Shaking the Family Tree Review, by Michael Breen
Convict ancestor James Barry emerges from the family mist like the convict in the opening scenes of the film of “Great Expectations”. He looks scary but becomes more human as we get to know him. Margaret provides details of Irish history and nineteenth century occupied Cork.
This is the landscape from which James Barry moves to primitive Australia. Reading “Shaking the Family Tree” I enjoyed what I learned about nineteenth century life, rural life in Ireland, in Australia, about the Hunter Valley and its prominence in the Colony. About Mudgee, and the goldfields their miners and suppliers as well as learning about moves to the city and back to the bush again. At times I could smell fresh cow’s milk or leather dressing on harness or saddles or the smell of a horse. Or I could imagine the view to the side of a bush track curtained with thick flora now gone.
This is the landscape from which James Barry moves to primitive Australia. Reading “Shaking the Family Tree” I enjoyed what I learned about nineteenth century life, rural life in Ireland, in Australia, about the Hunter Valley and its prominence in the Colony. About Mudgee, and the goldfields their miners and suppliers as well as learning about moves to the city and back to the bush again. At times I could smell fresh cow’s milk or leather dressing on harness or saddles or the smell of a horse. Or I could imagine the view to the side of a bush track curtained with thick flora now gone.
Shaking the Family Tree Review, by Jo Killmister
Shaking the Family Tree holds many pleasures for avid family history researchers. For a start, we can readily empathise with the evident blend of Margaret McMahon’s strong affection for her emigrant ancestors and her passionate determination to uncover the truth about their origins and reasons for settling in Australia. There are some vivid details for history buffs of the lives of these early colonial settlers, especially in the Hunter Valley, as well as some compelling facts. Did you know, for instance, that no free settlers were allowed to reside in the Hunter until 1819? Shaking the Family Tree is also very revealing of the attitudes of later generations of Australians toward their immediate forebears. As Margaret shows, many Victorians succumbed to social pressure to delete or gloss over family behaviour at odds with rigid contemporary standards—pressure that later became the bane of many a modern genealogist. A good read, especially if you have nineteenth-century Irish ancestors.
Shaking the Family Tree Review, by Judy Galvin
Today I finished reading “Shaking the Family Tree’ and you have given the tree a mighty shake. … there is an amazing story there. And what a remarkable achievement! To have drawn together what are bits and pieces of historical facts into a human story that is compelling reading. While the research into family history is impeccable, impressive, you’ve added invaluable dimensions to an otherwise, incomplete “factual” story e.g. You’ve satisfied your reader by ”completing” the story, by adding what is insightful, balanced, credible infill and always in tones that are realistic while empathic. Most people would probably have approached the writing of a family history by following a simple time sequence. I’m selfishly glad you did not. Instead your construction of a series of family settings, journeys, episodes or perspectives assisted the reader (me) gradually to get to know the subjects and their inter-relationships better. Your reference to “knitting” it altogether was for me, very apt. You very skilfully wove a complex pattern of lives and inter-relationships into a meaningful whole, that whole being your heritage. What I liked, specially, was seeing the person, Margaret, unashamedly present there, throughout the written work – the thread that ties all the disparate parts together – with her empathy intelligence, inventiveness and understanding.
Shaking the Family Tree Review, by Joy Foster
I have been thinking of you and reading Shaking the Family Tree but slowly despite falling in love with James Barry. This book should be on the compulsory reading list for all senior high school students. There exists nothing better to open up the colonial world of our beginning to the young. What makes it so impressively valuable above all is the truth of it. You have garnered the facts and made them into literature. How fortunate that your ancestors have you, writer, lawyer, farmer, veritable women of the land to bring them back to life.
Reader Comments
Just a quick note to thank you for Shaking the Family Tree. It was most enlightening and interesting, especially the Irish history notes and the coincidence of James Barry and Emanuel Hungerford!
Megan McMahon
Congratulations on a difficult job well done
Dale Thompson
Megan McMahon
Congratulations on a difficult job well done
Dale Thompson
Launch Address - Pauline Tyrrell
I would like to thank Margaret for asking me to help launch her latest book - Shaking the Family Tree. I have done no public speaking since debating at school 50 years ago, so I hope I don't disappoint her. I was very honoured to be asked, as I have been shaking the Hungerford family tree since 2001 - seventeen years in all, so it is a wonder that there are still many leaves left on the tree.
For my sins I am now Vice-President of the Hungerford & Associated Families Society (known as HAFS) here in Australia. Gregan McMahon has served on our committee, and his niece, Catriona Rogers, is currently a committee member. The Hungerford family is the biggest family tree in the world, and here in Australia there are well over five thousand direct descendants.
