John Toohey, convict
John Toohey, Convict.
There is debate and uncertainty about
whether John Toohy was born in 1801 or 1809. The latter date is what various
records in Australia show, but Basil Toohey’s extensive research convinces him
that 1801 is more likely, and I will go with that. Whatever date it was, it
occurred in Ballygodboy, now known as Ballygibbon, in County Tipperary,
Ireland, to Mary Noon, age 32, and William Toohy, age 36. Over time, as so often happens, spelling of the surname changes, and these various usages over time will appear here.
John was the third of four children born to
William and Mary, and although at present we do not know William’s occupation,
we can probably assume he was a farmer, the occupation of his son John. To this
day, Ballygibbon remains a rural locality, an apparently rich farming area, not
attached to any particular town or village.
A “farmer” in Ireland in those days is more likely to have been someone
who leased a small amount of land from a larger land-holder, and in good years
had surplus crops, and perhaps animals, to sell. It was very much a life of
subsistence on what you could grow to live on. Lease payments could also be met
by work on the land-holder’s own farming operations.
John was 25 when he married Mary Cahill, or
Skahill, in 1826 in Nenagh, a larger centre in County Tipperary, and within the
“circle of 7 miles” from Ballygibbon in which husbands and wives were generally
found at this time in Ireland. A daughter was born in 1827, but the infant died
the same day and remained un-named. Two years later, in 1829, a son Stephen was
born, and this child would very soon only know the far-away colony of New South
Wales as home.
One year later, in 1830, life changed
completely for the young Toohy family. In the Spring Assizes of that year,
these being the Criminal Courts which operated outside of Dublin, and in this
case, in the months March to May, John was charged and convicted of “stealing
money”. The penalty : transportation to the colony of New South Wales for a
period of 7 years. The amount of money stolen is not recorded, but we know that
transportation was a punishment for many crimes which today we would regard as
minor, if indeed a crime at all.
For comparison, it’s worth having a look at
some of the other crimes punished on that same day. There were three grades of
punishment , being transportation for 7 years, 14 years, or life. Crimes which
attracted 7 years transportation
included : stealing a sheep or a pig, stealing clothes, larceny (stealing
property), manslaughter. Interestingly, manslaughter could also attract a life
transportation sentence, as could highway robbery, and stealing a gelding. The penalty of 14 years transportation was
used sparingly, being applied to crimes such as receiving stolen goods and
larceny from a chapel.
John Toohy’s name is listed in a group of 5 young men, aged
from 21 to 25, all charged with the same crime of stealing money. Were they
working together as some sort of ‘gang’?
Basil Toohey’s research has established that this is “our” John Toohy,
which means that John’s recorded age of 23 on the official record, is
incorrect. He would have been 28 or 29 years old at this time. Interestingly,
one of this group of 5 is a Michael Toohy, but this could not be John’s younger
brother, as he emigrated as a free man to New South Wales in 1841, also
settling in the Goulburn area, and dying in Cootamundra at the fine old age of
86, in 1889.
On 28 August 1830, John Toohy departed Cork
Harbour on the convict ship “Andromeda”, never to again see his native Ireland,
his parents (his father died that same year), or his older brother and sister.
Voyages on the convict ships to the colonies have been well described, from the
ships which were utter hell-holes to those which were relatively benign. We
don’t (yet) know the circumstances of John’s trip, but we do know that he
disembarked at Garden Island in Sydney Harbour on 18 December 1830. What were his thoughts at this first
encounter with this strange, new land - the
heat of a Sydney summer, the strange trees with stunted, mis-shapen leaves and
whose leaves and bark fell off in summer, the first view of a township already
in transition to the city it would become. After near on 50 years of white
settlement, Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens and Hospital had already been opened
back in 1816, the first Sydney Royal Easter Show had launched in 1823, and the
first newspaper, the Sydney Herald, would begin weekly publication the
following year, 1831. The Sydney which John Toohy had arrived in, was no longer
a struggling colonial outpost.
Arriving convicts were typically either put to
work in Government enterprises (such as road works) and housed at places like
the ‘Convict Barracks’ in Macquarie Street, or they were ‘assigned’ as a
servant or farm worker anywhere in the colony.
