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SALUTARY ADVICE re PROVENANCEI have recently come across two submissions to the Monaro Pioneers website that disturb me because of some inaccuracies and suspect suppositions. These I find in the reproduction of two articles from the pen of Mrs Mary (Byrne) Johnson : Some early Australian Reminiscences ( p.32, The Freeman’s Journal, Syd., 11.6.1908 - reproduced in The Queanbeyan Age, 12.6.1908 and p.19, The Freeman’s Journal,Syd., 4.6.1908. While I have great regard for the long-dead Mary (1843-1946), I regret I must isolate instances where perhaps her memory is at fault OR she is reproducing as fact something that was originally relayed to her as another’s supposition - or jest – OR misinterpretation of a connection. In any event, it reminds all family historians that the prime element in establishing the veracity of details is recognising the provenance of the information, whether oral or written, to assess its reliability.In my reproduction of the two articles, I indicate my misgivings by italicising (in brackets and my initials) such detail that I feel needs amending. In so doing, I do not wish to denigrate the person(s) who made the original submissions, but rather congratulate them on their interest and zeal in perpetuating the extremely valuable contributions of our pioneers. : John Byrne : 1240284 Ann (Healy/Healey/Hely) Byrne : 1313943 ref. Jennifer Round Article 1 : Some Early Australian ReminiscencesMrs M.Johnson, daughter of the recently-deceased Mrs John Byrne, of Spring Valley, writes as follows-We see many sketches from time to time about the early days of Australia, and many get much credit for the labour of others; and such is the case with Hamilton Hume. It was my father who took Hamilton Hume all through the Queanbeyan, Snowy River and the Murray, and all through that country about Yass, and many other parts of New South Wales. It was my father who had the cattle station on Lake George when it was dry, and another station in the Queanbeyan ere they travelled through. But Hamilton Hume and his people ( ! JTF) appear to have been very careful not to make any mention of my father’s name in any of the former’s writings. Hume took the credit of my father’s labour and enterprise to himself. ( Quite unfair ! Filial loyalty ? sour grapes ? - JTF ) My father endured many hardships through that part of the country ere he took his kinsman by marriage with him ( rather tenuous - Hamilton Hume’s father, Andrew Hamilton Hume had married Elizabeth More Kennedy in 1796. It was John grandson of her brother James Raworth Kennedy who married Caroline Catapodi - John Byrne’s half-sister – in 1813 = JTf ) and my father’s name is omitted from nearly all Australian history; and yet he was one of its greatest heroes. He was a quiet, retiring man and did not push himself forward to gain honours. On one occasion, before I was born, however, a certain man with a few others came up to Lake George and took illegal possession of his sister’s ( Mrs Kennedy’s) property after her husband’s death. ( Francis KENNY - NOT ‘Kennedy’ - died quite young in the late 1830s. Rated one of the ten richest men in NSW at the time, he names his wife Mary (1805-1848) and Thomas Hammond (husband of Mary Byrne’s sister Anne - and so, also, brother-in-law of John Byrne, subject of this article, as beneficiaries, It would appear that Thomas was seeking to override Mary’s interests in her husband’s estate. Litigation over the terms of the will went on for several decades… JTF) My father gathered a few of the neighbours and proceeded to Lake George to put the intruders out of possession. They had a shooting match, and my father lost one eye and got a bullet in his back which never could be extracted. At times he suffered severely but he lived to the age of 84 years ( actually, 86 - b.4.10.1802 d.11.10.1888 - JTF) strong and hearty, and did all his own farm work till a few weeks before he died; and his death was then caused by stepping into a deep hole and hurting his spine.He was the eldest son of Billy O’Byrne of Ballmena (Ballymanus – JTF), chief of the Wicklow Mountain in the ’98 uprising. ( In other places, Mary asserts that John’s father, her grandfather - and of course my 3 X great-grandfather - was known as ‘Patrick’ rather than ‘Billy’ in Australia. Note that the famous Billy O’Byrne was executed for ‘high treason’ in Wicklow Town on September, 1799. In 1900. a statue in his