CONTROVERSIES

Controversies

Constructing a life from official historical record alone is a fraught exercise. All you have to work with is a name and an event. You don't have any real evidence as to how any two events are connected.
At its extreme we might have a record of birth: Eliza Dooley was born here. We have a record of a death: Eliza Dooley died here. How can we connect them? Does this describe one individual, or two? We might look for other evidence. If the death record had information about the birth, say a date or a place, we might proceed with more confidence than otherwise. If places and dates line up, we might be able to construct a plausible life story. 
Ellen Dooley died here. but which one?
But any such story is only provisional. You can't prove that two events are connected; you can only prove that they are not. If the dates, say, don't line up, you don't have a story. If they do, then you might.  
This assumes the records themselves are correct. They can be misleading or contradictory. In a world before sophisticated computers and communications technology it was easy enough to feed officials whatever tall tale one wished. It's not even necessary to assume people were economical with the truth. Sometimes they were just forgetful or mistaken, Mistakes happen in the public record all the time. 
Such considerations are especially relevant in a book such as Earl Grey's Daughters. It is a history of Ireland and Australia, told around the life trajectory of three women, Eliza, Catherine and Ellen Dooley. 

Stories
The most obvious version of their history is that  the three of them were born in the same village near Birr in County Offley. Their parents succumbed to the Famine. They were selected for the Earl Grey Scheme, bought to Australia, worked as domestic help on farm properties inland, married, had babies and died in or around the village of Uralla, just south of Armidale in the New England region of New South Wales. Three Irish matriarchs on the far side of the world. 
It's a simple, straightforward tale but other, more complicated versions, are on offer.
For starters, we don't know for sure that Michael and Bridget, Eliza's parents, really were dead. In 1861, the British census records a Michael and Bridget Dooley alive and well in Tyldesley, a village just outside Liverpool. They lived with their children, Patrick, Thomas and Maria. 
On this hypothesis, Thomas would have been a new baby born after the Famine, since the church records do not list his birth, but they do show all the other children. It’s a perfectly plausible scenario. The girls may have come to an understanding with the parents. You go to Australia; we go to England. The girls may have lied to immigration officials in the hope of a better life or to spare their parents. We know at least that the officials in Sydney did not record the girls’ correct ages. What else did they get wrong?


Ellen

Another problem with this simple story is that there were two Ellen Dooley's in the workhouse at Parsonstown in 1849. The workhouse register records the discharge of one Ellen Dooley in April 1849 and another in August. We also know that two Ellen Dooleys came to Australia as part of the Earl Grey scheme. One arrived on the John Knox in January 1850, the other on the Tippoo Saib that July. According to the immigration records, Ellen Dooley per John Knox came from Dublin. Taken at face value, there are now three Ellen Dooleys, two from Birr and one from Dublin. But it's equally plausible that the girl on the John Knox came from the Birr district via Dublin. 

 We know that one Ellen Dooley married John Flynn from Tipperary in a Roman Catholic Service in Dapto, to the south of Sydney, in 1851. We know that the same woman married John Cunningham in 1885. because, when she died in 1898, the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum in North Stradbroke Island recorded that Ellen Dooley was known variously as Mrs Flynn or Mrs Cunningham. Moreover, we know that Mrs Cunningham was the same person as the immigrant on the Tippoo Saib, because her marriage certificate records both her parents' names and her place of birth and those details match the immigration records.

On the face of it, the documents seem to show that Ellen per Tippoo Saib left Eliza and Catherine in the Hunter Valley and followed John Flynn to Dapto where they married. Several children later, she followed him to Tenterfield in Northern New South Wales, where she produced several more children before marrying john Cunningham.  It seems she committed bigamy: John Flynn was still alive and there are no records of a divorce.

Some Flynn descendants believe this story and on the strength of it have erected a plaque in the Tenterfield cemetery. 


But...but...but....

We also know that another Ellen Dooley married John Murray in Uralla in 1856.  We know that this Ellen was intimately connected to Eliza and Catherine. Eliza is a witness on the wedding certificate, and Catherine Cleary's obituary describes her as a sister of both Ellen and Pat, the two surviving siblings. At the very least, it seems an extraordinary coincidence. It's so unlikely that one would suppose it would form part of family lore among Mrs Murray's descendants, but no stories mention it. The most straightforward hypothesis is that the two Ellens from Birr both came to Australia, one on the Tippoo Saib and the other on the John Knox, where they became Mrs Flynn and Mrs Murray. Of course, if you believe that, you must explain how Ellen from Birr became Ellen from Dublin, with a different set of parents.

Another explanation is that Ellen arrived under her own steam before the Earl Grey scheme began. The cost of a passage being what it was, it seems unlikely. 

Still, as I said at the top, all these stories are provisional. An alternative story for Mrs Murray would help. I was not able to find any Australian evidence for the existence of Ellen per John Knox after 1850, or any Irish evidence that Michael and Bridget had a daughter Ellen prior to 1830, when Catherine was born. Written material from her latter life in Australia might help too. Until such comes to life, it remains a bit of a mystery. 

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