It was John Toohy’s great fortune to be assigned as a farm labourer to
Mr Hamilton Hume, the son of a large landholder in the Appin district. This is
the same Hume now immortalised in the “Hume Highway”, the explorer who, with
William Hovell, made the 1824 journey from Appin to Gunning and thence to Corio
Bay in Port Phillip. His reward for these explorations was further land grants
at Appin and near Lake George. Basil Toohey explains that Hamilton Hume and his
brother-in-law had taken up a station in the future Gunning area around 1822,
and also at this time became the first white people to set sight on the Yass
plains.
Quoting now directly from Basil Toohey’s book
“Ballygibbon to Bonnie Dell”, “John Toohey remained with the Humes in the
District of Appin for several years. In October of 1834 he obtained his Ticket
of Leave to report to this district, but this was transferred to Yass District
in 1835. He no longer had to work as an assigned man for a master. He could
spend the rest of his sentence working for himself, wherever he pleased, as
long as he stayed within the Colony. The Ticket had to be renewed each year,
and could be revoked on any adverse reports. He probably moved between
“Collingwood”, at Gunning, owned by the Hume family, and Yass Plains where
Hamilton Hume had been granted 3200 acres in 1829.”
Around this time, John’s wife Mary, and their
now 5 year old son Stephen, also arrived in the colony. On 28 October 1835,
they had departed from Cork Harbour, but in their case on the ship “Roslyn
Castle”, a transport provided to give free passage – in ‘steerage class’ - to
New South Wales to the wives and children of Irish convicts. Clearly, the
expectation was that these convicts would not be returning to Ireland. And why
would they want to? The land down under offered opportunities for a hard
working man to get ahead, even to own land, something impossible in the Ireland
of that time. Transportation may have wrecked lives, but it also became the
vehicle by which new lives, prosperous and secure, could be built.
On 23 December 1837, John Toohy received his
‘Certificate of Freedom’. Freedom, and the building of a new life. A second son, William, was born before this great event and the great pioneer priest,
Father J J Therry baptised him on 15 March 1837, at “Collingwood”. Toohey
family tradition maintains that a year or two prior to “Freedom Day”, Hamilton
Hume had given John Toohy the use of some acres of land, on which he grew
crops. “This was probably part of an informal system of rewards and incentives
for assigned convicts, replacing the earlier system of ‘overtime’ payments.
Profits from this arrangement would have enabled him to provide for his family
and set some money aside for future land purchases”.
Over the next few years, as more children were born, the growing Toohy family can be located in this area, and localities of Fish River and Murrumbateman are also mentioned. The big development for John comes around 1845 when he begins applying for land of his own. Basil Toohey believes “he was probably one of the very early settlers to apply for purchase of small portions of land around Jerrawa Creek”, near the intersection of Jerrawa Creek and the Lachlan River, and near the current township of Dalton.
These applications came to fruition on 9 January 1850 when John Toohy purchased 64 acres for £89,12 shillings and a further 103 acres for £113, 6 shillings. As a map of the time shows, by later in that year he had erected a simple dwelling on one of the blocks.
Additional nearby land purchases eventually
built his holdings to around 578 acres, and he called his property “Willmount”,
portions of which were still in Toohey descendant hands in recent years, and
may still be. John Toohey, as his name was now being spelled, appears on the
1860 subscription list for the newly erected Catholic Church of SS Francis
Xavier and Joseph, at Gunning, as indeed do several of his children.
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John and Mary Toohey had eight children in 20
years. Aged 68, John died on January 5,
1869, and was buried on “Willmount”, in what was to become a Toohey Family
Private cemetery. His imposing headstone still stands among other family
monuments, with possibly up to 16 burials in this cemetery. Mary Toohey died on
13 January 1883, and although there is no additional inscription on his
headstone, it is believed that she is buried in the same grave as her husband.
And what is our connection with John Toohey?
His youngest daughter, Mary Ann, born 11 December 1847, married Richard
Hennessey, and their daughter Margaret married John James Cleary, and the rest
is history…….. So John Toohey, emancipated convict, is the great great
great grandfather of Ross, Neil and
Helen. And, as we know, it is ‘gold’ to have a convict in your Australian
family tree. However, even in my own grandparent’s time, this was not the case,
and even if I had asked my grandfather Cleary about his forebears, I doubt very
much that he would have been forthcoming with information or shone with pride
at this dubious stain on the family line. I doubt also that my own parents
would have seen this as something to talk about. It is really only my, our,
generation that has embraced a convict past.
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