honour, as well as memorials to ’98 United Irishmen, Michael Dwyer, General William Holt & William Michael Byrne, was erected in Market Square, Wicklow. So nothing to do with our Patrick, convicted as a ‘Defender’ in Carlow in March, 1795, and transported on the Marquis Cornwallis to arrive in Sydney in 1796, aged 20 i.e. born c.1775, the year of Billy’s birth - and possibly leading to the assertion that Patrick was actually the “Billy’ ? JTF) There were two brothers, Thomas and James (here Mary is referring to the two youngest sons of Sarah & her last husband, William Sykes - JTF) Thomas was thrown off a horse and died. (Elsewhere e.g ‘Branching Out’, Amy Humphries, private circulation, we find he drowned , 1836 - JTF) James, in throwing weights, hurt himself and also died (1836 - JTF) That left of the family four daughters and two sons - my father and his brother William ( who died in Princes St, Sydney, nearly two years ago. He was born after his father’s death and his father left it as his deathbed request that, if a son was born, he was to be called William. My grandfather got a severe cold while on duty and died, but he had the pleasure of fulfilling his mission - namely, of gaining for Michael Dwyer his freedom, ( This quite fanciful : Michael Dwyer, the ‘Wicklow Chieftain’ came to prominence in the ’98 insurrection, conducting guerilla warfare against the British from 1798 until 1803 when he was interned in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, capitulating on condition of being assured a safe passage for himself & family to America. The authorities reneged, sending them as free settlers to Australia, Michael was surprisingly awarded 100 acres on Cabramatta Creek (Sydney) and was Chief of Police for the Liverpool district from 1813 until 1820 - when he was demoted for drunkenness ! He died a few years later, to be buried in the Devonshire Cemetery. When this was resumed for construction of Central Railway Station, the remains were re-interred in a magnificent monument in Waverley Cemetery, the cortege attracting the largest number of attendees ever seen in Sydney. The monument is the focal point for the local Irish community each Easter ( other than in Coronavirus dire days) = JTF) In NSW my father and Michael Dwyer did not live very far apart - Michael Dwyer on the Bungendore side of Lake George and my father on the Spring Valley side - so that both families grew up in the friendships as our grandparents lived. ( misleading : it was Michael Dwyer Jnr, son of the Michael above, who had the ‘Harp Hotel’ in Bungendore - JTF). My grandfather married a Miss Best, whose father was a baronet but who died leaving neither title nor fortune behind him. My grandmother was a Church of England lady. ( ‘Two assertions which I am encountering for the first time - and doubt ! More research required ‘ Miss Best’ had a very colourful history : born in 1774, Sarah married John Roberts alias Collin Reculist in her early twenties. With him hanged in London in 1797, she entered a de facto relationship with a married Greek, Peter Catapodi alias Brown, bearing him a daughter, Caroline. Convicted for larceny & possession of counterfeiting plates, she & Caroline were deported, arriving on Britannia III in July, 1798. The following year, she married Patrick Byrne. The offspring comprise Matilda, my 2 X gt grandmother ( 1801-1899), John (1802-1888), Mary (1805-1848), Ann (1806-1885) and William (1808-1906). With Patrick’s death in 1808, she took up with Londoner convict William Sykes, bearing him three sons - George (1810-1903), Thomas (1812-1836) & James (1815-1836) – JTF ) No priest being in the country, all the children were brought up in the Church of England. But my grandfather always instilled into the mind of my father that he had fought for the Faith and would die for the Faith, ( a tad poetic licence here, I think : after all, John was only seven when his father died. - JTF) Father became a great friend of Father Therry and would lead him on sick calls through the bush with the candle bark that falls from the white gum trees and would go with Father Therry in disguise into the prisons and hospitals, and each time Father Therry was captured and sent back a prisoner ( ! JTF) father kept his vestments and all articles required for Holy Mass. Three times he was sent back and on the last occasion father was away but came home late in the evening. To his great surprise, he found a lot of friends had