Phelan and Atkin Family History

Prologue Before launching into today's story, I thought I might give an update on how my research is going. I started this blog back in 2019 as a way of communicating some of the more interesting stories about past family members, as I embarked on a 'redo' of all my original research. Having completed my Family History Diploma the year before, I'd learnt the importance of verifying information, and my family tree had plenty of information with no proven sources.  Across the last four years I have completed the 'redo' of seven lines of the family: Phelan, Gasperino, Cowan and Davenport on Dad's side, and Atkin, Collins and Kenny on Mum's. I have also done a lot of work on the remaining maternal line, Lawless. But this line's Australian history goes back an extra generation, and has not just one but five brothers who emigrated here, so it represents by far the largest chunk of work to get through. As of now, I estimate that I've completed about 85%...

Today's post is about one of my distant relatives on Mum's (Atkin) side of the family. My 2x great-grandfather Samuel Atkin came to Australia from Lincolnshire in 1853, and three years later was followed by his older brother Henry with his family. Henry settled near Newstead (not far from Castlemaine), and his daughter Elizabeth married Charles Slee, the Slees being another prominent early Newstead family. Elizabeth and Charles had 14 children (!) and this story is about their grandson Mark Mackie - my third cousin once removed - and what would have been, for the time, a pretty incredible adventure.  Mark Mackie was born in Camberwell in 1899, and was educated at Scotch College. He worked as a photo-engraver and had a keen interest in yachting. In 1927 he was one of several ex-public school boys to undertake an 8 month trip in the South Pacific, aboard a yacht named  Utiekah III,  a 37-ton, 56 ft, auxiliary ketch built in Tasmania two years previously. The  Utiekah...

Perhaps it stands out when compared with the tendency of today's media to sensationalise, but the understatement of much of the reporting of yesteryear is remarkable. Take the following 'painful injury' to Martin Clohesy, a farming contractor of Leongatha, as reported in the Great Southern Star on Friday 5 February 1915.  Martin Clohesy was a cousin of my great-grandfather Nicholas Lawless (as shown in the chart below), who some readers might remember was a hopeless alcoholic and ultimately divorced by my great-grandmother Margaret. You can read about that elsewhere in this blog. Martin was married and had two children at the time of the horrific incident, and had other relatives in the Leongatha district - including the Cantys mentioned in the article - so presumably his family were able to lend plenty of support in his farming work (he was later listed in the electoral roll as an 'onion grower').

A few weeks ago I was emailed by a Ben Macauley who had found my blog post on 'The Misfortunes of the Hulleys' ( https://phelanatkin.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-misfortunes-of-hulleys.html ). Ben is descended from Mary Hulley, a daughter of Trafalgar pioneers Patrick and Catherine Kenny. Patrick and Catherine are 2x great grandparents to us both, which makes me and Ben 3rd cousins. Mary Hulley had four children, the youngest of which, Mary Kathleen, was Ben's grandmother. Mary K had been raised from a young age by her aunt Lexie O'Loughlin (another of the Kennys' children) and as a result Ben's family had never really known much about her older brothers, so was especially grateful to learn about them. Fast forward to this week, and Ben contacted me to say that amongst a selection of scanned images from his dad, there was one in which he hadn't been able to identify who was featured. But after seeing my blog posts (specifically the one in which Patrick Kenny is ...

This post is about one of those coincidences that you might only come across if you really delve deeply into the branches of the family tree. As most of my family know, Mum came from a prominent family of butchers. Her grandfather William and father Gloucester were both long-serving butchers in the town of Yarragon. Most of Mum's siblings worked in the trade at one time or another. My uncles Billy, 'Tiny', 'Butch' and Don all worked in their father's business. And then in the 1960s Billy ran a butcher's business in Trafalgar with Hec Standing, while Don was a butcher in Thorpdale. Advertisement for Bill Atkin and Hec Standing's butcher's in Trafalgar There's little doubt that both Billy and Don would have been aware of a fellow Trafalgar butcher by the name of William Kenneth Tatterson. How well they knew each other I'm not sure. Tatterson had been born in 1926 and was part of a family butcher's business in Thorpdale, but following a peri...

Back in October, I wrote about my Italian ancestor Antony Gasperino 'jumping ship' from the General Hewitt at Portland, Victoria in 1856. A little over a year before Gasperino's unconventional arrival, his future wife Hannah Hourigan (sometimes known as Hannah Hogan) had her own eventful introduction to Australia. Hannah was born about 1837 in Cork, Ireland; her father Matthew was a blacksmith but we do not know the name of her mother. Possibly Hannah was orphaned at a young age and with Ireland reeling from the devastation of the potato famine, was one of many single girls enticed to improve her lot by emigrating to Australia. And so on 14 February 1855 at Liverpool, 18-year old Hannah was one of 130 single Irish servant girls boarding the Nashwauk : an 18-month old, three-masted wooden-rigged sailing ship carrying  300 emigrants   bound for South Australia.*  Captained by Archibald McIntyre, the Nashwauk had an uneventful 89-day voyage to reach Gulf St Vincent. Having...