John Kitchen : Short Biography

John Kitchen married Mary Kelly in Ireland in about the year 1840; they were Catholics. My father believed that the Kitchins were from County Cork, but it was in Kings County, now County Offaly, that John and Mary’s children were born. All four children that I know of were born in the town of Parsonstown, now Birr, and the place of birth of the first two was given as Barracks. This was the Crinkle Barracks and it is to be supposed that John Kitchen was in the Third Leinster Brigade, or otherwise associated with the military. In 1853 the family was living in the townland of Ballinree as shown in the Ireland Valuation Book. The barracks were located directly adjacent to Ballinree townland.

George was born in 1842, Mary in 1844, Joseph in 1846, Elizabeth Mary Catherine in 1849, and Francis Patrick on the 25th of June 1852. There were two more daughters (deduced from newspaper family notices), and possibly other children.

When he was 14 Joseph was in trouble with the law after a large stone was thrown into a house. A boy named Peter Clements was taken into custody and Joseph and another boy were given a summons. Clements was found guilty but Joseph Kitchen and the other boy were acquitted. Joseph was imprisoned twice - once in Tullamore when he was 17 for ‘Endeavouring to Upend a Cart,’ and again in Naas at the age of 19 ‘Charged With Being a Deserter.’ He deserted again at Fermoy in 1870. The 89th Regiment of Foot had been raised in 1793 for service in the Napoleonic Wars; Joseph joined the regiment at the time when it was based at the Crinkle Barracks. When he deserted in July 1867 he had just turned twenty one while Francis Patrick had just turned fifteen. Their father had been dead for eleven years.

John Kitchen died on the 13th of April 1856, just four years after the birth of Francis Patrick. It is quite likely that he was only in his forties. His wife Mary lived for another twenty years, dying on Xmas day 1876, just under a year after Francis Patrick emigrated to South Australia. 

Private Joseph Kitchen died at Wellington, India on 6 April 1871, at the age of twenty four. The 89th had served in India from 1857 to 1865, and then it removed to Ireland where it was based from 1866 to 1870, after which it returned to India. Joseph had joined the regiment during its brief stay in Ireland, and then died soon after its return to India.

Francis Patrick Kitchin, farm labourer, set sail from Plymouth on the Benan on February 19 1876, arriving at Port Adelaide on May 15, eight months before his mother’s death. 

On the 22nd of August 1877, eight months after her mother had died, Elizabeth Kitchin, domestic servant, sailed from Plymouth on the Queen of Nations, arriving at Port Adelaide on the second of December.