52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks  2025

 

Week 3 - Nickname

 

Dad really did not want any of his children to have a nickname.  Accordingly, we were given safe mid-20^th century names that either couldn’t be tampered with (Jill, John) or had inoffensive diminutives (Jenny, Libby, Margie, Mike).

This was despite his own name being a nickname.  Christened Norman John he does not appear to have ever answered to that name.  When he was still a baby, one of his grandfathers called him “Bill” and he was Bill ever after.  Most people didn’t even know his “real” name.

I think this antipathy stemmed from the nicknames in his mother’s family which seem to have been bestowed in childhood and stuck – even when they became slightly silly and then, in old age, ridiculous.

The first boy born to his mother’s parents came after four girls and was named Charles after both his grandfathers.  He was known as Boy all his life, Uncle Boy to my father.

There were seven children in this family and two others had baby nicknames that lasted.  The third girl was Eliza – always called Weenie or Ween.  I didn’t know her proper name until I began doing the family history.  The baby of the family was Mabel, known as Sis.  In an article in the Northern Star newspaper, she is described as “Mrs Sis Day”.

The eldest of that family was Nellie (Ellen).  When talking about his abhorrence of nicknames, Dad always used this example – her daughter Florence Alice was dubbed “Bub” as a baby and still called Bub when she died at 87.  Her wedding announcement in The Land on 29 Dec 1939 read:

“Murwillumbah: Bub, daughter of Mr. and Mrs Vic Lehmann, of, Lismore, and Charlie, only son of Mrs. McLean, of Coraki.:”

Bub was a talented florist and is mentioned in quite a few stories in the Northern Star, either as Bub or Alice.

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - 2025

Week 2 - Favourite Photo

 

Figure 1 Elsie Barnes (nee Morgan) 1920s

 

I have chosen to write about this photo of my great aunt Elsie, who had no children and perhaps now is only remembered by the children of her nieces and nephews.  I remember her only as an old lady, but she was much loved by my mother who told us many stories about her.

Elsie May Morgan was born in Surry Hills, an inner suburb of Sydney, NSW on 11 April 1884.  She was the third child of George Frederick Power Morgan and his wife Mary Jane (nee Black).  Her older siblings were Max (born 1881) and Josephine (1882) and in 1886 a little brother, Edward, was born.

Elsie’s world was torn apart by events in 1887.  Her brother Max died after being hit by a cart in the street.  Sometime – either just before or just after this – she and her sister Josephine were taken to live with their paternal aunt (also Josephine) and her family in Summer Hill, Sydney.  Her mother took the baby and apparently disappeared – we think the children never saw her again.

Josephine and Elsie were absorbed into the large and loving Fleming household.  Their aunt Josephine and her husband William Fleming had been married only eight years and already had six children when they took their nieces in.  The girls’ grandmother Bedelia Morgan, who had been widowed in 1880, also lived with them.

What a generous couple they must have been.  Josephine and Elsie were absorbed into their growing family (there were five more children born between 1888 – 1899) and the two women spoke lovingly of their “Aunt Sis” all their lives.  

The girls also lost touch with their father when they were quite small, as they grew up believing they were orphans.  In fact, George did not die until 1921.  Their mother went on to have two more “marriages”, at least one of which was bigamous, and when they learnt of her death in 1933 Josie and Elsie discovered a whole new family of half siblings.

By this time both were married.  Josephine (my grandmother) married Fred Whitten in 1911, and we believe that this photo was taken at their property, “Woodstock” near Quirindi, NSW.  Elsie probably met Jack Barnes during a visit to her sister as he and Fred had known each other since childhood.

Elsie had stayed in Sydney after her sister married and was working at a store in Ashfield (my mother thought it was a drapery).  She was a member of the Ashfield Philharmonic Society and had also been a dancer.  My mother recalled a photo of her in costume with one leg straight up the wall – she thought it was amazing!  I have also found accounts of her performances with the Railway and Tramway Musical Society, including one in which she sang the role of Pitti Sing, one of the “Three Little Maids from School” in “The Mikado”.

