Australian-Irish History | Family Genealogy

The Brooch that Pins My Family Together

GiaB ‘Dear Genie’ prompt #1: family

What if my great-great-great-grandfather, James Kelly, hadn’t been a farmer in Kilkenny, Ireland during the Great Famine of 1845–1852?

What if he hadn’t been forced off his farming plot and into the most wretched of all institutions, the Kilkenny poorhouse, never to be heard of again?

What if his illiterate wife, Margaret O’Neil, and their elder daughter, Catherine, hadn’t been caught stealing dresses in 1850 in sheer desperation to provide for themselves and the children in their family?

What if Margaret and Catherine hadn’t been convicted and sentenced to spend the next ten years in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), the penal colony on the other side of the world?

What if Annie Kelly, Margaret’s 5 year-old daughter hadn’t been allowed to travel with her mother and older sister on the female convict ship, the Blackfriar, when it set sail from Dublin in early 1851?

What if Annie, like several of the other children on board the Blackfriar, hadn’t survived the perilous journey to her new home at The Orphan Schools, the church-run institution in Hobart Town that ‘cared’ for children of convict mothers.

What if three years later, Margaret, upon being granted a Ticket-of-Leave (early release), hadn’t claimed her young daughter and arranged for her discharge from the orphanage?

What if at this same time, a fellow by the name of Frederick Robert Podbury hadn’t decided (for reasons we can only speculate about), to leave — maybe, flee — his home turf in England and make a new life for himself in Australia?

What if Annie and Frederick (a baker and 16 years her senior), hadn’t decided to ‘get hitched’ — not necessarily, married — in the early 1860s?

What if Annie and Frederick hadn’t been blessed with almost a baker’s dozen of children, one of whom was Gertrude born in Geelong, Victoria in 1867 and who would, in time, become the great-grandmother I never knew?

What if Annie hadn’t owned a distinctive embossed gold brooch that she chose to wear in a portrait photograph taken of her circa 1890?

What if that photograph hadn’t survived the passage of time long enough to be posted online by Mary, Annie’s great-great-granddaughter.

What if, upon her death in May 1938, Annie’s brooch hadn’t been passed onto her granddaughter, my great-aunt Marian?

What if that granddaughter hadn’t had the foresight to slip a handwritten note, ‘Grandma Podbury’s brooch’ into the jewellery box safeguarding not only the brooch but preserving family ties, past, present and future?

What if the brooch hadn’t found its roundabout way to my mother?

What if my mother hadn’t, for whatever reason, shown me the brooch?

What if I hadn’t connected the dots?

My mother had no idea until I informed her a few years ago that her great-grandmother, Annie Podbury, was the daughter of a convict. I’d only just started digging around in our family’s genealogy — oh the wonders of online platforms like ancestry.com — when I discovered this meaty skeleton in the cupboard. It was enough of a shock for my mum to process this fact without me rubbing in the obvious — her great-great-grandmother, Margaret Kelly (nee O’Neil), WAS a convict.

My mum knew Annie Podbury. She still remembers her — the little old lady always dressed in funeral black. The matriarch of the Podbury family. Annie was 93 years old when she died in 1938. Those were tough years. My mum, who was nine at the time, had already lost her maternal grandmother (Annie’s daughter, Gertrude), her baby brother, and her father. Within months, she’d moved away from Geelong and away from the Podburys, distance and sadness driving a wedge into their lives that would never be fully repaired.

Years ago, an admission of being descended from a convict would have been treated as an open invitation to mockery and scorn. These days, especially for younger generations, it’s almost a badge of pride. For Mum, it’s something between embarrassment and bemusement. Part of her is glad to have been brought into the harsh light of reality and to finally have answers to questions that have niggled at the back of her mind for decades. Another part of her is saddened that it was left to chance for us to discover it for ourselves. Such are the curiosities of life. Such is the curiosity of the institution of family.

Thank you to Melissa Speed for the inaugural Dear Genie prompt: Family and Victor Sarkin and the rest of the editorial team at Genius in a Bottle. In the process of refamiliarizing myself with this part of my family’s history, I have discovered what I suspect are more skeletons in the closet!

Here is the link to Melissa’s prompt which also includes the guidelines for anyone interested in learning more. I call on Priyanka Srivastava | Jen McGahan| Nanette Schieron| Rhonda Skinner| Ashley Lorraine Bridges to think about offering their thoughts about family.