Margaret and her husband Gregan are part of this large extended family - Gregan is Bruce's 3rd cousin once removed. Gregan and Bruce are both descended from Emanuel Hungerford and his wife Catherine Loane.
Emanuel was the Captain of the 32nd Regiment of the Foot in the South Cork Militia and resigned his commission in 1827. The following year he emigrated with his wife and 8 children to Australia, 2 more being born after they came here. Shortly after his arrival he purchased Lochdon Estate, a 2000 acre property at West Maitland. He also eventually owned land on Baerami Creek in the Upper Hunter. "Baerami" as the property became known played a major part in the connections between our two families. It was the home of the 6th son of Emanuel Hungerford, Thomas. After his first wife died he married Catherine Mallon, and this is Gregan's great grandmother.
And it is on this property that the first of many connections occur. Margaret's great-great-grandfather was a man called JAMES BARRY. James was a convict - sent to Australia, arriving in 1836. Both Emanuel and James hailed from County Cork in Ireland. As Emanuel had large landholdings, he was entitled to at least seventy assigned servants at any one time. He picked James out of a line at Hyde Park Barracks and James became one of his assigned servants. This meeting of the two men would be the first connection between a member of Margaret's family and that of her husband Gregan. As Margaret says in her book "both men would have been astonished to know that sometime in the future they would share the same great-great-great-grandchildren. The Barry family were Catholic, the Hungerford line Anglican, and their respective churches were to have a profound influence on each of their lives, particularly with interfaith marriages. Back in 1836 you could not have imagined the two families eventually becoming one.
James would have helped with the construction of the Hungerford home, Font Hill, a wedding present for Emanuel's first son John. The next home to be built was Owlpen. James then would have used the many skills he acquired during the construction of Font Hill. Owlpen was built as a wedding present for the 2nd son of Emanuel and Catherine, Robert Richard Hungerford. Which brings us to another link. Owlpen is the home of my husband's great-great-grandfather, and the birth place of the first child of Susan Hungerford and her husband Edward Tyrrell. This property still stands today. John and Robert Hungerford married Anne and Ellen, 2 daughters of Tom White Melville Winder, and another daughter Agnes married another Hungerford son, William.
Tom Winder had been given a grant of 700 acres on the Hunter River and secured with it a ten year monopoly of all coal won from the Newcastle penal settlement. He was then granted 4000 acres near Lochinvar and the estate still stands today, known as Windermere. A group of Hunter Valley businessmen later purchased 245 acres of Emanuel's property, Lochdon, and formed the East Great Mining Company and by 1914 this mine was producing half the State's coal. Don't we all wish these two assets were still in family hands today!
Now there is another connection - CONVICTS. From about 1818 Tom Winder employed Ellen Johnson as a servant, and they shortly began living together as husband and wife, eventually being married in a church in 1848. Ellen was the daughter of John Lyster, who arrived as a convict in 1796. So the convict ties appear in the Winder/Hungerford/Barry families.
There are many more connections between all these families: INSOLVENCY for example. Emanuel, and his sons John, Robert, and Thomas, plus Patrick Mallon, the father of Catherine, all suffered financial hardship at one time. There were also brushes with the law - some minor and some much more series, but I will leave that to Margaret to tell these stories in her book. Luckily we now have easy access to local newspapers through Trove, and The Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley Gazette reported all these cases in great detail.
Then there are the WINERY CONNECTIONS in the Hunter Valley. Timothy McDonald another one of Margaret's relations, held a lease of 512 acres on Black Creek. Black Creek runs from the Brokenback Range to Branxton where it joins the Hunter River. He also leased 320 acres adjoining the famous property called The Wilderness, owned by the Holmes family, which is situated on what is now called Wilderness Road in the Rothbury district. In those days Wilderness Road was the only way to Maitland from the Pokolbin/Rothbury area. Timothy and his wife Margaret grew grapes, made wine and then sold it in a shop outside their land. Also on Black Creek was Susan Tyrrell and her husband William McDonald.
So the winemaking connection is now there to the Tyrrell family, which also has a connection to The Wilderness property by marriage. One of the Tyrrell daughters, Florence, married Arthur Dalrymple Kelman, whose mother was a Holmes and was born at The Wilderness. Other winery connections abound. Most of you will also realise that the Kelman and Busby family also had vineyards on the Hunter River. Also the 8th child of Emanuel Hungerford, Anne married Robert Chapman, and their daughter, Florence married Charles Frederick Lindeman, who ran that famous winemaking family.
So with all those wine connections in the family I think we should now raise a glass to Margaret and this wonderful book. I hope she still has more stories to come!’
For my sins I am now Vice-President of the Hungerford & Associated Families Society (known as HAFS) here in Australia. Gregan McMahon has served on our committee, and his niece, Catriona Rogers, is currently a committee member. The Hungerford family is the biggest family tree in the world, and here in Australia there are well over five thousand direct descendants.