Elsie was 42 and Jack 37 when they married so there were no children.  In some ways they seem to have been ill matched.  She was a city girl who loved music and dancing, and he was a country boy who had barely left the area in which he was born.  There is a story told by my aunt that he was embarrassed by a performance she gave once so he seems not to have appreciated her talents.

Her nieces loved her.  My mother and her sister Joan especially loved and always remembered her laughter and singing and kindness to them and mourned her death, which came in March 1974 at the age of 90.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025

Week 1 – Beginnings

 Figure 1 Statue of Grace O'Malley in the grounds of Westport House, Co Mayo, Ireland

Last year, I became aware of my earliest ancestor for whom I have a name. She is my 13 x great grandmother, so she has hundreds, maybe thousands, of descendants.  She is also one of the most famous women of her time in Ireland – Grace O’Malley.

Also known as Grainne or Granuaile, Grace was born in about 1530 and died in 1603.    The O’Malleys were a formidable clan with lands around Clew Bay (in County Mayo).  To protect themselves by sea and land, they built a chain of castles and the principal seat at the time of Grace’s birth was Belclare Castle.  There were four other castles, including one near the present Westport House, which was built by one of her descendants.

Ireland at this time was largely unaffected by the Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12^th century – this was confined to Dublin and the Pale,* a small area stretching north, south and west of the city.  There were about 60 counties and no central authority (as in Tudor England) so inter-clan warfare was endemic. 

All this changed when Henry declared himself King of Ireland in 1541, having become increasingly concerned about the threat on his western flank of a country still Catholic and with strong ties to Spain, France and Scotland.

The O’Malleys, in the far northwest of the country were wealthy owners of cattle and sheep and were expert fishermen. They were also traders and pirates.  The seasons and the sea dictated the ebb and flow of life, and there are stories that Grace became an expert sailor before her first marriage.

Not much is known of Grace’s early life, but we do know that she had a good education.  It is clear from her correspondence that she had been taught Latin and had a shrewd and knowledgeable mind.  She is credited with having conversed in Latin in her audience in 1593 with Queen Elizabeth I

At about 16, Grace was married off to Donal O’Flaherty, a son of the clan who were rulers of a vast area approximately equivalent to modern day Connemara.  She bore him two sons, Owen and Murrough, and a daughter Margaret.

Donal was a belligerent warlord, but Grace herself was not a stay-at-home wife.   She is said to have superseded him in his authority over his clan and she gradually became known as the force behind a growing fleet of ships plying the coast north of Galway. 

There is no official record of Donal’s death, but afterwards Grace returned to her father’s territory (taking many O’Flaherty men with her) and settled on Clare Island.  From there, with a flotilla of at least three galleys and a number of smaller boats, she launched herself on a career of plunder and piracy, which she euphemistically described as, “maintenance by land and sea.” It looks more like a protection racket.  The captains of ships coming into Galway had the choice of either paying a toll in goods or kind or being blown out of the water by the boatload of clansmen who backed up her threat.

When her father died (date unknown), most of the O’Malley fleet seems to have come under her control and she appears to have been the de facto leader of the clan.  By the end of the 1560s she is credited with having control of almost the entire west coast of Ireland.

Her reputation as the “Pirate Queen of Ireland” stems from this time.

Grace must have realised, as England gained more control over Ireland that she would eventually have to negotiate, and that the English would not negotiate with a woman.  She needed a strong man to marry.

Shrewdly, she chose well – Richard-an Irainn Bourke – a powerful chieftain whose land bordered the O’Malley’s to the north. She bore him a son, Tibbot (Theobald), and remained married to him for the rest of her life.  While he was undoubtedly a brave soldier, he left the political strategizing to his wife, and in English documents of the time he is referred to as, “the husband of Grainy O’Maily” #

This particular document is an account of the meeting in March 1577 between Grace (and Richard) and Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland and father of the poet Sir Philip Sidney who was also present.  He described her as “the most notorious woman in all the costes of Ireland”#

Believing herself to have put everything right between her and the English administration, Grace was nevertheless shortly afterwards captured by the Earl of Desmond and imprisoned, first in Limerick Gaol and then in Dublin Castle – the Irish equivalent of the Tower of London.  Suddenly released without charge in 1579, she returned to Rockfleet Castle and seems to have kept out of trouble in the next few years.

