Catherine found at last

Our 3xgreat grandmother Catherine has proved to be something of an enigma.

When she died on 3 May 1878, 2xgreat grandfather Thomas Henry Suddaby was just sixteen months old, so he must have had very few personal memories of his mother. Even the possibility of hearing stories about her was cut short when his father Henry died just a few days after Thomas' fifth birthday.

Nevertheless when Thomas had a daughter in 1897, he gave her his mother's name, Catherine Corry Suddaby. With just one exception each of the Suddaby's 8 children had their maternal grandmother's family name as a given name.

It would be more accurate to say that that the children had a name that Thomas believed to be that of his lost mother. It seems that the source of his information was a record of the marriage in 1888 between Henry Suddaby and Catherine Corry. Unfortunately almost all the other evidence is conflicting.

When Henry registered the details of Catherine's death at Quilpie, he stated that she was the daughter of James Currie and Mary O'Donnell of County Armagh, Ireland. There is no record that either of these people were ever in Queensland, so Catherine must have been an immigrant. But there are numerous possibilities including a Catherine Corrie born at sea and even a Catherine Coary.

Henry provided one other piece of information in recording Catherine's untimely death. It was that she had lived in Queensland for approximately 3½ years.

The continuing program to index the migration records held by the Queensland State Archives has now made available (in csv files) lists of all assisted immigrants from 1848 to 1912. That opens up the possibility of some brute-force genealogy. I could download all migrants with names at the beginning of the alphabet and filter that list to extract all females with family name C*, who arrived May 1874 to April 1875 aged 17 to 19 years. After that, all it should take would be a line-by-line examination …

Unfortunately the downloaded file does not have a gender field and there were 284 young adults immigrants in that year. Adding a filter of C* for given name reduced the list to just 9 people including four Catherines - Carty, Connelly, Corrigan and Curry.

So there she was: one of the 89 single female passengers on the Gauntlet that arrived at Maryborough on New Years Day of 1875. They had sailed from London on 4 October 1874 under the supervision of the Matron, Miss Collins, along with 87 single men and just 16 family groups (7 of whom lost a child on the voyage).

Now the speculations can be swept aside and Catherine given her true history. But how should I record the spelling of her name from among the myriad options? That is an easy choice. She is Catherine Corry, just how Thomas wanted his mother to be remembered.

Can you spell that?

In the course of Friday's (excellent) seminar on Shipping Records, discussion turned to the many and varied versions of ships' names that may be found. The Rajahgopaul was cited as one example of a name that is often mangled by family historians.

This is a vessel close to my heart because it was the birthplace of Catherine Corry. So I was interested to find the definitive answer to how it should be named.

A Google search [rajahgopaul] produces an immediate suggestion that I may have it wrong; followed by an array of "hits" on different spelling forms.

Employing the time-honoured maxim that he who agrees with me must be correct, I went to the New South Wales State Records result first.

There I found that the image of the passenger list includes (in a beautiful copperplate hand) yet another spelling.

So the name could be one word (with two internal variants) or two capitalised words (with or without a hyphen)!

When you need a definitive ruling, you should seek an authoritative source and what could be more authoritative in the maritime field than Lloyd's Register, available for search through Google Books.

The 1855 edition includes our vessel and the issue is resolved — one word, with a "u".

Now to confirm that fact by referring to the 1860 edition of Lloyd's (because you cannot have too many supporting references).

And the conclusion? The ways in which the names of ships are recorded are no more (or less) reliable than those of the names of the people and places we seek out.

Take care that you consider all the obvious variations (and even some not so obvious). The obituary of Mrs Maria Holgate (eldest sister of Catherine Corry) in The Central Queensland Herald of 5 October 1933 reported that she had "come to Australia with her parents in the ship, Rajah de Paul".

Who was Catherine Corry?

When I was a small boy, I thought that (great) Aunty Corry had a very strange name. I said so to my grandmother, who told me that Corry was part of her name too; and that of Aunty Vi; and Uncle Tommy and even Uncle Henry. Who was the woman with such an influence that five of her grandchildren were given her name?

I have previously written about our 3xgreat grandmother Catherine CORRY having been born at sea on 9 September 1852 as the SS Rajahgopaul neared the (then) colony of New South Wales.

