The Gheas: Our Eurasian Family

Ghea Family c1930
Standing (left to right): Dick, Tilly, Liza, Maud, Dotsie
Seated: Flo, Emily, Great-Great-Grandma Annie, Minnie, Fanny
In front: Bunny

My Aunty Daph died on the 4^th November 1990. She was my paternal grandmother’s sister. It was only then as a result of a conversation with some in my family soon after her death that I discovered that we were Chinese. That was the catalyst for starting my family history journey.

The Gheas have always fascinated me ... probably because of the Chinese and even the German. I would have expected English, Irish and Scottish ... but German and Chinese? How exotic!

I can still remember how delighted I was when I was first given a copy of this beautiful photo above of the whole Ghea family ... well not quite the whole family. Where was Great-Great-Grandfather Ghea? This photo is one of two taken on the same occasion. The other photo is taken with hats on. The dress would date the photos to the late 1920s or early 1930s and the hats would likely indicate a family wedding. Great-Great-Grandfather Ghea had died in 1918.

Photo taken same day with hats on
(colorized courtesy of My Heritage website)

The head of the Ghea family was William Gee from Canton (Guangdong Province) China. Unlike Europeans the first Chinese weren’t recorded, or even regularly counted, as entering the Australian colonies so we don’t know exactly when he arrived. The first record we have for him is his marriage certificate.

Marriage certificate of William Gee and Anna Elise Wieckhorst

What a surprise I got when I found the marriage! Not only was the spelling of Ghea different but the bride was the wrong person! By this stage I already knew that William had married Anna Elise ‘Annie Elizabeth’ Wieckhorst so was more than a little perplexed to see a different person on the certificate.

William and Annie were married on 28 April 1870 in Maryborough Queensland. William gave his details as being a bachelor from Canton China, his occupation as cook, his age as 28, his current address as Maryborough, his parents’ names as John Wong Sing and Ah Houn, and his father’s occupation as merchant. Annie gave her name as Katie Sharp and her details as being a spinster from Hamburg Germany, her occupation as domestic, her age as 19, her current address as Maryborough, her parents’ names as Peter Sharp (in reality Peter Wieckhorst) and Annie Wickhorst (in reality Annie Reinfahrt), and her father’s occupation as carpenter. Annie could sign her name but William could not sign his name in English. Witnesses were George Ernest Macrae and John Patrick Furey.

Annie was 16 at the time of the marriage and not 19 as she claimed. William’s age varies enormously across the different records that exist so we don't know his exact age. He may well have put his age down at the time of his marriage to appear closer in age to his bride. 

Not only did Annie give her name as Katie Sharp for the marriage but she recorded it for the birth of her first 10 children. It was only for the birth of her 11^th child did she give her correct name. What would make her change her name? And why Katie Sharp?

One of the stories I heard when first beginning my search was that ‘Grandfather Ghea had to buy her (Annie)’. When I asked if that meant a dowry, the reply was that ‘No one wanted to marry a Chinese. They had to buy them (brides).’ I wondered if Annie had changed her name to disassociate herself from her father who had given her away as a 16 year old bride to a much older man.

In recent years another distant cousin revealed that their family story was that William and Annie had eloped. We know that Annie put her age up by 3 years for the marriage. At 16 she was too young to marry without written permission from a parent. This, together with the fact that no family member was a witness at the marriage, would point to the absence of family at the ceremony. The fact that Annie put her age up would indicate her consent to marrying William.  Additionally her mother had died a year prior to the marriage. It’s highly likely that Annie was in the role of housekeeper for her father and her two older brothers as well as the younger children. Was the prospect of running the household for years too much?

And where did the name Katie Sharp come from? I searched the passenger list from the ship that carried the Wieckhorsts to Australia and many other records but could not find any clue.

At any rate it is fair to assume that the marriage was a happy one. They had a large family and the marriage endured.

Children of William Gee and Anna Elise Wieckhorst

Ancestry ethnicity 7% Chinese

Nothing is complete in the world of family history these days until you have proven your DNA link to your forebears. I am happy to report that not only do I have 7% Chinese ethnicity but I have identified DNA matches with descendants of three of the 10 Ghea children as well as with a number of descendants of Annie Ghea nee Wieckhorst's grandparents. I can therefore claim the Gheas as part of my genetic family.

Note: Family history is a never ending story. If you find an error on this page or have anything new to contribute to this topic I would love to hear from you.

Please email me on Kathryn.Barrett02 at gmail.com

Jack Barrett's Will: How the Thackerays got the Barrett money

John Barrett 1849-1923
reproduced with permission
©B Bywater

Growing up we knew a lot about our Nana’s side of the family. We knew her sisters and their families. There were photos. We heard lots of family stories. But when I came to think of it I hadn’t met any of my grandfather’s family. I hadn’t seen any photos, heard any names or any stories. I didn’t even know how many brothers or sisters he had.

