Our Hennessey connection

 

Our Hennessey connection, and the strange case of “Uncle Martin.”

 

“Uncle Martin” is in fact Martin Hennessey, the brother of my great grandmother Margaret Hennessey, who married John James Cleary at Grenfell. So, technically, this Martin is my great great uncle.  Let’s start this story with another Martin Hennessy, who is the grandfather of “Uncle Martin”. The only way to distinguish between these two Martins, is the spelling of their surnames, as you can see. Same family, but the spelling of this surname can appear either way in all the official records.

 

Martin Hennessy (the older one), arrived in Australia on 20 May 1850. Together with his wife Mary and children, they had travelled on the “Thetis” and it is more than likely that like thousands of other Irish emigrants, they were leaving their native country to escape the devastation of the “great potato famine”. Martin, aged 36 at the time, is described as a ‘farm labourer’, who can both read and write. His wife Mary, 33 years old, is a ‘house servant’, and she can read only. Their children at this time are Bridget (14 years), Margaret (12 years), Richard (10 years), Patrick (8 years) and William (2 years), and the three older children can all read. Richard is to later marry Mary Ann Toohey, the daughter of our convict ancestor John Toohey, and their daughter Margaret marries John James Cleary. But, more of that in another story, elsewhere in this blog.

 

Very soon after arrival in Sydney, the family are in the Yass district, where 3 more children are born – Catherine (1851), Mary Ann (1853) and John (1858). John only lived a month, and his birth place is Gundaroo, at a place called ‘Talagandra’, which I presume is a farm property.  A number of Martin and Mary’s children go on to find husbands and wives in the Yass area. In the Baptism certificates for Catherine and Mary Ann, Martin is described as a ‘shepherd’, so it is likely that from his arrival in Australia he sought work again as a farm labourer. This may well have been part of the attraction of coming to Australia, as farming lands were opening up and white settlers claimed and bought land recently in Aboriginal possession.  Over subsequent years, the family can be found at Gunning, Yass, Gundaroo, and Cowra, where Martin dies in 1877. As a farm labourer, it is quite possible he worked at a number of other localities between or around these towns. Intriguingly, his death certificate – completed by his son Richard – says at the time of his death he was a ‘Grazier’ in the Wattamondara area, which is just out of Cowra on the road to Young. Certainly his monument in Cowra cemetery is in a grand style and would have been expensive, so it is quite possible he had become a successful land owner. More research needed on property titles of the time!!

 

Martin’s third child, and eldest son, Richard, also seems to have been a farm labourer, although he does describe himself as a ‘Farmer’ on his father’s death certificate, living also in Wattamondara district. Perhaps he was farming on his ‘grazier’ father’s property? After marrying 19 year old Mary Anne Toohey in 1867 (marriage registered at Yass, but more likely held at Gunning), their children are born at Yass, Young, Cowra, Canowindra, and Grenfell. Both Mary Anne, in 1912, and Richard, in 1922, died in Dubbo.

 

And this brings us to the ‘strange case of “Uncle Martin”’ !!!  Martin Hennessey was the 8^th child of Richard and Mary Anne, and was born in Canowindra on 26 May 1884. In fact, his birth certificate lists his place of birth as “Gum Creek” and his Baptismal record lists the ‘family abode’ as Nyrang Creek, a locality just to the west of Canowindra. In the 12 years I lived in Canowindra, travel through Nyrang Creek was one of the ways from town to our farm “Indigo Park”. These days, Nyrang Creek is a grain storage site on the long-disused railway line, and apart from a small local cemetery there are no obvious signs of the once thriving little community. Mim Loomes, long time member of Canowindra Historical Society, has produced an informative book on the pioneers of Nyrang Creek and its thriving settlement, which is obtainable from Canowindra Historical Society. I went on the bus tour which Mim organised at the launch of her book, to look at the sites of this former settlement. Little did I know at the time that I was looking at the places where my forebears had lived, and the farms where they had worked. Undoubtedly this also would have included working on lucerne farms, this being an industry heavily dependant on manpower in those days, well before the mechanised systems available today to cut, rake and bale lucerne hay.  It’s a small world!!

 

Martin Hennessey enlisted in the AIF (the Australian Imperial Force, the volunteer army raised to fight in the First World War), on 12 March 1918. This is late in the war, the two conscription campaigns of 1916 and1917 had failed, and the numbers enlisting had fallen considerably. Possible the pay of 6 shillings a day, much better than an average wage ( and 3 times what British soldiers were receiving), was a factor in his joining up?  But this is where the ‘strangeness’ begins.

