Woman
Let woman keep her sphere; Why should she strive
With man for mastery in the rough life,
Formed not as he, but subtler in strength
To move to mightier ends in homely ways.
The Numurkah Leader, Sat 4 May 1895, Pg 3.
In 1891 a petition had been presented to the Victorian Parliament with nearly 30,000 signatures and addresses, demanding the right for woman to vote in the colony of Victoria. Of the 64 woman of Numurkah who signed this petition, there is not one I can link to my family. It was a time when many woman were finding their voice, but the newspapers were still publishing articles like the poem above and this below entitled The New Woman
Our Melbourne correspondent thus writes on the above subject:- I am not personally an advocate of woman's suffrage and I give my reasons: the best and most womanly woman do not ask it, and if it were given to them, would not exercise it; and those who demand it would not ( for the most part) improve the tone of the Community or the character of legislation by votes.... The Numurkah Leader, 19 Sep 1895
Against this backdrop, Mary Anne McAuliffe married James Sullivan in Numurkah on 25 May 1894. She was a month off her 27th birthday when she married James, eight years her senior. Mary Anne was my great, great Aunt, the second of eight children, the first of her family, to be born on Australian soil at a place called Ballard's Camp near Toowoomba, Queensland. Her Catholic, Irish, immigrant parents, Jeremiah McAuliffe and Kate Ford, both from County Cork, had married in Southwark, Surrey in 1864, only a month before they boarded the ship Elizabeth Ann Bright that brought them to Moreton Bay, Queensland. Mary Anne's elder sister, Johanna was born at sea during the voyage. A nod to the family's Irish heritage can be seen in the naming of the girls, Johanna after her paternal grandmother and Mary Anne after her maternal grandmother.
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| Railway Tunnel near Ballard's Camp 1894 Queensland University of Technology |
Being born at Ballard's Camp was an indication of what Mary Anne's early childhood was like, her father constantly moved around the country to find work and took his young family with him. Ballard's Camp had been established on a rounded knoll on a ridge as a construction camp for the building of a difficult section of the railway at 2300ft above sea level. The one consolation to the family living there, unlike Ireland, the climate was the mild with not even a frost.
By the age of three, Mary Anne and her family were living at Glengallan Swamp near Warwick, still in Queensland where her brother, Cornelius was born in 1870. Glengallon Swamp was the site of another railway camp at that time. However by 1872 the family had ventured further afield to Avenel in Victoria where her sister Margaret was born. A report in The Age newspaper, four days after Margaret was born, stated if favourable weather continued the tracks of the North-Eastern railway would reach Avenel in a fortnight, suggesting her father still had something to do with the railways. By 1874, the family were in New South Wales where my great grandfather, John, was born near Forbes and duly named after his maternal grandfather. Mary Anne now seven and a half had spent much of her young life moving about the country. This came to end in February 1878 when her father was granted over 300 acres of land at Katunga on the outskirts of Numurkah.
Mary Anne and her siblings were finally settled. When Numurkah State School officially opened for the first time on 4 March 1879, Mary Anne and her two siblings, Johanna and Cornelius, were on the enrolment list. Mary Anne was about to turn 12 in the April. Whether they actually attended was a contentious point, as the route to school was some distance, heavily wooded and difficult to navigate, their names may have been used just to make up the numbers to open a school.
By the age of fourteen, Mary Anne and her family were well settled on their farm in a log and iron house, 30 x 14 feet with a fenced and planted garden and 112 foot well for water. Eighty three acres had been cleared and planted to wheat and oats. The property also had a bark hut, bark stable and a bark and log Dairy. Life was comfortable for the family.
Jeremiah McAuliffe, sadly, didn't live to see his daughter marry, having died of influenza four years before the wedding. Not quite six weeks after the wedding, Mary Anne gave birth to her first child, Michael McAuliffe. He was born at 39 Henry St, Hawthorn according to the birth certificate filled out by her mother, Kate, and named the father as 30 yr old, Jeremiah McAuliffe of Shepparton, with the marriage date of Mary Anne and James Sullivan. For whatever reason, Mary Anne did not keep her first son, but gave him to her Aunt Margaret, her mother's sister to raise. Margaret Ford was nearing 60 years of age and had never married. There was a Jeremiah McAuliffe of the same age, who lived in Shepparton at the time, but was he really the father or a convenient way to give Michael the McAuliffe surname. Michael was known in Numurkah as Mick Ford, which came to light in an article written in the local paper, when he was given a rousing reception on his return from WWI. A little over twelve months after Michael was born, Mary Anne, gave birth to her second child, another son, who she also called Michael!
As with most women of this time period their are no records of her life except when she had or buried her children. Mary Anne had ten children in her eleven and half years of marriage, only six lived to adulthood. Michael McAuliffe, her eldest child, never married and spent his final years with John Sullivan, who certified his death, as his brother, and that Michael's parents were James Sullivan and Mary Anne McAuliffe. Mary Anne gave birth to twins in Nov 1905, only one of whom survived. At the time she was suffering influenza that developed into pneumonia. She passed away eight days after the birth as described in this newspaper article.
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| The Numurkah Leader, 10 Nov 1905 |
Sadly, Mrs J Sullivan suffered the same fate as her father and brother, dying of influenza. A sign of the times and illustrating the difficulty of researching woman ancestors, she was not mentioned by her own name but in terms of being the wife of James Sullivan. Mary Anne Sullivan (nee McAuliffe) was buried in an unmarked grave at Numurkah Cemetery at only 38 years old. In roughly a two and half year period between 1900 and 1902, Mary Anne had given birth and buried three children, Kate, John and Margaret and her last baby, Thaddeus was buried only six days prior to her own death. Gone, but not forgotten.
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| Mary Sullivan (nee McAuliffe 1867-1905) Thaddeus Sullivan (1905-1905) Margaret Sullivan (1902 -1902) John Sullivan (1901-1902) James Sullivan (1860 - 1932) Numukah Cemetery Graves 483 & 484 |
