Citation
MacFie, Peter. Thomas Meagher, Sergeant Daniel Murphy and the Bennett Family: Some Enduring Connections at Richmond, Tasmania. Papers and Proceedings: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Vol. 58, No. 1, Apr 2011: 100-114. .
Outline
The impact of the imprisonment in colonial Van Diemen’s Land of the leaders of the Young Ireland movement on Irish, British and North American politics has been widely documented. In Tasmania, the interest continued well into the twentieth century. When former Irish President Eaton de Valera visited Tasmania in 1948, he travelled to Richmond where he ‘visited the grave of the four month old son of O’Meagher, and also the cottage which was the home for some months of Smith O’Brien’. Even today, visitors from Ireland who are interested in the period are moved to tears by the sight of the Meagher child’s grave. While the significance of these two sites are valued and understood by the Irish community, and its historians, the impact of the revolutionary leaders on the emerging Tasmanian society is not.
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Excerpt
When the Meagher family – and later, William Smith O’Brien – arrived to live in Richmond village in the 1850s, the new society of Van Diemen’s Land already had its established traditions. The Irish settlers at Richmond came mainly from the one shipload of Irish male convicts who had arrived aboard the Minerva in 1818. The dominance of these families in the Richmond district led to the building of St John’s Church in 1836, with assistance from other prominent Catholic settlers.[1] Not all prisoners from the Minerva settled at Richmond, however. Pivotal to the Meagher story is the family of another Minerva man, Bryan Bennett, who settled near New Norfolk, and whose daughter Catherine married the flamboyant Irish political radical.[2] Catherine’s sister, Bridget Bennett, married a former soldier, Sergeant Daniel Murphy of the 21st Regiment, who became the publican at the Bridge Inn Richmond in 1842. She also is central to the story. The reasons for the infant Meagher child being buried at St Johns – at the time, the only Catholic church in southern Tasmania – are complex. The story revolves around the Irish community at Richmond, the sympathetic clergyman Father Dunne at St John’s Church, and the family bonds of the Bennett sisters.
While transportation normally divided families, the Bennetts were unusual in that they were reunited in 1822. Four years after Bryan Bennett arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, his wife, Mary Bennett (née Wood) and his four children – Ann, Bartholomew, Bridget and Rose – travelled to New South Wales aboard the prison ship John Bull.[3] The Bennetts were one of four Irish families participating in the convict family reunion scheme for prisoners.[4] All four families had links with Irishmen transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the Minerva.[5] The John Bull left Cork, Ireland, with eighty female prisoners on July 1821 and docked at Sydney on 18 December.[6] The Bennett family arrived in Hobart Town in March 1822 aboard the Royal George. During the long voyage these four families had become close. Bridget and Rose Bennett were later witnesses to the baptism in Hobart of the children of Minerva man, George White, whose wife (also Bridget) had sailed with them on the John Bull.[7] The bonds between the four families had probably been heightened during the voyage from Cork as a result of witnessing ugly scenes of fraternisation and violence between the crew and some female convicts.[8]
After Bryan and Mary Bennett were reunited, a further four children were born in Tasmania – James (b. 1824), Margaret (b. 1827), Catherine (b. 1831) and Charles (b. 1834). In 1831 Bryan Bennett applied for a land grant, with the support of Dr Robert Officer of New Norfolk. He was allocated land at Hayes not far from New Norfolk, a strongly Irish community. [9] The Bennetts called their farm, Stonefields. Bryan received his free pardon in 1841.
Apparently most of the prisoners from the Minerva moved to the Coal River area soon after their arrival in 1818. By 1825 their dominance in the Richmond district was such that Father Therry recommended that his replacement be able to speak Gaelic, otherwise he would not be understood.[10] The community was without a church, however, and this was later rectified by John Cassidy, a discharged soldier from the 73rd Regiment. A Catholic and a large landholder, by the mid-1830s Cassidy was possibly the most influential person in the Richmond district.[11] Guided initially by advice from Governor Lachlan Macquarie, Cassidy made a number of shrewd purchases, and in 1833 acquired Woodburn on the banks of the Coal River at Richmond.[12] Cassidy’s farm provided accommodation and employment for the Irish convicts while they were assigned as servants and they went on to become Cassidy’s tenants. At the time of the 1842 census, ‘Over 70 people including his and six other households were living on Cassidy’s farm’.[13] The majority were the families of the 1818 Minerva men.[14]
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Footnotes (this excerpt only)
[1] Peter H MacFie, ‘Silent Impact, the Irish Inheritance in the Coal River Valley’, in Papers delivered at the Eighth Irish Australian Studies Conference, Hobart, 1995, Crossing Press, Sydney, 1996, p. 490.
[2] Bryan Bennett, a labourer who was a native of County Cavan, was tried at Trim for robbery on 17 August 1817. He was then 30 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall, with grey eyes and dark to grey hair.
[3] Colonial Secretary’s Office, Records of New South Wales, online.
[4] Lieutenant-Governor Sorell ‘believed in the advantages of the scheme and forwarded large batches of applications’ to the Britain. See Jennifer Parrott, ‘For the Moral Good? The Government scheme to unite convicts with their families 1818–1843’, MA thesis, University of Tasmania, 1994, p.17 ff.
[5] PRO 77, HO/43 181, convicts per Minerva.
[6] Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships, AH & AW Reed,, Sydney, 1974, p. 344.
[7] TAHO, correspondence file, Bryan Bennett.
[8] See Bateson, pp. 216–7.
[9] TAHO, correspondence file.
[10] MacFie, Silent impact, pp. 486–98.
[11] Cassidy served in the 23rd Fusiliers, the 4th Veterans Battalion, and the 102nd, 73rd and 46th regiments.
[12] MacFie, Silent Impact, p. 489.
[13] MacFie, Silent impact, p. 490.
[14] Catholic Church historian, Father Terry Southerwood, observed that the Cassidy’s ‘built up a fortune in property and liberally supported the establishment of St John’s Church, presbytery and school’. See WT Southerwood, The Convict’s Friend, Bishop Willson, Stella Maris Books,, George Town, 1989, p. 238.
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