For many years, I put aside my father’s papers after his death fearing that they would just resurrect his obsession about his great-grandfather Thomas Halfpenny. Until the mid 1970s dad believed Thomas was a good up-standing Melbourne Citizen but that changed when his convict status became known.
In the latter part of dad’s life, Halfpenny was the subject of virtually every family dinner table. In hindsight, it is a wonder the boys in the family ever brought home their girlfriends who ultimately became their wives. But it was after my father’s death in reflections with my mother that I became aware of how she had patiently fumed at this obsession in circumstances where no-one was interested in her family line. As Mum perceived it, she did not have the skills to do ‘research’ because she had left school at aged 14 to become a florist’s assistant until her marriage in 1949.
I decided I had better assuage my conscience and satisfy mum’s curiosity and began to look at the pile of certificates dad had collected (and no doubt paid for) but they all contained sterile names and irrelevant dates. The names were people whose lives meant nothing to me and as far as I knew, had done nothing of significance in their communities. There were no sportsmen, millionaires or artists; they were people who had just disappeared off the landscape. All I would be doing for mum would be providing her with a list of names and dates but nonetheless, I began.
My mother’s great-grandmother came to Melbourne aged 19 years, arriving from Ireland in 1854 with a 17 year old sister. Both women had been baptised as Catholic when born. Within a year of arriving and taking up domestic servant work, both married. It was their respective marriage certificates that struck me. Mum’s great-grandmother was married in the Richmond Catholic Church. The sister was married down the road in the Anglican Church. The latter’s certificate was endorsed with a hand-written statement that the bride abandoned her previous faith as a Catholic. My research suggested that a Catholic attending the competition at that time faced ex-communication. If the sisters were bridesmaids to each other, neither signed the relevant certificate as a witness. Were they even there? Did they celebrate the births of children? Were their respective marriages frowned upon by the family who at that time, were in the middle of the ‘Great Hunger’ or ‘potato famine’ in Ireland?
Mum was unable to help as she knew nothing about the background and her father had died when she was 16. There were no photographs of either that I could find and no correspondence left lying around. In pondering how sterile the certificates were, I turned back to dad’s work. Here too was an interesting conundrum. Thomas Halfpenny had married in 1839 and his wife Hannah died shortly after the death of their only child. Thomas then married Anne and had a huge family one of whom was born ‘Lucy Anne.’ On Lucy’s marriage certificate at the ripe old age of 23 to a Mr Barker, she wrote and signed her name as ‘Lucy Hannah Halfpenny.’ Why would she change her middle name to that of a woman she never knew and who was not her mother? But then it struck me that the marriage took place in the Ballarat Registry Office before a civil celebrant and not, as with the siblings, in a church.
Thomas Halfpenny had not only been baptised a Catholic but had also been prominent in getting the Sydney Diocesan Bishop to send the first Catholic priest to Melbourne. Was he present at his daughter’s marriage? The certificate did not tell me whether any family were present and again, no photographs survive. Did Lucy abandon her Catholic faith and/or all faiths to be so married? What, if anything, did this marriage do to the family relationship?
I joined the Port Phillip Pioneers Group not just out of some hereditary entitlement but because I might meet a whole lot of interesting historians puzzling over the same questions. Or, should I just adopt that lovely old Irish adage that you never let the truth get in the way of a good story? If the latter, I can let my imagination run riot. Sadly, mum died before I had the chance to do what I am now doing, but I am sure she smiles when she sees the fun I am now having and the questions I am asking.
Contributed by Paul Cronin – PPPG Member No. 1484