dalrymple if they resigned of their own volition.  It was an acceptable arrangement for all involved.  By 1812,  ex-soldiers and their families were trickling south to take possession of their new land. Thus in about 1812 came the family of toddler Mary Ann Elinor Cummings – known as Ellen – whose father had been an officer in the Rum Corps.   The dramatic tale of the Cummings family is worthy of its own blog article.  All that is relevant here is that the young Ellen arrived sometime between 1812 and 1816.

I tried to find a photograph of Launceston but on my last trip through it looked like this. However, this is probably a good indicator of life in the region on a winter’s day.  This was taken circa 11.00 am around 20km south of the city of Launceston.

So, back to Launceston.  Descriptions occasionally appeared in local papers.

In this decade, Launceston had no newspaper of its own and is generally referenced in other papers as a shipping destination, but a few articles give a clue about life there.

1817:

It appears about the 25th ult. that … bushrangers committed a robbery near Launceston – that the day after, one of them, (Wright, who lately ran from George-town ) left the party, went into Launceston, and surrendered – that on the 29th, Collier surrendered, having a cut across the neck, and his left hand much shattered: — he states that the night after the robbery alluded to, Browne & Wright left the party — that Septon, Hillier, & himself remained at a hut behind Gordon’s Plains, where in the middle of the night, Hillier with razor cut the throat of Septon so dreadfully as to cause his immediate death — that Hillier then attempted to cut his (Collier’s) throat, who, however, got out of the hut with a slight cut on the left side of the neck: upon which Hillier, who had possessed himself of the whole of the arms, took up Septon’s rifle, fired, & shattered much of the hand of Collier. It does not appear that there had been any quarrel; And Hillier’s motive for killing Septon, and attempting to kill Collier, can only be supposed to have existed with a view to obtain the reward offered for them. Since this affair Coine, another of the old bushrangers, has given himself up, and is in confinement at this place; and there remain now at large, Howe, Watts, and Browne, for the whole of whom rewards are offered. — [See Proclamation.] (Footnote 3)

More in 1817:

George Gray, who murdered JOHN EVANS at York Plains, as adverted and noticed in our last week’s Gazette, was this morning brought in a prisoner by a guard of the 46th regt. and lodged in the gaol. He was taken on the road to Launceston, by Corporal GREEN, of the 46th alone; a circumstance highly creditable to him.

It was a different and dangerous world.  Yet along with murder, assault, mental illness, severe alcoholism, floods, famines and much rain the two settlements continued to grow. Most settlers received supplemental supplies from the government but were beginning to make a go of it alone.  This was Ellen Cummings’ world.  By her teen years she had experienced the Rum Rebellion, a move to a new colony, home invasions and her mother’s tragic death by drowning in a flooded river in 1820 when she was aged 11. There had been little safety and maybe not much happiness in her world.  Shipping records indicate that her two older brothers – John and James – spent more time away from the family home than there once they were old enough to escape.  The Cummings family had money and a good position in society, not to mention a sense of entitlement which passed from father to son for several generations. But Ellen was a girl in a family which did not afford equal status to women. She missed a lot of the education and opportunities which her brothers received.  No doubt by the age of 18 in her lonely world she needed a protector.

Southern entry to Launceston 2014. This is probably the same hill from which the 1812 description was made. The rivers Tamar and Esk are temporarily hidden by the left hand cutting.

Given the copious records, letters and official engagements of the Cummings family, it would be surprising if the George Richards that we have gleaned from the records was an equal match for Ellen.  The Cummings family were well connected in Ireland and England, had married into a very wealthy family on the Isle of Man, had some lucrative enterprise in India and managed to wriggle out of a whole lot of scrapes which would have resulted in a destroyed life for a ‘lesser’ man.  Ellen seems to have been a forgotten and unregarded child. Her father was only concerned about the boys.  Thus somehow she met an illiterate convict approximately ten years older than she and the two of them made a match of it.

Here’s the marriage record:

Marriage record of George Richards and Ellen Cummings (Footnote 5)

Civil registration started in Britain in 1831 and that requirement was sent to the colonies at the same time.  Three years earlier, in 1828, we have only a church marriage record. There was no consent sought for Ellen despite her tender years.  Eighteen was not adulthood in 1828 so she should have required the permission of either parent or if an orphan, of a guardian such as an elder brother, but in this era officiating ministers were hard to come by and they undertook a multitude of religious ceremonies.  I have not managed to trace the witnesses but hopefully I’ll find them one day.

Many of the details on this certificate are correct. Ellen was born in the colony – well, in a neighbouring colony – and she was free.  So presumably the record is correct in identifying George Richards as a convict.  I’ve never heard of anyone impersonating a convict. It is therefore logical to assume that George Richards was a convict who arrived on a ship called the Pilford.  Which doesn’t exist.

There were 9 convicts named George Richards transported to Tasmania and another 12 so far identified as transported to New South Wales.  The common theory among family researchers is that he arrived on the ship ‘Guildford’ in 1819.  There was indeed a George Richards on this ship. The convict from the Guildford was a butcher.  Our George is also a butcher.  So this fits.  But we don’t know for sure and in one place at least, it is recorded that the convict from the Guildford died in 1825.  There was indeed a convict named George Richards who died in 1825 but not ours. The record is all out of order and seems to have been rewritten from another record.

