Kerry Girls by Kay Moloney Caball Read Free Book Online

There is no evidence now available that her siblings were alive then, perhaps also in the workhouse, or that they had died from hunger or from one of the many fevers and diseases that swept through the population.
    Mary was one of the lucky girls; she was taken by Surgeon Charles Strutt with 108 others on a journey into the interior of New South Wales where Strutt carefully vetted all the applicants for servants. If he felt that they would not get a good home and be treated properly, he had no compunction if refusing employers or indeed removing the girls to better employers.
    Mary’s great-great-grandson Nathan Brown tells us:

    Mary Griffin was employed by landowner William Grogan of Sawyer’s Flats, near Yass (West of the Burrowa river; east of Sawyer’s Creek; south of Hassall’s Creek; north of the colony’s boundary line) for one year on £8. The land was roughly 9,700 acres and was estimated to have the capability of grazing 400.
    Less than one year later, Mary married William Dixon [Dickson, Dixson] (also of Sawyer’s Flats) on the 2nd March, 1851 at St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, Yass.
    Mary Griffin and William Dixon had two children, Ellen Dixon who was born about 1852 in Yass and died on 4th May in Rye Park, New South Wales. She married David Percival in 1872 at Binalong, New South Wales. David was unusually for the times, a native Australian, born in Sydney in 1845, the son of William Ambrose Percival and Anne Semple. David died at his home in Campbell St., on 24 December 1933 having been stricken down two weeks earlier by a paralytic stroke. He was buried on Christmas Day. Ellen Dixon and David Percival had fourteen children.

    While all the ‘orphans’ experienced loneliness, those who settled in the areas around Yass were probably the most fortunate. A number of Mary’s shipmates from the Thomas Arbuthnot were settled there, including a number of the Dingle girls. The main route from Sydney to Melbourne passed through the town, so it was an important place of commerce and was the centre of widespread Catholic and Anglican parishes. Yass was the place where the families from the outlying areas got together for the big events in life – baptisms, marriages and funerals in the local churches. The settlers in the outlying bush districts also came to Yass a couple of times a year for their supplies.
Listowel
    The Wilson sisters, who were on the Listowel list, also recorded their parents as both dead. The Wilson girls were registered as Church of England and as there are no baptismal certificates for them in the Kerry area, we would have to assume that they were introduced to Listowel Workhouse by one of the Church of England guardians. Margaret Raymond and Julia Daly from Listowel also declared their religion as Church of England.
    We know that Margaret Raymond was not initially selected by Lieutenant Henry, but she seems to have been treated as a special case. On arrival in Sydney, she claims to be a cousin of James Raymond, Postmaster General of Australia. Indeed the records bear out this claim as the truth. Margaret states that her parents were William and Hanora (both dead). There is no Church of England or Catholic baptismal record extant for Margaret but a William Raymond and Honora Barrie are registered as the parents of a William Raymond in the Catholic Parish Church Listowel on 12 February 1828, and it is possible that this is Margaret’s brother. This William Raymond was later married to Anne Reeves and had further children baptised as Anglicans in Listowel. William Raymond’s first cousin, James Raymond, had married and taken up residence in County Limerick but suffered some land troubles. Raymond seems to have had access to some of the most prominent names in the New South Wales colony in the nineteenth century and July 1824 Henry Gouldburn wrote on his behalf to Earl Bathurst, requesting a free passage for Raymond and his family to New South Wales because of their misfortunes in