Silent Impact – the Irish in the Richmond District, Tasmania

Citation

Silent Impact – the Irish in the Richmond District, Tasmania, Peter MacFie,  P & P Biennial Irish- Australian History Conference, Hobart, 1995.

Outline

The origin of the Irish Catholics who made their home at Richmond (Tasmania) and the fundamental difference it made to the development of the district.

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Silent Impact (2018-06-14).pdf

Excerpt

Tasmania is a state not traditionally remembered as having an Irish influence. Lloyd Robson’s History of Tasmania has no reference to Ireland or the Irish in its index. The number of convents located around the island – at Richmond, Cygnet, Deloraine and Burnie in addition to Hobart and Launceston – and a study of colonial and church records reveals a different picture. W.T. Southerwood was the first to note that the Richmond district contained the largest Catholic and Irish community outside the two centres of Hobart and Launceston. At Westbury (west of Launceston) – another Irish settlement – John Mitchell, Young Irelander, found Gaelic spoken in the 1850s when he was sheltered there by Irish sympathisers.

Apart from Port Arthur, one of the most popular images of Tasmania is St John’s Catholic Church built on a rise above the Richmond Bridge. The oldest Catholic church in Australia it is claimed, yet there is little in the town to immediately give a sense of an old Irish community. But within living memory, the ‘suburb’ near the Church was called ‘Irish Town’. Indeed, a strong Catholic tradition survives today. The former convent school still operates, attracting pupils from the district as the church traditionally attracted its flock.

A church suggests a community to support the buildings; this is borne out by evidence which reveals that by 1825 (11 years before the Catholic Church was built) the Richmond district had the largest Catholic population outside Hobart and Launceston. From its erection in 1837 until 1850, St John’s Richmond was the only Catholic Church in rural Tasmania.[1] As indicated later, Catholicism equated to Irish settlement. The Richmond district was in reality the only ‘heavily’ settled area in the new colony, and thus Irish Catholics were the predominant religious group in the interior. With the spread of settlement, the Irish Catholic community in the Richmond district became linked historically with other rural Catholic communities in Tasmania.

Archival and genealogical research in the Richmond and Westbury districts reveals a strong pattern of interlinked kinship ties based on Irish ancestry, with fellow transportees and their families marrying each other’s children, witnessing each other’s baptisms, weddings and funerals and naming children for each other. A similar pattern has been noted at Cygnet, another centre of Irish settlement, where emancipists from the Hyderabad (1850) also developed communal inter-relationships.[2] How long these links survived, and their influence and uniqueness are yet to be determined. In the Richmond district, the intermarriage pattern has been noticed among the first arrivals post 1818, and among the last of Irish transportees in the 1850s.[3]

Why there was a predominance of Irish around the Richmond and Coal River/Pittwater area of Tasmania remains to be explained. With the recent overlay of tourism, understanding the historical origins of Richmond village is not easy. The Bridge Inn, once the ‘Catholic pub’ and scene of many a fight, is now renovated as the ‘Bridge Inn Mews’, a series of boutiques, with the former bar – where a fight was easy to come by – now an ice cream parlour. One of the principal reasons for the development of an Irish character was due to the area’s relative isolation imposed by the Derwent Estuary and Pittwater, allowing a subculture to develop away from Hobart Town.

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End of excerpt

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References for this excerpt

[1] W.T. Southerwood Planting a Faith in Tasmania; the Country Parishes Hobart 1977 p. 12.

[2] Personal Communication, L. and T. Rainbird 1995.

[3] Peter H. MacFie ‘At That Time o’ Day’ – A Social History of the Richmond District, Tasmania’ unpublished manuscript 1995