George Richards was tried on 4th March 1820 in Chelmsford, Essex and found guilty of larceny. He was sentenced to death which in the usual way was transmuted to transportation 14 years.  He was placed in a hulk named Leviathan at Hampshire, from whence he was removed to the Guildford and arrived in Tasmania on 10th October 1820. He received a ticket of leave at some early date.  In 1824 he stole something which I cannot read from the factory of William Smith in Launceston so he must have been in town then. He was in trouble again in 1826 for being out after hours.  Which brings us to the date of his marriage, of which there is no mention in the convict record.

The eldest child of George and Richard was my own ancestress, Frances Ann born 2nd January 1829. She was baptised in March 1829 at St John’s Anglican Church in Launceston.

Baptism of Frances Ann Richards in Launceston Tasmania

George’s convict record contains a misdemeanor of being absent from muster on 26th January 1829.

From this point, all we have is a handful of baptism and civil birth registration records. Combining the existing baptisms with later records the Richards family so far consists of:

George’s ticket of leave was suspended for six months on 11th March 1831 for some unknown reason,   only a few months after the death of his first son George.

In 1833, George was charged with sheep stealing, an offense which still brought the death penalty in those days.  (Footnote 6)

So, does this mean he died?  It seems not, because although his convict record also states ‘Death recorded’, the entries go on.  In fact, his convict record states that he received his free certificate on 7th Feb 1834, at which point he was still in jail awaiting trial. This is very very unlikely!

However, no registration has been located for the children born between 1833 and 1839. We know of them either through their marriage and death records or through DNA matches with their descendants.  The town of Launceston was growing rapidly at this time.  Whether they lived in town or somewhere very rural is not known.

In 1838 George was arrested on suspicion of felony but there was insufficient evidence to bring the matter to trial.  On March 14th 1840 he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.  There was another felony in Sept 1840 and a third offence on 3rd October the same year due to entering the constables’ huts while drunk. For this offence he was sentenced to 10 days hard labour on the roads.  It didn’t help. On the 31st October 1840 he was in trouble again for another felony but the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence. Possibly he’d gained a reputation.

After that final offense in 1840, the matter was allowed to rest on the condition that he move to the Hamilton district and remain there.  It’s where the unruly ex-convicts went.

This fits with the movements of our Richards family.  All the children from Eliza onward were born and properly registered in Hamilton.  George appears in their birth registrations as a labourer, a butcher and finally a farmer.

On 8th November 1847, George and Ellen’s eldest child Frances married Edward Cox at St John the Baptist, Ouse.   Almost ten years later in 1856, Ellen passed away, the cause of death given as dropsy.  The family split up, some of the children leaving for the now thriving colony of Victoria where fortunes were being made in the goldfields and there was work for everyone.

As required, George remained in Hamilton. Richard and Matilda moved to Victoria. Harriet married a shepherd of Osterley.  The youngest four girls all married local ex-convict farmers.  I’ve written often about the Ouse region with its early pioneers, that peculiar bunch of free-by-servitude men who lived almost as one with the bush and could comfortably spend weeks alone without missing human contact.  The six Richards girls who remained in the Ouse region became matriarchs of six large families who still live and farm in the region today.  But the sons moved away.  One of the boys had a liaison with a local girl but there was no marriage.  The resulting son grew up bearing his mother’s surname and his descendants also continued in the region.

This has been a very long post, I know.  George Richards ended his days amidst a diphtheria epidemic which took half his family. His daughters Frances and Susan plus his grandson Edward George Cox all died within weeks of each other.  George’s death was attributed to cancer. Possibly this was so. Possibly he had cancer but the diphtheria was taking hold also.

Here is his death registration. His daughter Susan is the entry immediately after his. (Footnote 7)

To conclude, here is George’s grave.  It’s a proper monument, worthy of a pioneer of the district who was also father-in-law and grandfather to most of the region’s farmers.

Grave of George Richards at St John the Baptist Ouse Tasmania

(Footnote 8)

Footnotes:

(1) By Lencer [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

(2) “GOVERNMENT AND GENERAL ORDERS.” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 – 1842) 11 January 1812: 1. Web. 2 Jul 2017 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article628393>.

(3) “HOBART TOWN; SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1817.” The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter (Tas. : 1816 – 1821) 6 September 1817: 1. Web. 2 Jul 2017 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article652952>.

(4) “Hobart Town; SATURDAY, NOVEMBER, 1817.” The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter (Tas. : 1816 – 1821) 1 November 1817: 2. Web. 2 Jul 2017 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article653280>.

(5) State Archives of Tasmania, marriage records Church of England

(6) “CRIMINAL SIDE.—THURSDAY.” Launceston Advertiser (Tas. : 1829 – 1846) 20 February 1834: 3. Web. 3 Jul 2017 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article84774309>.