Midgee property with cemetery now in the middle of a quarry

The one thing I did remember was Midgee. Whenever we were driving south out of Rockhampton past Midgee Dad would point out the property where his father had grown up. And he would point to the family grave where Grandad’s little sister was buried up on the hill. She had died in a fire.

When I started the family history 30 years ago I asked many questions of the family to try to unravel the story of Midgee and our Barretts.

I heard that Grandad’s father used to whip the boys if the cattle got out and that my grandfather ran away from home as a teenager. I also heard that Grandad’s mother left his father as soon as the children grew up. I heard that Grandad’s father married the housekeeper Nina Thackeray after his wife died. And I heard that the Thackerays ‘got all the money’.

Grandad’s father was John Barrett who had come to Australia from Manchester England as an 14 year old with his parents Benjamin and Mary Ann and his three sisters and two brothers on the ship Hannah More arriving at Keppel Bay in 12 October 1863.

John ‘Jack’ Barrett at 17 years of age married Ellen Scully in 1866 in Rockhampton. Ellen had arrived with her sisters Bridget and Honora on the ship Landsborough also at Keppel Bay in 23 January 1865.

Jack and Ellen had 10 children: Joseph, Mary Ann ‘Polly’, Catherine ‘Kate’, Elizabeth, Edith ‘Eda’, Nora, John ‘Jack’, Ellen or Helen ‘Nell’, Sarah and Margaret. Poor little Margaret was the toddler who was only 15 months old when she died in the fire and was buried in the family graveyard up on the hill at Midgee.

John and Nina Barrett South Rockhampton cemetery

As we all do when we start our family history I looked for the graves. I found the graves in the South Rockhampton cemetery. My great-grandfather was buried with Nina, his second wife, in the Anglican section and my great-grandmother was buried with two of her daughters Elizabeth and Edith who had predeceased her, in the Catholic section, almost as an afterthought it seemed with her inscription on the side of Edith’s headstone.

Ellen Barrett nee Scully
South Rockhampton cemetery

Death certificate of John Barrett 

When I received John Barrett's death certificate the first surprise I got was that my grandfather J. F. Barrett was the informant. Somehow I had formed the impression that he had fled his father never to return. But that clearly wasn’t so. He must have reconnected with his father and Nina at some stage.

So off to Queensland State Archives I went and found the will and probate details.

The will was three pages long, quite detailed and clearly not a simple matter of gifting everything to his second wife Nina.

 

The estate was divided up in the following manner:

·       Nina (wife)
o   “Midgee Cottage” in Kent Street
o   North Street property
o   store on the corner of Archer and West Streets
o   £300
o   War Peace bonds £850
o   life estate over “Fariview” including contents in Cambridge and Talford Street

·       John Stanley Burns (grandson)
o   “Fairview” on the death of Nina
o   “Roundbay” in Cambridge Street

·       Thomas Howard Burns (grandson)
o   Two properties in Oxford Road

·       James Patrick Burns (grandson)
o   £420 owing on West Street property
o   West Street house and land

·       John Fitzroy Barrett (son)
o   “Kensington” in George Street

·       Mary Portus (daughter) 
o   House and land Talford and Archer Streets

·       Sarah Barrett (daughter) £200

Probate application p1

·       John Edwin Fitzroy Barrett, Rowley David Winsall Barrett and Gordon Vivian Barrett (grandsons) £100 each

·       Ellen Pearson (sister) £100

·       Nora Burns (daughter) Approx. £1,100 rest and residue of the estate

The executors of the will were Henry Barrett, son of his brother Benjamin, and Benjamin John Adams, son of his sister Sarah Adams.

The will was signed 10 weeks before his death.

(To put the gifts into some perspective, in 1922 the minimum wage was £4.10.0)

Probate application p2

Jack Barrett's will summary showing all grandchildren alive at the time of the signing of the will

Some of Jack Barrett’s children and grandchildren would have become quite wealthy as a result of this will and some missed out completely.

What was his thinking in drawing up this will? Why was there no provision for two of his daughters? Did he think they were well catered for by their husbands? Had they sided with their mother and cut him out of their lives? Why did he cut out one of his two sons? Why was the provision for most of his grandchildren so disproportionate to what others received?

It would appear that some were in favour and others completely out of favour. On the face of it, it certainly paints a picture of a fractured family.

While it isn’t completely accurate to say that the Thackerays ‘got all the money’ it must have been galling for his children and grandchildren when some 20 years later Nina’s large portion of the Barrett estate passed to unrelated people, particularly when five of the nine children, or their offspring, were disinherited.

