‘A little German girl about ten years old … [left his service] because of the brutal treatment she received at the hands of her mistress, who was in the habit of beating her with a whip … [ she then] showed a large sore on her leg which she swore had been occasioned by the blow of a whip.’ This news item, from the 3 December 1864 edition of the North Australian, was of a court case held in Brisbane … Continue reading
Meet the culprit…the source of so much angst and hours of trolling, delving up hill and down dale through mountains of paperwork and never-ending websites. Searching… searching… and more searching. Sleepless nights of wondering… just where did my Maggie go? Come on Aunt, show yourself… you know… the ‘real’ you. The tricky, cheeky, and suddenly evaporated Margaret Waters. The elusive entity, crossed between the wonderful family loving young woman and femme de frustration. A Croake to a Keogh! Now, meet … Continue reading
Shipping was the lifeblood of the colony of Moreton Bay. Through the convict period and the early years of free settlement, everything including people and animals came by sea. The sheltered bay was a highway for local shipping traffic. Quarantine stations, pilot stations, and outlying settlements all required a regular service. Sailing vessels of all sorts and sizes plied the coastal route from Sydney to Brisbane, stopping along the way to deliver goods and collect valuable loads of timber. In … Continue reading
One very small sentence – ‘Brother in N.S.W.’ And so began the search for one ‘William Spooner’ who morphed into one ‘Patrick Toohey’. ‘Say what, that doesn’t make any sense!’ I hear the cry. But it will… be patient… I’ll explain. It was 1856 and that short, nearly illegible line scratched onto the immigration record next to the name of Eliza Butler (nee Spooner/Spunner) ‘brother in N.S.W’, was to lead one merry ‘family history dance’ some 164 years later. Eliza … Continue reading
I’m not really sure whether the moral of this story is “neither a borrower nor a lender be” or “look for the silver lining”! Hugh Irvine, having arrived from County Down on the Roma in 1882 opened his Boot Warehouse in Ferry Street Bulimba in 1887, and in 1888 he and the shop were written up in Volume 2 of the Aldine History of Queensland published in that year.[i] This was obviously impressive for the young man from Killyleagh and … Continue reading
