Kerry Girls by Kay Moloney Caball Read Free Book Online Page A

Ireland. This request bore fruit and in 1826 Raymond emigrated to New South Wales. Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling was asked to provide Raymond with a suitable colonial appointment and, until it became available, to allow him the means of subsistence. 9 In 1829 he was appointed Postmaster General.
    At the time of Margaret’s arrival in February 1850, James Raymond lived in some splendour at Varroville, near Campbelltown, which he had bought from Charles Sturt and there entertained extensively. He died at Darlinghurst on 29 May 1851 aged 65, and was buried at St Peter’s, Cook’s River. He and his wife Aphra had seven daughters and four sons, of whom James and Robert Peel held positions in the Post Office and William was a landholder at Bathurst. However, there are no records that any of these Raymond cousins made any effort to look out for Margaret or to get her any employment. A month after arriving, having been apprenticed to John Beit in Sydney, he asked to be relieved of her ‘because she is insane’. 10 She was then sent on to Moreton Bay and can’t have been too ‘insane’ as she was immediately indentured to the Import Agent and later Chief Constable, G. Watson. Margaret married Patrick Ambrose, an Irish convict, in the Church of England at Ipswich in 1852, and after his death, in 1861, she married again to David Kynoch. Margaret lived until 1912 and died at the ripe old age of 89.
    Another Listowel girl who claimed her father was in Sydney was Bridget (Biddy) Ryan. Biddy was the last name on the list selected by Lieutenant Henry, so we would have to presume that she met the rule of being at least one year in Listowel Workhouse, but on arrival in Sydney she gave her ‘native place’ as Bruff, County Limerick. Her father was called Lancelot (Lanty) Ryan. He had been a soldier but he had been convicted of being a bigamist and, aged 35, he was tried in July 1837 at Limerick Assizes and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. In a report of the court case in the Limerick Chronicle of 12 July 1837, Fr Halpin PP Bruff, stated that he married ‘the prisoner’ to Mary Hynes (Biddy’s mother) in Bruff and F. Lyddy PP, stated that he had married ‘the prisoner’ to Jane Huddy in Abbeyfeale at a later date. ‘Jane Huddy deposed that she had married the prisoner and that six weeks later his former wife walked in with her family’. 11 The convict ship Neptun e which departed Dublin on 27 August 1837 for the 128-day voyage to Sydney listed Lancelot as having two children, one male and one female, he was a soldier labourer, and was blind in his left eye. 12 It is possible that Biddy may not have known of her father’s conviction. He should have served his sentence and got his ticket of leave by 1844 but we have no record of their ever meeting.
    Another interesting ‘selection’ from Listowel was Julia Daly. On arrival at Sydney on Tippoo Saib on 29 July 1850, Julia gives her native place as Tralee and her religion as Church of England. She could read and write and said she was a dressmaker. However, her baptismal certificate giving her father as Henry O’Daly and her mother as Elizabeth Howard is registered at the Catholic parish church in Tralee. Julia Daly was named in a court case reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 13 under the Masters and Servants Act. She was accused of absconding from her employer, a Sydney solicitor named Mr McCulloch of Elizabeth Street, and bringing with her another of the orphans, Mary Connor, also of Listowel. The evidence was not in dispute and it appeared that Captain Morphew, who was the Captain of the Tippoo Saib , on which they had arrived, settled Julia in ‘a furnished house in Newtown’ with Mary Connor as their maid and he had represented Julia as his wife. By the time the case came to court, Captain Morphew had sailed on the return journey to England. While no doubt there were repercussions for his career as a responsible ship’s captain, it was the Irish orphans who