(7) State Archives of Tasmania, civil death registrations

(8) http://www.gravesoftas.com.au/municipalities/Southern_Tasmania.htm

The pioneer of our Peard family in Australia was John Peard who arrived in the 1850’s as a young man and eventually settled in Albury on the New South Wales/Victorian border.

Family researchers in the mid 20th century went to Ireland in search of our roots and returned with a grand pedigree in ornate handwriting which gave us the lineage of the Peard family in Fermoy, Cork.  A slightly simplified version of this lineage can be found in Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland. The family home was Coole Abbey in Fermoy where the family once entertained royalty.  The manor was built for Henry Peard back in the 17th century and remained in the family until the early 20th century.

Somehow the family line descended from Coole Abbey and an entry in Burke’s Peerage to my great grandfather, the respectable but hardly notable Burley Peard in the Snowy Mountains district of New South Wales.  We all wanted to know the story.  Why were we not sipping tea in our illustrious mansion in Ireland?  What happened?

There were other questions too.  Why would a well-connected young man travel alone to Australia?  Why did he then stay here when he was wealthy enough to return to Cork for a visit?  Why does the family have no heirlooms from Ireland?  Why did he not name a daughter after his mother? The story seemed incomplete.

On 18 Sep 1856 he arrived in Melbourne on the ship Saldanha. He was aged 17 and is on the shipping list as ‘Gentleman’.  He traveled alone.  Later research has shown that he first went to the Victorian goldfields before making his way to Bowna in New South Wales where he met his future wife.  John Peard certainly was an educated and hard working man. He was involved in local committees and progress associations. He was also industrious and adventurous, ready to try new methods.

John and Mary Ann were married on 26th Mar 1868 in Beechworth, Victoria.  The marriage certificate names the parents of John Peard as Henry Harrison Peard and Jane Leahy.  The old pedigree of the family had named his parents as Henry Harrison Peard and Jane Selby.

This is the second half of John and Mary Ann’s marriage registration showing their occupation, age, location of the marriage, their address, parent’s names and parental occupation.  John Peard was a carrier aged 28 and he lived in Albury.  The handwriting is difficult to read, someone just might read ‘Lehy’ as ‘Selby’.  But until the past decade it was not easy to locate a marriage certificate in Australia without knowing which state one needed first.  After all these years looking for a Jane Selby as per the older research, now we could search for Jane Leahy.

At first it didn’t help. Jane Leahy has proved as hard to find as the nonexistent Jane Selby. Her birthplace was a complete guess.  There was no baptism to be found for John so there was no confirmation that she was even Irish, other than that very Irish surname. Henry Harrison Peard died in Inchinapalace on 4th May 1847 of fever but did not mention any family.  It was a puzzle that wouldn’t solve for a very long time.

Two recent events changed everything.  Firstly, a fellow researcher in the United States found me through this very blog and contacted me regarding John Peard.  She was the descendant of one Richard Peard who emigrated from Cork to the United States alone as a teenager sometime around 1858.  A family story had passed down that Richard Peard had a sibling who moved to Albury in Australia.  When she read my blog she suspected she had found the sibling.

Secondly, a very elderly Peard relative in Ireland replied to an online post stating that John Peard in Australia was supposed to have a brother named Henry who went to the United States.  These two sketchy stories led to a comparing of DNA test results which confirmed cousinship between the descendants of John Peard and the descendants of Richard Peard of Iowa.   It looked very positive.

Finally, after some rather pessimistic trawling through the Irish Catholic Parish Registers, I found him.  More than that, I found the whole family!

Here he is at last, after at least fifty years of constant research by various Peards with a few big surprises thrown in.  He was baptised on 26th June 1839 in the Catholic church at Castletownroche and his address is given as Inchinapalace.  At least, Henry Peard’s address is.  Jane was still a Leahy and John was illegitimate.  This explains a lot.  Henry Harrison Peard was a protestant, Jane was Catholic. After Henry’s death, did she and the children receive any protection from the rather wealthy Peard family?  Were they even acknowledged as Peards?

Looking further in the register, the following baptisms also came to light.

This is the baptism of Richard Peard on 26 Feb 1841, the lad who emigrated to Iowa.  He was also illegitimate.  One illegitimate child might be an accident or a seduction. Two? There must have been some impediment to marriage.

William Peard baptised on 28th Aug 1842, also illegitimate.  Yet Henry Peard was not called upon to marry Jane?  The existence of this boy was a complete surprise.

Two illegitimate girls, Ellen and Sarah both baptised on 18th October 1846.  They may not have been born at the same time.

It looks as if Jane Leahy was living near Castletownroche and was in a long term relationship with Henry Harrison Peard.  One Henry Peard was having children quite nearby with a wife named Catherine.  This is an avenue to explore.  But many questions remain.  What happened after the death of Henry Harrison Peard in 1847 and the emigration of John Peard in 1856?  How did the family live?  What happened to Jane, William and the two girls?

The plan now is to look at the Leahy families around Castletownroche, focusing on Jane Leahy and the sponsors.

Photograph by Sarah777: attribution under Creative Commons License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/