James and Mary CARR lived Drumwood 1850s

Hi Christine,

Thank you very much for your message. I hope that someone who has information on this family makes a connection with you and helps you confirm your research.

In the meantime have you tried looking in to emigration records to see if you can find the Australia/New Zealand link? The University of Woolongong has produced, on microfiche, a complete index and transcript of all information concerning immigrants of Irish origin recorded on ships' passenger lists between 1848 and 1867 for New South Wales. The Public Record Office of Victoria has good online databases of settlers at www.prov.vic.gov.au Otherwise, other records may be found in the Colonial Office Papers of the UK National Archives, class reference CO 201. This class contains a wide variety of records, including petitions for assisted passages, emigrants' lists, records of emigrants on board ship, petitions from settlers for financial assistance and much more.

Please be patient - as our programme has only begun to rollout across the island of Ireland and volunteers in some areas may not yet be organized.

Kind regards,    

Genealogy Support

Hi Emma,

Thank you very much for replying to my query. It is great to have such a forum and I am used to being patient as my quest has been a work in progress for a very long time.

I have found these siblings arriving in Sydney. John was the first to arrive in 1863 followed by James in 1866 with Denis and the girls arriving later in 1874 on the Samuel Plimsoll.  This is what alerted me to the possibility that this is the family that I am interested in. By the time of the later arrival in 1874 it was noted that the parents were dead. Although their brother James paid £5 each for their passage I wonder if they received some assistance from the parish towards other costs associated with the voyage e.g. clothing and if so whether there would be a record of such - perhaps a note in the church records.

It is a longshot but I would be interested to know if any of the siblings kept in touch with any of their relatives back in Tipperary. The younger children possibly attended school in Tipperary as the notes upon their arrival indicate that some of the siblings were able to read and write. I have managed to locate all of the siblings in New South Wales except for Catherine and she is the person that I am primarily interested in.

In my family tree I have a Catherine CARR who like the above Catherine was born in Tipperary about 1845 to a James and Mary CARR.  This Catherine arrived in New Zealand about 1875 and married my ancestor.  Her 'official' marriage entry gives her mother's name as Mary DOWNIE but this is a transcription of the information obtained by the Registrar at the time of marriage. Like the Catherine who arrived in Sydney my Catherine was of farming stock and married into a farming family.

So apart from locating family information back in Tipperary I am also keen to identify any family links that would help identify any possible reason that Catherine would have gone to New Zealand when her siblings remained in New South Wales.  One possibility would have been her age and likelihood of finding employment. Post the goldrush New Zealand and Otago in particular had a shortage of women which prompted the government to offer free passage to single woman in particular and Catherine may have been considered too old to retrain for work as a domestic servant in Sydney.

I have done quite a lot of research in Australia mainly from records that are available online and have made several attempts to contact the decendents of James CARR and Mary DONNELL in Australia and while I have had some limited success the information that they have is sketchy as regards earlier generations. I do know that two of the brothers died without producing any offspring and one of the daughters died relatively young leaving behing a young family.

Ideally I am after any information that would prove that this is my family and to find out what life was like for them in Ireland before they left.  My gut feeling tells me that the CARR surname was by no means common in this part of Ireland and the likelihood of there being two people named Catherine CARR who were born in Tipperary about 1845 to a James and Mary CARR and who being unmarried at the age of 29 emigrated to the same part of the world at about the same time is rather remote but of course stranger things have happened.

So while I am clutching at straws any piece of information no matter how small will help build up a bigger picture and may just provide the clue that I am looking for.

Regards,

Christine