Laurence Blade

My great great grandfather was Laurence Blade, born about 1820/1821 in Lisheen, Ballymacward. His father was John Blade and his nmother was Honora Coffey.

Laurence emigrated to Australia in 1842, His older brother, John, also emigrated to Australi, proably at the same time or a little earlier. Laurence appears to have moved around a lot. Shipping records show him being in Sydney NSW, Launceston Tasmania, Portland Bay Victoria. and Adelaide South Australia.

Sometime after 1847 he travelled to South Africa. He was joined there by Ann Cullen, who was also came from Ballymacward. A month after she arrived, they married in Tongaat, Natal, South Africa on 21 November 1849. They had one daughter, Margaret Julia, who was born in 1850 or 1851 in Natal (now Durban), South Africa.

In April 1853, his wife, Ann, arrived in Melbourne, posting advertisements in the local paper seeking Laurence. It appears that their daughter, Margaret Julia, was not with either of her parents at that date. Family legend has it that Margaret was fostered out to a Jewish family in South Africa.

I can find no trace of Laurence after 1853. 

Margaret Julia later arrived in New Zealand and married my great grandfather, Alexander Colin McKenzie on 19 December 1872.  

Margaret and Alexander McKenzie had 6 children. Only one of them had children of their own - my grandmother Jane Robertson McKenzie. The whole McKenzie family emigrated from New Zealand to California in 1904 where Margaret died on 19 December 1924, aged 74 years, on her 52nd wedding anniversary.

I would love to find out more about the Blade, Cullen and Coffey families in Ballymacward, and why Laurence left his wife and child behind in South Africa, and where he went after 1853!