Richard continued to battle for recognition and was finally recognised in Letters patent from Queen Elizabeth+ as “chief of his clan”.  She also conferred upon him an English knighthood.  However, he did not live long to enjoy his newfound status as he died, apparently of natural causes, on 30 April 1583.  Grace was 53, and she quickly established her claim to one third of Richard’s property and installed their son Tibbot on his father’s estate.

In 1584 Sir Richard Bingham became the new Governor of Connaught – he was inflexible and racist towards the Irish and in the following year he arrested and imprisoned Tibbot in Ballymote Castle and was complicit in the murder of Grace’s eldest son, Owen. 

It was a relief when Bingham was ordered to Flanders by Elizabeth I, and Grace subsequently sued for a pardon, which was granted to her as well as to her sons Murrough and Tibbot, and her daughter Margaret, but the war was not over.  Bingham returned in 1588 and four years of bloody rebellion against him continued, with Grace’s stepson Edmund (Bourke) and Tibbot the last chieftains to hold out against him.

The English forces were too strong.  In September 1592 Tibbot surrendered and an uneasy peace descended on Mayo, Grace, now an old woman in her 60s, (an astonishing age for the times, especially given her perilous life) had lost her power and her wealth.

But she was not done yet!

She petitioned Queen Elizabeth in 1593.

 She wrote (probably in Latin although the relevant State papers are in English) that she was, “forced to make head against her neighbours who in like manner constrained your highness fond subject to take arms and by force to maintain herself and her people by sea and land the space of forty years past.”

The Queen’s emissary, Lord Cecil, put to her the famous eighteen “Articles of Interrogatory”, all of which questions had to be answered if she was to stand a chance of an audience.  This was granted to her and it probably took place toward the end of July 1593 at one of the Queen’s Summer Palaces.

London in 1593 was a fearful place; afraid of another attack by Spain, swarming with refugees fleeing from religious persecution on the Continent and in the grip of plague. 

There is no official account of what took place when the two women met, and it was several weeks before the Queen responded.  Her letter to Bingham required that he, “ deal with her sons in our name and to yield to her some maintenance..”  She trusted that Bingham “shall in your favour in all their good causes protect them to live in peace to enjoy their livelihoods.”*  We can imagine that Bingham was reluctant but eventually he released Tibbot.  Grace set about acquiring three new galleys.

From this time until Grace’s death (about 1603) she appears only occasionally in the annals of the ongoing fight between the Irish and the invading English.  Her son Tibbot fought on, occasionally changing sides as it suited his cause.  By 1603, when James I acceded to the English throne, Tibbot was the largest landowner in County Mayo.  He was now Sir Tibbot Bourke and in 1627 he was made Viscount Mayo by Charles I.

 

 Westport House in County Mayo was the seat of the Browne dynasty, Marquesses of Sligo, direct descendants of Grace O’Malley.  The current house was built close to the site of an O’Malley fort.  The original house was built by Colonel John Browne, and his wife Maud Bourke.  Maud was Grace’s great-great granddaughter and my 9 x great grandmother.

 

·* * Thus “beyond the Pale”

·         # Lambeth Palace Papers quoted in “Granuaille: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley by Anne Chambers.

·         #Ibid

·         + held at Westport House        

 * *   Cecil Papers quoted in Pirate Queen by Judith Cook p157 

52 Ancestors 2023 - Week 4 - Education

 

52 Ancestors 2023 – Week 4 – Education

 

This prompt seems like an opportunity to write about the “great Gowrie school feud” of 1886, recorded in a series of letters now held in the State Archives of NSW.

The small file containing copies of these letters came to me on my mother’s death in 2018, and I found them fascinating.

Gowrie was a small school attended at the time by about 30 children, including the family of Henry and Eliza Whitten (nee Mason)# whose property, “Spring Creek” was in the Gowrie area.

