Thomas Fitzpatrick - Newry to Victoria, Aust 1850s

Searching for the origins of Thomas Fitzpatrick who came to Victoria, Australia by the early 1850s from Newry, Co Down. I have no information on date or place of arrival or the ship or whether he came out under some assistance programme. I believe his siblings included Michael, James, and William (see below).

His Catholic marriage certificate from Melbourne on 26 Nov 1853 gives his age as 24, bachelor, tradesman from Bendigo Victoria, and parents Thos and Rose Fitzpatrick. Thomas senr was said to be a Farmer.  Later Thomas was an Innkeeper, a miner in Victoria and finally a road & telegraph line construction contractor in NSW.

His spouse was Margaret Hannon, age 21, Spinster, of Melbourne Victoria, born in Co Wicklow, Ireland.  Her parents were Matthew and Eliza Hannon, Farmers, according to the marriage data.

Margaret and Thomas has several children around the goldfields of Bendigo and then moved to Tantawangalo in the south coast of New South Wales near Candelo.  There they had more children and Thomas was a road construction contractor and also built telegraph lines for the government. There are several newspaper articles about his work including court battles over payments.

Their children, as best we can decide, were Mary Ann (b. 1854, d. 1939), Elizabeth (b. 1857), Thomas (b. 1858, d. 1859), Margaret (b. 1859, d. 1927), Rose or Rosanna (b. 1862), William (b. 1864) and Thomas Joseph (b. 1867, d. 1926).

Newspaper articles can be found about Thomas between 1865 and 1869 but not thereafter.  Family hearsay is that Thomas may have been killed by natives in Fiji in the 1870s. Searches so far of Fijian information provides no confirmation of his death or presence over in Fiji but it was a turbulent time there between 1870 and 1874. His youngest son’s marriage announcement in 1892 says he is the son of the late Thomas Fitzpatrick of Viti Levu.

We know quite a lot about some of the children and their descendants but not others.  So far we have no other reports relating to his death or that of wife Margaret, apart from her death registration certificate attested to by her eldest daughters, by then married.

However, a really interesting piece was found in an old Perth newspaper.  It is a request from British newspapers for information about the fate of both Thomas and Margaret in 1902.

Ex Sunday Times (Perth, West Aust) 5th October 1902, page 2

The article was captioned “Missing Friends’ and started –

Below we give a list of the missing in Australia, compiled from the latest English, Irish and Scottish journals. Any person who can give information concerning those wanted is kindly requested to send particulars to the Editor of THE SUNDAY TIMES, Perth. The intelligence will then be forwarded to the paper in which the enquiry first appeared. ….

FITZPATRICK.—The relatives of Thomas Fitzpatrick, a native of County Down. Went to Australia over 45 years ago. Had three brothers—Michael, James, and William.

This would indicate that he came to Australia before 1857 which his marriage certificate confirms.

The associated information about Margaret Hannon said she went to Australia prior to 1853 but gives no indication that they knew she had married, except that the Fitzpatrick request was in the same newspaper article along with others.  This may be pure coincidence.

Other information about Thomas that we have comes from children’s birth registrations that were sometimes provided by him.  They sometimes vary the parent’s ages a little bit but, in one case, the certificate says that Thomas was from Newry which is more specific than Co Down  Another said he was from Bally ---, possibly Ballyslan, Ireland.  I have been unable to find such a village name in Ireland although there are plenty starting with Bally around Newry, as well as many Fitzpatricks. Griffiths valuation records have a Thomas Fitzpatrick at Ballyholland in Newry parish.  Is he his father?  There is no guarantee that he was residing around there just prior to emigrating.

We know a fair bit about Thomas’s work from newspapers in Australia but nothing about a possible involvement in Fiji. He may have even just abandoned his family for some reason, such as fleeing from the law, and begun a second life elsewhere in the world.  Presumably he did not maintain contact with his brothers back in Ireland – that presumes that they all stayed there and some of them did not emigrate too?  Thomas would have been in his early 40s when he disappears. Our guess is late 1820s for his birth year.

We seek information about his Fitzpatrick family from Co Down as well as baptismal or birth information that is truly about him.  We know nothing about his Irish roots apart from his parent’s names and probably that of 3 brothers.  We are not even sure of his mother’s maiden name but suspect it was Garvey.  What ship did he travel to Australia on and when?  His youngest son, Thomas Joseph, worked for a time in London in the early 1900s for an insurance company before settling with family in Perth thereafter. Whether that son made any contact with his father’s Irish family while in London is not known and it is pure speculation that the 1902 newspaper advertisements may have been inspired by his London travels.