Phelan and Atkin Family History

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...