 

There are 3 things on Martin’s ‘Attestation Papers’, signed in Cowra, which are not correct :

1.   He gives his name as Mark Hennessey.

2.   He says his birthday is 6 May, 1889.

3.   He say both his parents are deceased.

 

I can only speculate on what is going on here.

1.   Basil Toohey - who has researched deeply the convict Toohey line in my family -  has confirmed to me that he has 3 sources who say that this Martin Hennessey was known as Mark. Possibly he, or his family, used this ‘nickname’ to distinguish him from his cousin, another Martin Hennessey, born just up the road at North Bangaroo , also in May 1884. (As an aside, North Bangaroo is not only near Canowindra, but even closer to “Indigo Park” !!) This certainly might explain the general use of the name ‘Mark’, but not its use here in an official document.  Furthermore, and crucially, there is no birth record in NSW of a Mark Hennessey, born on or near this date. And, also crucially, there is no World War 1 service record for a Martin Hennessey.

2.  The second anomaly is the birthdate he gives on his Attestation Papers. Why he would give this birthdate, 6 May 1889, is a complete mystery. His birth certificate is unambiguous : he was born on 26 May 1884. It was common enough for soldiers to give a false birth date when signing up, to fit in with the age requirements of the AIF. However, this was not necessary for Martin / Mark as his age of either 31 (Martin) or 28 (Mark) fits easily within the age range of 18 – 45, which applied from June 1915. When Martin died, in 1950, at Dubbo, his death notice says he was 60 years old – which fits with an 1889 birth year.  For some reason, Martin believed – or came to believe or wanted others to believe – that he really had been born in 1889. And furthermore, this same death notice says that Martin had served in the AIF and was an active member of Dubbo RSL.

3.   And the final anomaly. In 1918 when he enlisted, his mother was dead, but not his father. Why would he say they were both dead? He nominates as his next of kin, his sister, “Margaret Cleary”, of “Pinedale” - the Cleary family farm west of Grenfell.. So there is no doubt of his parents, his wider family, and therefore the veracity of the official records which identify Martin Hennessey. This is confirmed again in the 1922 death notice for his father Richard, where Richard’s children are listed, including Margaret and Martin. But why say, in 1918, that his father was dead? Possibly to spare his father receiving the news first hand if he was killed at war? Perhaps his father was not in good health? Whatever the reason, it was probably not due to a falling out with his father, as he did move to the Elong / Dubbo area, near to his father, after the war. There is a letter in his war record file at the National Archives of Australia, dated 1937 and with an Elong Elong address, where he asks for another copy of his war service badge. While the letter has his correct service number, it is signed simply “M. Hennessey.”

 

All the available evidence points quite clearly to the fact that Martin Hennessey, born in 1884, for some time used the name Mark Hennessey, including for his war service, before returning to use of his birth name Martin after the war. However it seems he may have continued to use an incorrect birthdate for the rest of his life.  According to his death certificate, Martin never married and his death notice in the local paper also has no mention of wife or children.

 

In death, Martin’s story continues to intrigue.  The information on his death certificate is provided by his nephew  P.J.Cleary, 14 Clarke Street, Granville. This is Paddy Cleary, younger brother of my grandfather, who was living with his mother Margaret and his sister, also Margaret, in the home in Granville to which John and Margaret Cleary had moved from the farm near Grenfell.  Martin died in June 1950, the same year in which another three of his siblings also died : Patrick (February), William (August), and Margaret (October). By this time, none of his siblings were still living in Dubbo. All were either already dead or had moved to Sydney, except for Stephen, the youngest, who had died at Narrabri the previous year, and Agnes, who was a Josephite nun (Sr Mary Joachim)  in Queensland.  Perhaps he had other nieces and nephews still living in the Dubbo area, and maybe this will be established one of these days by another researcher investigating more fully this branch of the family. My hunch is that he was closest to his sister Margaret, my great grandmother, listed as his next of kin in his AIF Attestation papers, and whose son, Paddy, attended to the registration of his death. It is tempting to speculate a separation from other family members, and a quiet, isolated life as a labourer in Elong Elong after all his siblings had moved from the Dubbo  area. On his father’s death certificate, in 1922, all of the children are correctly identified except Martin, who is named as “Michael”. Another hint that Martin was not closely aligned with most of his family.

 

It’s a strange case, with many questions which will probably never be answered.

 

Why did I go down this particular rabbit hole of research? It came from my desire to prove conclusively that Margaret Hennessey, my great grandmother, was definitely descended from convict stock. Mark Hennessey’s enlistment papers were the first definitive reference I came across which placed her in the Hennessey line I needed to verify, and I was then able to match this information with certainty to other information which told me I was on the right track. And then Martin / Mark’s  story became very interesting in itself, as well as a great case study of how thorny the investigation of family history can be!! “Uncle Martin” indeed!!!