Margaret Sullivan (Kilgarvan) daughter Ellen on her marriage
On 6 December 1849, the John Knox sailed out of Plymouth with twenty five Kenmare girls departing on the Earl Grey ‘Orphan’ Scheme for Sydney. There were two hundred and seventy nine girls in all from Ireland on board.
By October 1849, Lieut. Henry had been to Kenmare and made his selection:, ‘Lieut Henry RN, Emigration Agent having selected 30 Females of whom 25 are to be fitted out for Emigration to Australia and to leave for Plymouth on 29th November, resolved that the forms of consent be affixed in the emigration of the persons therein and to the payment of a portion of the expenses of such emigrants. Cost of the funds of this Union to be now signed and forwarded to the Poor Law Commissioners’ (i)
After arrival in Port Jackson, the majority of the Kenmare girls were sent on to Moreton Bay, the town of Brisbane was just opening up and the rapidly developing rich grazing and farming lands in the interior were being settled. These girls became the female pioneers in the newly developed inner unexplored tracts. They mostly married older men who had been in the colony for a number of years, as squatters, stockmen or ex-convicts who had secured their tickets of leave. We have a number of cases where the Kenmare girls were not happy with their new employers and applied to have their Indentures cancelled. Reading newspaper accounts now, of the evidence we are glad to see that they were well able to defend their rights and their characters and did not intend to be subservient to anyone. They were supported by a Fr. Downing, Parish Priest of Brisbane and Ipswich, who was originally from Kenmare, in sorting out their grievances.
From my research for The Kerry Girls: Emigration & the Earl Grey Scheme, I found that Kenmare had the highest number of what we would call ‘real’ orphans. Both parents of twenty two of the Kenmare girls were dead, while Jesse Foley and Margaret Murphy’s mothers were ‘living at Kenmare’. Kenmare also had the highest number of those who could not read or write. Despite all these disadvantages, their resilience, courage and hard work, led them to economic and family success. We have accounts, provided by their descendants of the land that they and their husbands acquired, no landlords or ‘middle men’ to move them on. They and their families ran hotels and small businesses. Their grandchildren became active in politics and public life What would life have been like for them if they had remained in the Workhouse?
List of Kenmare Girls
The Kerry Girls: Emigration & The Earl Grey Scheme, available from good bookshops, The History Press Ireland , Amazon, Book Depository
Hello,
I am researching a Catherine Downey (Earl Grey Scheme) who is shown on the Irish Famine Memorial database in Sydney Australia as arriving on the John Knox in 1850. Your list shows her as Catherine Downing. I was wondering which name is correct? Do you have any further information regarding the ongoing lives of these girls once they arrived in Australia. Thank-you
Marion, standard spelling, as we know it now, did not exist in the 1850s. In effect, Catherine could have been ‘Downey’ or ‘Downing’. My methodology was to follow the details that were logged at arrival in Sydney on each girl and then match these up to the actual list on the Kenmare Board of Guardians. So the details taken from Catherine in Sydney are logged as ‘Downey’ and her parents as ‘Daniel & Catherine both dead’. However on the kenmare records there is only a Catherine Downing from the ‘Ballybog Electoral Division’. I then located a birth record (13 May 1832) for Catherine Downing of Gorbrack, (Templenoe) with parents Daniel Downing and Margaret Shea.
When researching these old records for any reason (not just Earl Grey girls) you have to take into account that spellings and dates are not going to tie up. There is an added factor with the Kenmare girls (also Dingle girls) that they spoke Irish as their native tongue and would not have been that familar with English. They also had ‘heavy’ Kerry accents so could you blame the Government officials who recorded what they thought they heard rather the facts as they came to us 150 years later.
My book Finding Your Ancestors in Kerry might be of help in understanding all this better.