A marriage made not quite in heaven

Historian set to give fascinating talk about first priest in New South Wales

An Irish born priest long celebrated as the saintly founder of Australian Catholicism — accumulated an 85,000 acres portfolio and regularly engaged in unethical commercial dealings in the penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. That's the amazing story historian Dr Damian Gleeson will share when he comes to Johnston Central Library, Cavan this Thursday, October 1.

Cork native Fr John Joseph Therry was accredited as the founder of Catholicism in the new British colony when he was appointed the first ever Catholic chaplain to New South Wales in May 1820. Over more than four decades of ministry across NSW and VDL he became a zealous and outspoken advocate for the Irish convicts and emancipists, which won him admiration from his compatriots.

Dr Gleeson drew on extensive Irish and Australian manuscripts to write a new book on Fr Therry's legacy.

"The book is covering for the first time all his business dealings," explains Dr Gleeson over the phone ahead of his visit to Ireland. "He became a large business owner in his own right. He leased one property that was 80,000 acres in New South Wales. That's a huge property and they were employing dozens of convicts on that property. He was quite an entreprenuer."

Did it operate as a social enterprise where he intended to give convicts jobs?

"Not so much that, but he had a vision for the Catholic church and he came from a business family, but where he went a little bit astray was, he admisnistered a lot of the wills for the convicts and if they were illiterate and couldn't write the will, he wrote the will for them. He was the executor of the will, and often the beneficiary of the will. There are lots of disputes with families all over Ireland, these are families of the convicts, writing to him saying: 'We want our money'.

"And some Irish went over to Australia to claim the land. Some of the convicts did very well - particularly the men of the 1798 rebellion. They became the nucleus of what we call the Therryites - a very very vocal supporter group."

Dr Damian Gleeson has researched his roots back to Cavan, and his ancestors on his maternal side, who were amongst the many who got on the wrong side of the British authorities and ended up getting banished to Australia.

"In 1815 there was a group called the St Patrick's Society in Bailieborough, Virginia, Cavan town - they had had enough with the tithes which had been imposed upon the small tenant farmers, and a group of them ambushed a tax collector from the government. And they murdered him. His name was Matthews. The English authorities gave a reward of £100 for any information.

"The men were on the run for three and a half years and someone turned informer. The group, about 20 men were captured.

"Three were executed who did the murder, some absconded to America and three were sent to Australia - my ancestor Bryan Carolan and his brothers in law Thomas and Robert Reily."

Carolan and the Reilys were officially charged with conspiracy to murder in the 1819 trial. "He was present at the planning, or perhaps he was a look out but he wasn't involved in the actul murder because those three were executed," explains Damian. "The informer was scared for his life and family so he asked for assisted migration to America to get away from Cavan."

Their ship docked in New South Wales with Dr Gleeson's ancestors aboard in 1820, coincidentally the year Fr Therry began his ministry Down Under.

"He got a life sentence. After eight years he got a ticket of leave - that means he could work within a certain area, and he could earn money. And after another seven years he got a conditional pardon - a conditional pardon meant you were free to go anywhere in the colonies, but you could never return to Ireland - because they wanted people to populate New South Wales as this new colony.

"After that [sentencing and imprisonment] they became model citizens, as many convicts from Cavan and across Ireland did. They never reoffended, and that's not a story that's very well known."

Then in 1828 Carolan was able to bring out his wife and his two children to New South Wales.

They became successful farmers in the Burragorag Valley.

"So my family have been in the colony for 200 years," he says with a degree of pride.

While there was opportunity in New South Wales, life was hard for former convicts.

"The colony was very brutal, there was a lot of sectarianism unfortunately, and anti-Irish feeling," reports Dr Gleeson.

"There was a lot of opportunity if you settled down and you didn't reoffend. I've studied around 500 Cavan convicts who came to New South Wales from Cavan County from 1820 to 1840. Most of the men did not reoffend, very very few - it was very harsh for the women, it was a very brutal place to live, so there was some reoffending [amongst women], but nothing serious."

Understandably many of the Irish uprooted from their home and families, congregated in their own settlements dotted around New South Wales, in places such as Irish Town or Little Tipperary.

In addition to being an ferocious advocate for the Irish, Fr Therry played a surprising role in helping some of them establish new roots. He notes most women in pre-Famine Ireland married very young - between 13 to 16 years old.

With no prospects of returning home many of these young women remarried in Australia, under their maiden name and in some cases their mother's maiden name. Taking a pragmatic approach, Fr Therry was happy to marry them as bigamists.

"The colonial authorities by the 1830s said we have got to stop these bigamist marriages, but the irony of early Australian history is that from 1788 to 1820 the colonial governors encouraged marriage as a way of improving the morals of the society, even though about 60-70%, three quarters nearly were bigamists - they didn't care," explained Dr Gleeson, noting he is not judging the practice.

"There was a feeling amongst convicts that once you went to Australia it nullified all your previous commitments - financial marriage, whatever," he says.

Fr Therry, due to his colourful, and sometimes ruthless dealings, by the time of his death in 1864 amassed over 4,500 acres of land in his own name, separate from the church. This vast fortune was left it to the Irish Jesuits.

"There is no evidence he's personally greedy, but he is naughty," he says with a laugh.

Did Carolan and the Reillys have any dealings with Fr Therry?

"They were a litte bit wary of the priest I believe, because he was a bit of a shark with the money," says Damian.