Breakthrough!
Earlier this year I went to the Royal Historical Society of Victoria for a joint event with the Professional Historians Association (Vic & Tas) to hear five emerging historians – doctoral students – talk about their “break through” moment. While I was walking to the train station, I wondered what “break through” moment I would have discussed?
There is significant emotional investment in research. You spend vast tracts of time searching; anticipation builds and if you strike it lucky you skip along merrily, basking in your finding that surely everyone can see as a radiant glow. Or a day in the archives that leaves you completely empty handed has, on many occasions, cast a despondence so deep it’s like a dark, heavy fog that clouds everything you see and feel. The highs and lows are real and affect your emotions deeply. In many respects it’s that rollercoaster ride of emotions that hooks you, and away you go. Happy are you if you find someone else who shares in the joy and pain of your stories.
As I was walking and thinking about my break though moment, I thought of the three generations of my family who have paid homage to the surname of my paternal great, great grandmother, Margaret Sheehy. Her son, my great grandfather, John Meagher, adopted ‘Sheehy’ as his second name by the time he matriculated aged 17. My eagle-eyed mother-in-law noted he wasn’t baptised with his mother’s surname, although it was common for children to bear their mother’s surname as a second name. Taking on his mother’s name as an adult seems extra poignant in John’s case, as his mother died of scarlet fever in August 1866 when he was three years old, just one month after the ship he was aboard docked in Australia.
John later named his second eldest child John Sheehy Luxford Meagher and my grandfather, Jack, named his youngest son (my uncle), Desmond Sheehy Meagher. However, giving Desmond the second name of Sheehy may well have been a tribute to John, who had made a significant name for himself as a barrister, rather than to a little known great grandmother. In a letter my father wrote in 1987, he remarks on Jack’s limited knowledge of his family history, ‘Whilst my wife and I have been researching back with no help from my father who is alive and well at 81, but because he was the youngest of seven children … doesn’t know any of the past history, because of the age gap of 16 years between oldest and youngest … consequently we feel the eldest …would have been told the basic story of grandparents, where they came from (Ireland) etc.’
After 1987, my parents pieced together a lot about the family and revealed many new insights to Jack, including a paternal aunty he did not know he had. However, knowledge about Margaret Sheehy always remained elusive. My mother simply could not make any progress in her research on Margaret’s life before she arrived in Australia. For a very long time, evidence of Margaret’s marriage to Michael Meagher could not be found either, and as a consequence no knowledge of Margaret’s family or upbringing existed. The birth and death records in Australia told us that the marriage occurred in Whitegate, Co. Galway in Ireland in 1861.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 90s, our Maher relations in Ireland sought the advice of local parish priests, and my mother consulted with the Nenagh Historical Society in Ireland. She also wrote to and heard back from various parish priests in County Galway. All replies carried a variation of ‘ I have searched the registers for the Meagher/Sheehy marriage and unfortunately can find no record of it either in the year 1861 or the years before or after’.
Fast forward to 2016 and after telling a work colleague who is an avid family historian about this significant gap in our family history. She searched through the Catholic parish baptismal and marriage registers online, and had the same response as the priests: no marriage record for Margaret and Michael. Two years later, over dinner one night, I told my parents-in-law about how no record could be found of this marriage and Sue, my mother-in-law, sensing a grand challenge, wanted to have a go. She started family history research in the mid 1970s, several years before my parents started in 1983, so they were highly seasoned researchers.
“Of course!” I cried, “Go for it!”
Sue scoured the Catholic registers and noticed they were missing the period between February 1861 and September 1863. There’s that eagle eye again! She checked the Co. Clare Library website, which stated that the list of Birth, Deaths and Marriages was complete. After emailing the library, librarian Peter Beirne of the Clare Library confirmed there was a gap in the record after checking the microfilm copies and offered to check the newspapers for the period in question. I received regular updates from Sue, and she emailed that Peter hadn’t found anything in the first six months of 1861 in the Clare Freeman, but he would continue the search the following week for the second half of the year. At the time Sue wrote, “I wasn’t very hopeful after reading this.” even though Peter wrote, “fingers crossed…!”.
Peter commenced checking on Monday and wrote later that day: “Hi Sue, Wonderful news. The marriage notice you ask after is given in the “Clare Freeman” of Saturday 6th July 1861”. Sue rang me to tell me the good news, and seriously, the high I received from that phone call lasted for days! I rang my father to spread the good cheer, because progress is always better when shared and delighted over in detail.
But it wasn’t just that evidence had been found confirming a legitimate marriage, it was the detail in the newspaper advertisement that was so tantalising:
“On the 1st inst. at Whitegate, county Galway, by the Rev. P.McMahon, P.P. Michael Meagher Esq., of Nenagh, to Margaret, third daughter of John Sheehy, Esq.”
“Third daughter”, “Esquire”, “Nenagh”, “Whitegate” Clues, glorious clues!
New stepping stones skip, skip, skip, I want to jump in puddles! Nothing further could be done until I went to Ireland. So I did just that.