The first letter in the file is dated 14 May 1886 and it comes from John Riely, teacher at Gowrie School.  It’s addressed to the District Inspector of Schools at Tamworth.

In beautiful handwriting, it describes an enclosed letter, from “Mr H Whitten” as “insulting and libellous”, strenuously denies the allegations it contains, and requests an impartial investigation.  He notes that Mr Whitten has never visited the school to “enquire into the truth or otherwise expressed dissatisfaction.”

Henry Whitten’s letter begins, “Sir it has come to my knowledge yesterday the way you have been teaching my children at school lately. It seems you blame our child Annie for not working her sum herself in her Book and abused and terrified the child with threats of dismissal from the school and other punishment…you have marked her a liar.”

Riely’s reply states that he “never wronged a child” and suggests that the proper course of action might have been for Henry to come to the school to discuss the matter.  He also suggests that Henry has been misled.

 On 15 May, a letter to the Inspector, written by Henry, was signed by 7 parents, who accounted for 25 of the pupils at the school.  It was accompanied by another letter from Henry which accuses Mr Riely of “immorality”

The situation worsened on 25 May when there was another letter from Mr Riely to the District Inspector to advise him that he had that day suspended two pupils – John Whitten, aged 16 and Roland Richard Whitten aged 14, pending an investigation.  

He writes, “R. R. Whitten has been convicted of pouring into the ears of the younger children the vilest obscenity.  Mr Whitten senior only sent these boys for a day or two, to create mischief” *

He goes on to say this:

“I have grave reasons to suspect that hostile ecclesiastical influence is at the bottom of the whole affair.”

(I suspect he might be right.  Mr Riely was a Catholic.  Henry, like all the Whittens was a Methodist of the most earnest kind –  non-drinking, non-dancing, non-gambling and probably anti-Catholic)

In his letter about the suspension to Henry, Mr Riely accuses him of encouraging the boys to rebel against his discipline and says that they have been guilty of “repeated breaches of Regulation 125 viz: gross insolence, persistent disobedience and profanity”.

The report of the Inspector deals with Mr Riely’s alleged “uncouth language”.  This seems to consist of the use of two nicknames – “long legged kangaroo” (of John Whitten) and “Billy the Bullock” (of Richard Rowland Whitten).  He also used the expletive “By thunder”.

Several children were called as witnesses and their evidence is included in the file.  Most say they have heard the teacher use the nicknames for the boys, but none make any complaints and there is no other incriminating evidence.  One boy, Michael Hough, whose father signed the petition, concludes his statement with:

“By Mr Riely I have never been punished unless I deserved it, and not always then.”

Even John Whitten, who complains of the nickname, says, “I have never heard Mr Riely say or do anything worse than what I have heard”.

It was enough for the Chief Inspector.  He wrote to the District Inspector on 28 May to advise that John and Richard Rowland had been hastily dismissed and should be reinstated.

And then on 15 June a final judgement delivered to the District Inspector:

“Mr Riely has been informed that his conduct in calling pupils by such names as “Kangaroo” and “Billy the Bullock” is highly objectionable and unjustifiable and must not be repeated.

In view of Mr Riely’s unpopularity with a large section of the parents the Minister deems it desirable in the interests of the school to remove him to another locality.  It is accordingly requested that you will submit arrangements for his removal as soon as practicable.”

Signed: J.C Maynard

Chief Inspector

All of this seems like a storm in a teacup now, but it nevertheless galvanised this small community to the point where a teacher was removed from his position and made to relocate.  We don’t know whether this was a welcome intervention or not, or the affect it had on his family.  Perhaps he was relieved to be quit of them all.

One of the great ironies in all this is that John Whitten was actually known as “Long John” within the family and is recorded that way in numerous family histories.  It’s hard to see why he and his father regarded the teacher’s nickname for him as such an insult.

 

# Henry was the brother of my Great grandfather, Anthony Whitten. His wife Eliza was the sister of Anthony’s wife, Charlotte.  Their children at the school were John (16), Roland Richard (14), Annie (12), Fanny (10) and Henry (8)

*My italics.  It does seem to me that both of these boys are of an age when they would normally be working on the farm and not at school.