found the vestments and one man, a wealthy settler, had them on and was pretending to hear confessions and making the young folks jump over the broom to be married. Father was in a great way. He gathered up the vestments, put them away and told Father Therry what (had) happened. Father Therry replied ‘ Never mind; his fortune may perish and go like chaff before the wind’. Father and his mother and the rest of the family lived at Appin where my uncle William was born. ( Not so : William was born in Parramatta in 1808 – several years before William Sykes & recently-wed Sarah established themselves & large family in Appin - JTF) Soon after the event referred to ( ? JTF) my father picked up a poor man’s Catechism and became a Catholic; then his mother and three of his sisters and youngest brother. ( IF ‘the event referred to’ means the wanton use of Fr Therry’s vestments, then the timeline of the rather fanciful conversion to Catholicism looks rather shaky - JTF). My grandfather went by the name of Patrick Byrne in Australia. (See above - JTF) The Freeman’s Journal, 4 June, 1908, p. 19With reference to the death of Mrs Ann Byrne of Spring Valley, Goulburn, particulars of which appeared in our issue of the 28th, we have received a communication from the deceased’s daughter, Mrs Mary Johnson, ‘Ballarat’, Walker St, North Sydney, in which she states her mother was born in Kent St, Sydney, near the barracks, in the same year as the late Queen Victoria, namely on Feb.24, 1819. Her father (i.e. Mary Johnson’s father John ) was born in Parramatta in the year 1803 ( Not so … 1802 b. 4 Oct., Bapt. 24 Oct., St John’s - JTF) and his father was known as Patrick Byrne in Australia but in Ireland as Billy O’Byrne (See preceding article – JTF) one who figured prominently in the ’98 movement and who was bosom friend of Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow Chief. ( Here I think Mary Johnson is confusing Patrick Byrne with my great-great grandfather, James Byrne (1769-1849) on a different Byrne line - the two Byrne lines were conjoined with the marriage in 1851 of my great grandfather Patrick (1826-1899)( son of James) to Mary Carey (granddaughter of Patrick (1775-1808). For his part in the ’98 insurrection, James was transported to Australia on the Anne in 1801 and in time settled his family as neighbours to the Sykes in Appin and later at Long Corner, Kennys Point near Spring Valley - JTF) Mr Byrne was married to Ann Healy in 1834 at little St Mary’s Church, Sydney, by Father Therry, who was Miss Healy’s godfather. (More likely, married in Goulburn where Ann’s father had established a brewery / hotel in 1830. The marriage would have been written into the register held at St Mary’s Church – Cathedral after 1836, with the arrival of Bishop Bede Polding - JTF). After the birth of their first daughter in Goulburn, Mr and Mrs Byrne went to reside at Quadron Flats / Spring Valley (Note : John Byrne had settled there, the first white man to do so in those parts, in the early 1820s - JTF) where sixteen children – seven daughters and nine sons were born of whom there are surviving Francis, Thomas, Edwin, Edward, and George (sons) and Mesdames Agnes Barden, Mary Johnson, Amelia Cartwright and Alvina Unwin (daughters). Mrs Byrne also leaves over 50 grandchildren and a number of great-grandchildren. Hume, the explorer, married Mr Byrne’s niece ( Not so - see explanation in preceding article - JTF) and other members of the family were married to Messrs Mr Frank Kenney (Kenny – JTF) Mr Thomas Hammond ( Campbelltown) and Mr John Carey. Mr William Byrne of Princes St, Sydney, was Mr John Byrne’s youngest brother and Mr George Sykes his half-brother. Mr and Mrs Byrne’s married life, extending over sixty years, was an exceptionally happy one. Our correspondent adds ‘ My dear mother said, just before she died, to one of her grandchildren “ I am ready to depart now. I have fulfilled my duty to God and to the State”. A nobler or more charitable couple never broke the world’s bread. No one ever left their door empty-handed, though at the time of the diggings, they would count a hundred in one day. If there was nothing left, mother would dig a few potatoes. Better parents never walked and we, their surviving children, had the consolation of seeing them die happy, fortified by the rites of Holy Church, and every comfort that God could bestow on the just. ................
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