Why did 12 single women from Cappoquin, Co Waterford, sail to Australia on an emigrant ship in 1849, and are there any descendants of their families still living in the west Waterford area? Ray Thorburn, director of the Australian Genealogical Education Centre, in Kiama, New South Wales, has sent out a call for help on this after reading the South East Column on the Internet.
Mr Thorburn, who has the original passenger list of the vessel, the Success, which arrived in Sydney on December 18th, 1849, writes that besides the usual mix of assisted passengers, including families of convicts joining their loved ones, the names of these girls, aged from 16 to 23 years, were recorded.
He points out that, unlike Tipperary, Limerick, east Clare, Cork and most of Ulster, Co Waterford did not figure substantially in migration to the Antipodes. His non-profit centre, owned and financed by the local Kiama Council, is the leading family and social history research centre in Australia.
It holds a worldwide resource collection of more than 650 million entries in relation to Australian immigration, particularly the early Irish immigrants who made Kiama the most Irish area in the colony in the 1860s.
The Cappoquin women were an unusual group, however. "They had no relatives out here. They don't appear to have come from a workhouse, although admittedly it is towards the end of the Famine period," Mr Thorburn notes. "Did an emigration agent swing through Cappoquin and paint an enticing picture of migration and prospects in New South Wales?
"The families of these girls, coming down from those siblings left in Cappoquin, are probably still living in that area. Perhaps they have letters from them or anecdotal evidence that can explain this exodus of the 12 girls from this small market town, as it was then."
The names on the passenger list are: Mary Kennedy, Mary Carthy, Mary Cunningham, Ann Dwyer, Catherine Griffin, Mary Keefe, Mary Linnen, Jane Trehey, Mary Wall, Bridget Wall, Bridget Welsh and Margaret Welstead. The list records that all were illiterate, apart from Catherine Griffin and Jane Trehey.
Mr Thorburn is leading an Australian tour party to this country next week. It will visit Waterford and Connemara, and in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, the party will inspect a project to restore the old workhouse to make it a workhouse interpretative centre. The workhouse contributed 26 girls to Earl Grey's "Orphan Girls to Australia" scheme in 1849-50.
Any information from Cappoquin can be communicated to Mr Thorburn at: AGEC, PO Box 75, Kiama, NSW 2533, Australia.