Margaret and her husband Gregan are part of this large extended family - Gregan is Bruce's 3rd cousin once removed. Gregan and Bruce are both descended from Emanuel Hungerford and his wife Catherine Loane.
Emanuel was the Captain of the 32nd Regiment of the Foot in the South Cork Militia and resigned his commission in 1827. The following year he emigrated with his wife and 8 children to Australia, 2 more being born after they came here. Shortly after his arrival he purchased Lochdon Estate, a 2000 acre property at West Maitland. He also eventually owned land on Baerami Creek in the Upper Hunter. "Baerami" as the property became known played a major part in the connections between our two families. It was the home of the 6th son of Emanuel Hungerford, Thomas. After his first wife died he married Catherine Mallon, and this is Gregan's great grandmother.
And it is on this property that the first of many connections occur. Margaret's great-great-grandfather was a man called JAMES BARRY. James was a convict - sent to Australia, arriving in 1836. Both Emanuel and James hailed from County Cork in Ireland. As Emanuel had large landholdings, he was entitled to at least seventy assigned servants at any one time. He picked James out of a line at Hyde Park Barracks and James became one of his assigned servants. This meeting of the two men would be the first connection between a member of Margaret's family and that of her husband Gregan. As Margaret says in her book "both men would have been astonished to know that sometime in the future they would share the same great-great-great-grandchildren. The Barry family were Catholic, the Hungerford line Anglican, and their respective churches were to have a profound influence on each of their lives, particularly with interfaith marriages. Back in 1836 you could not have imagined the two families eventually becoming one.
James would have helped with the construction of the Hungerford home, Font Hill, a wedding present for Emanuel's first son John. The next home to be built was Owlpen. James then would have used the many skills he acquired during the construction of Font Hill. Owlpen was built as a wedding present for the 2nd son of Emanuel and Catherine, Robert Richard Hungerford. Which brings us to another link. Owlpen is the home of my husband's great-great-grandfather, and the birth place of the first child of Susan Hungerford and her husband Edward Tyrrell. This property still stands today. John and Robert Hungerford married Anne and Ellen, 2 daughters of Tom White Melville Winder, and another daughter Agnes married another Hungerford son, William.
Tom Winder had been given a grant of 700 acres on the Hunter River and secured with it a ten year monopoly of all coal won from the Newcastle penal settlement. He was then granted 4000 acres near Lochinvar and the estate still stands today, known as Windermere. A group of Hunter Valley businessmen later purchased 245 acres of Emanuel's property, Lochdon, and formed the East Great Mining Company and by 1914 this mine was producing half the State's coal. Don't we all wish these two assets were still in family hands today!
Now there is another connection - CONVICTS. From about 1818 Tom Winder employed Ellen Johnson as a servant, and they shortly began living together as husband and wife, eventually being married in a church in 1848. Ellen was the daughter of John Lyster, who arrived as a convict in 1796. So the convict ties appear in the Winder/Hungerford/Barry families.
There are many more connections between all these families: INSOLVENCY for example. Emanuel, and his sons John, Robert, and Thomas, plus Patrick Mallon, the father of Catherine, all suffered financial hardship at one time. There were also brushes with the law - some minor and some much more series, but I will leave that to Margaret to tell these stories in her book. Luckily we now have easy access to local newspapers through Trove, and The Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley Gazette reported all these cases in great detail.
Then there are the WINERY CONNECTIONS in the Hunter Valley. Timothy McDonald another one of Margaret's relations, held a lease of 512 acres on Black Creek. Black Creek runs from the Brokenback Range to Branxton where it joins the Hunter River. He also leased 320 acres adjoining the famous property called The Wilderness, owned by the Holmes family, which is situated on what is now called Wilderness Road in the Rothbury district. In those days Wilderness Road was the only way to Maitland from the Pokolbin/Rothbury area. Timothy and his wife Margaret grew grapes, made wine and then sold it in a shop outside their land. Also on Black Creek was Susan Tyrrell and her husband William McDonald.
So the winemaking connection is now there to the Tyrrell family, which also has a connection to The Wilderness property by marriage. One of the Tyrrell daughters, Florence, married Arthur Dalrymple Kelman, whose mother was a Holmes and was born at The Wilderness. Other winery connections abound. Most of you will also realise that the Kelman and Busby family also had vineyards on the Hunter River. Also the 8th child of Emanuel Hungerford, Anne married Robert Chapman, and their daughter, Florence married Charles Frederick Lindeman, who ran that famous winemaking family.
So with all those wine connections in the family I think we should now raise a glass to Margaret and this wonderful book. I hope she still has more stories to come!’