But the connection between that birth and the person we know to be our ancestor is by no means straight-forward.

We know that Catherine married Henry SUDDABY in Bundaberg on 21 March 1876. Their first child, Thomas Henry, was born at Cooranga Creek in the District of Darling Downs North, on New Years Day 1877. It was five weeks before Henry travelled into Dalby to register the birth. On the form he indicated that Catherine was 26 years old and had been born at Margathy in County Armagh, Ireland.

Catherine had a second child, William, on 26 April 1878 and she died seven days later (3 May). William lived for just two weeks after his mother's death (d 15 May 1878). The registration of Catherine's death lists her parents as James CURRIE and Mary O'DONNELL.

There is no record of either of these "parents" in Australia. Nor is there any record of migration by Catherine from Co Armagh either alone or as part of a family. I have been unable to locate any place in Armagh, or elsewhere in Ireland, with a name resembling Margathy. The lives of the family from the Rajahgopaul, on the other hand, are well documented and consistent.

All of the apparently incorrect information came from Henry Suddaby. You might argue that a man who had lost a young wife and been left with a toddler and a (dying) baby had every excuse for being an unreliable witness in May 1878; but that leaves the February 1877 errors to be explained.

I conclude either that Henry was unaware of his wife's family and origins, or that he deliberately concealed them.

Was Catherine estranged from her family? Had she kept the truth from her husband; or did he know it and supported her by keeping a secret beyond the grave?

One possible explanation is that the Catherine born on the Rajahgopaul was the child of Anthony CORRY and Catherine KENNY of Killmurray, Co Clare. Like her sisters Maria and Honora, she was almost certainly Roman Catholic.

Henry SUDDABY (and his brother John, who accompanied him to Australia) had been christened in the Church of England Parish of Eastrington, Yorkshire.

Whatever the truth, such matters were of no interest to little Thomas Henry SUDDABY. Left without a mother at eighteen months of age, he then lost his father three days after his fifth birthday. Tom must have had precious little to remember either of his parents as he grew up, but he held onto a name — Catherine CORRY.

Tom's first child with Jane DAVIES in 1897 was named Olive May. After that, he gave each of five children, boy or girl, the same second name — Corry. Today, I don't think that is strange at all.

Born on the high seas

My analysis of our ancestors' country of origin based on where individuals were born obscured the fact that two of them did not have a place of birth in the usual sense. Each was born after her parents left their old home, but before they arrived in Australia.

Sailing halfway across the world during the nineteenth century was a hazardous undertaking for anyone, but there were particular risks for children.

In November 1883, the SS Corona left Plymouth bound for Queensland with 407 souls on board. There were five births during the 115 day voyage but only 394 disembarked in Queensland. Of the 13 deaths, 12 were infants and children.

Perhaps we can judge the suitability of the vessel for carrying young families by the fact that, just 18 years earlier, the Corona had been used to transport convicts and their guards to Western Australia.

Corona in Australian waters ca 1888
(Collection of State Library of South Australia)

Nevertheless, two families of our forebears set out on a perilous voyage to begin a new life while expecting another child.

Anthony CORRY and Catherine KENNY (4xgreat grandparents) left their home in Co Clare with five children and set sail from Plymouth on 25 May 1852 aboard the SS Rajahgopaul. Their daughter Catherine was born on 9 September, 2 days before landing in Moreton Bay.

Emily, the daughter of James FINLAY and Mary CREASE (3xgreat grandparents), was given the middle name Waroonga after the ship on which she was born on 6 May 1887. Her parents and three-year old sister had left London a month earlier after travelling from Scotland and the growing family would not reach Brisbane for another four weeks.

Although they shared a quirk of birth, Catherine and Emily had very different lives in Queensland.

Emily and Alfred NOYES had 7 children and although she died relatively young (not quite 40), Emily saw the wedding of her daughter Doreen to Alexander COLEY (our great grandparents).

Catherine died at only 25 after losing her second child with Henry SUDDABY. Their first son, our 2xgreat grandfather Thomas, was just 16 months old at the time. We remember the Corry name largely through the efforts of Tom to recognise the mother he barely knew. But that is a tale for another time.