#52 Ancestors Week 37 - Mistake

52 Ancestors  Week 37 -  Mistake

I have written many stories about migration and all of them have been about the great and positive changes that moving to Australia brought to all of mine and my husband’s ancestors.  Even, and especially, the convicts who were given opportunities in their new country which would never have been afforded them in 19^th century England and Ireland.

But there was one move to Australia that proved to be a mistake.  Happily, it was reversible.

I wrote ( #52 Ancestors  Week 32 – Sister ) about the three Kilroe sisters who came at different times from Shannonbridge to settle in Australia.  The one sister left behind was Katie.

Katie (Catherine) Kilroe was born in 1880 to Kieran and Kate Kilroe, the fifth of their 8 children who survived infancy.  By the time of the 1911 census, when she was 22, she was living at home with her widowed mother and her unmarried brother William. 

Katie didn’t marry, and she kept house for William, and her other unmarried brother, Keiran (Joe) until their deaths – William in 1954 and then Joe in 1967.  In the 1960s, her niece Kathleen, with her husband Pat, had made a couple of visits back to Ireland and now, concerned that she was facing old age without any family around, they suggested that she might move to Australia to be near them. 

Kathleen (left) and Katie in Shannonbridge about 1965

Katie was about 68 when she made the move to Australia, and despite everyone’s good intentions, it was not a success.  She missed the village where she had spent her whole life.  She missed the Irish weather (!) – Lismore is very hot and humid in summer and she found that unbearable.

Reluctantly, it had to be admitted that the move was a mistake.  Within two years, Katie returned to Shannonbridge where she hoped to live out her life.  Unfortunately the worst fears of the family came to pass – she became unable to care for herself at home and had to be admitted to a nursing home away from the village.  She died there at the age of 95 and is buried with her brothers at Clonmacnois.  Her only memorial there is the headstone she erected for her two brothers, but if you ask about Katie at Killeen’s Pub, they can show you her house and tell you a few stories.