Indexed items from pdf

Aislabie, William John
alcohol
alcohol excess
alienation of land
Anstey, Thomas
Arthur, Lt. Gov. George
assignment
Atkinson ?
Bassett Dickson
Bennett family
Bennett, Bryan
Bennett, Catherine
Beston, Joanna
bigotry
Binnitt, Bridget
Boorowa
Bridge Inn Mews
Brighton
Burgess family
Burn, George
Burnie
Buscombe, Henry
Butcher family
Byrne, Jno
Cain family
Cash, Michael
Cassidy family
Cassidy, Hugh
Cassidy, John
Cassidy, Sarah
Catholic communities
cattle running
cattle theft
churches – St John’s Catholic Church, Richmond
churches – St Luke’s Anglican Church
Coal River,
Colebrook
Conolly, Fr Philip
convents
convicts
Cork
Cosgrove family
Cosgrove, Mary Ann (Mrs Michael)
Cosgrove, Michael T.
Cosgrove, Robert
Cotham, Fr J.A.
Cotham, Lawrence
Cotham, Sarah (Mrs Lawrence)
Coverdale, Dr John
Cox’s farm at Parramatta
Cruse, Thomas
Cullen, Monsignor John Hugh
Cullen, William
Cunningham, Francis
Cunningham, James
Cunningham, Johanna
Cunningham, Mary
Cunningham, Michael
Cygnet
D’Emden, Henri James
Delaney family
Deloraine
Dixon, Kitty
Dulcot
Dunne, Fr William J.
Eardley-Wilmot, Lt. Gov. Sir John Eardley
elections
Elizabeth Town
Espie, Robert
Farrell, Mary
Fitzgerald family
Fitzgerald, Rev ? (Hobart Town)
Fox, Bernard
Fringe Farmers
fund-raising
Gaby, Thomas
Gaelic
Galway
Gavin, Bridget (Mrs Roger)
Gavin, Roger
Gaynor, John
Gellibrand, Rev Tice
geriatric paupers
Grady, Thomas
Green Ponds
Griffin family
Guy family
Hannan family
Hannan, Miss ?
Hannan, Mrs ?
hard labour
Hatton, Michael
Hawkes, Robert
headstones
Herbert, Thomas
Holt, ?
Housego family
Hunt, Janine
inns
inns – Bridge Inn
inns – Lennox Arms
inns – Lennox Hotel
inns – Prince of Wales
inns – Richmond Arms
inns – Richmond Hotel
inns – Union Hotel
Irish communities
Irish Famine
Irish Town
Irish transportees
Isles, ? (Mrs ?)
Jerusalem
Jerusalem road station
Jinglin Johnny
Keane, John
Keane, Roger
Kearney, Kate
Kempton
Kildare
Kilkenny
Killarney
King, Alf
King, Dennis
King, Eileen
King, Joanna, (Mrs Dennis)
King, John
Knight, Mr ? (lawyer)
Lancashire
lashes
Launceston
Levi family
library
Limerick
Lord, James
Lord, Simeon
Lyons, Joseph
Macquarie, Gov. Lachlan
Martin, John
Mayo
McAndrew, Andrew
McAndrew, Ann (Mrs Andrew)
McAndrew, Mary
McCall family
McCann family
McCullagh, Simon
McCulloch, Johanna (Mrs Simon)
McCulloch, Simon
McCullogh, Ann (Mrs Simon)
McCullogh, Simon
McCullow, Simon
McGowan children
McGowan family
McGowan, James
McGowan, James jnr
McGowan, John
McGowan, Margaret (Mrs James)
McGowan, Martin
McGowan, Mary
McGowan, Mary (Mrs James)
McGowan, Mrs ?
McGuire, Michael
McMahon family
McNamara family
McNamara, Bridget (Mrs Thady)
McNamara, Thady
McShane, Francis
Meagher, Catherine (Mrs Thomas Francis)
Meagher, Henry Emmett Fitzgerald
Meagher, Thomas Francis
Meath
Meehan Ranges.
military
102nd Regiment
23rd Fusiliers
46th Regiment
4th Veterans Battalion
62nd Regiment
73rd Regiment
Minerva
Mitchell, John
Moltema
Moran family
Moran, Mrs ?
Mulligan family
Murdoch, Dr James
Murphy, Bridget (Mrs Daniel)
Murphy, Daniel
Murphy, Francis
Murphy, Mary (Mrs Patrick)
Murphy, Patrick
National Trust management plan
Neil, ?
Nelson, John
New Norfolk
Nichols, J.H.
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Islanders
O’Brien family
O’Brien, William Smith
O’Connell, Daniel
O’Doherty, Kevin Izod
O’Keefe, Michael
O’Mara family
O’Sullivan, Bridget
Oatlands
Ogilvy, David
O’Keefe, David
O’Keefe, Michael jr
Paddy’s Scrub
Paice, Henry
Pittwater
Plummer, Richard
Polding, Bishop John Bede
politics
Port Dalrymple
Presentation Sisters
properties
Craigow
Laburnum Park
Lowlands
Nugent
Woodburn
prostitutes
Protestant Irish
Reardon, Bartholomew
Reichenburg, Mr ?
Reid, Richard
Richmond
Richmond Bridge
Richmond Catholic Institute
Richmond Races
Runnymede
Ryan, John
Schaw, Charles
schools
Anglican
Catholic
public
sewing
Sharkey family
Shaunessy, ?
Sheehy, Rev ? (New Norfolk)
ships
Hyderabad
Lloyd
London
Minerva
Nereus
Sligo
Smith, Francis
Sorell
Southerwood, Fr William T. (Terry)
Spring Bay,
St Joseph’s Sisters
St Patrick’s Day
St Paul’s River
Standard, Mrs ?
Stynes, James
Stynes, Sarah (Mrs James)
subcultures
Sushames, Heather
Tea Tree
The Adoration of the Magi
Thomas, Frederick
Tipperary
tracker-men and women
Troy, Margaret (Mrs Richard)
Troy, Richard
Troy, Sarah Ann
Villeneuve Smith, Francis
Wallace, Laurence
Watkins, W.
Westbury
Wilkins, W.S.
Willson, Bishop Robert W.
Wilmot, Charles Octavius
Woods, Rev. Charles
World War I
Worledge, ?
Worledge, William
Wynne, Mr ?
Young Ireland Movement
Young Irelanders
Young, Lt.Gov.  Sir Henry Edward Fox Young

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Copyright Peter MacFie ©2018

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