John Gorman: Donegal Relief Fund

John Gorman 1839-1912

John Gorman was my Great Great Grandfather.

During my search I found him arriving in Sydney on board the ship Caribou (1065 tons) on the 4^th October in 1859 from Liverpool England after a voyage of 92 days.

Caribou

The ship landed 388 passengers comprising 174 men, 168 women, 19 young boys and 27 young girls. They included 45 married couples. There had been three deaths (two boys and a man) and six births during the voyage.

I wondered if he came to Australia as a result of the Great Famine. But as I was to discover it was more complicated than that.

Passenger list for Caribou

John was listed  on the passenger list as being 20 years old, occupation a ploughman (meaning he owned a plough and hired himself out to the farmer who had the horse), native place as Donegal, a Catholic, able to both read and write, and sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. Looking at the ship manifest of the Caribou about 3 quarters of the passengers had Donegal Relief Fund next to their names. I was intrigued as to what this Donegal Relief Fund was and so began my search into conditions which led my Great Great Grandfather to come to Australia.

During the 16^th and 17^th Centuries the British government had confiscated a great deal of land in Ireland owned by Catholics and enacted penal laws restricting land-ownership to Protestants. This created a system of servitude for the Irish that was to continue for many generations. The majority of the population had little or no access to land and lived in appalling conditions. 40% of Irish houses in 1841 were one room mud cabins with natural earth floors, no windows and no chimneys.[1] 

Famine family [Sean Sexton collection]

Famine in Ireland was not uncommon during the first half of the 19^th Century but none was as devastating as the ‘Great Hunger’, Great Famine 1848-1852, when it is estimated that one million died of starvation or related disease. And it was during this time that there was a mass exodus of people to Great Britain and America.

An indication of the scale of the disaster is reflected in the census figures. The 1841 census recorded an Irish population of 8.2 million. By 1851 this figure had been reduced to 6.5 million.

Even during the good times many small tenant farmers had to rely on access to income from elsewhere, such as peat-digging or using waste-land for common grazing, kelp collecting, fishing or seasonal work on large farms.

Northwest Donegal was perhaps the bleakest and poorest part of Ireland where land was often infertile bog.

For centuries the peasants’ stock had been allowed to graze on the mountains with any increase in stock helping to pay the rents. But all of this changed in Donegal in 1857 when landlords withdrew the grazing rights and imposed other financial hardships.

Turf hut Gweedore [National Library of Ireland]

In January 1858 ten Priests from the Gweedore/Cloughaneely area of Northwest Donegal formulated a letter[2] appealing to the Irish people to help. The districts of Gweedore and Cloughaneely were in a state of extreme distress. The priests talked of 800 families starving, living on seaweed, with scant clothing and no bedding.

Soon afterwards, this letter turned up in Sydney and so began what was to become the Donegal Relief Fund.

The architect of the fund was Archdeacon McEncroe of Sydney. There was a public meeting in May 1858 with more than 800 attending. Their practical resolution was that monies should be raised to help people from Gweedore and Cloughaneely immigrate to Australia. £200 was collected at this initial meeting at a time when the annual wage of a labourer was £32.

During the 1850s there was a shortage of labour in NSW caused by an exodus of people to the Victorian goldfields. The NSW government was encouraging people already in the colony to bring out friends and relations from their home countries. The scheme provided that the Government supplied the bulk of the cost of passage leaving the balance for the relative to pay. The Donegal Relief Fund was given permission by the Government to use this scheme.

Donegal Relief Fund

With a total of £4000 the organisers procured an Immigration Agent to work with the priests who had written the letter to firm up a list of names of people wishing to emigrate. Before the end of the year 1858, the agent had a list of 1200 names.

Although the original fund was established for the people of Gweedore and Cloughaneely its scope was widened to include other districts in the Northwest of Donegal including Letterkenny, the home of John Gorman.

Nile

John married Susan McClafferty in 1862 in Rockhampton Queensland.

Susan had arrived on the ship Nile on 4 May 1861 in Sydney and within 8 months they would wed some 1,400 kms away. Had John known Susan in Donegal? Or was there some other way they could have crossed paths?

Passenger list for Nile

On the passenger list Susan was listed as 19 years of age, occupation a general servant, from Mevagh (a parish 30 kms north of Letterkenny) in Donegal, Catholic, able to read but not write, and also sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund. I knew that family writings had the McClaffertys as being from Carrygrath which I soon discovered was Carrickart in the parish of Mevagh in Donegal.

Further discovery revealed that Susan’s sister Mary had been on board the ship Caribou with John Gorman and it appears that Susan’s brother Michael (Mark) arrived on the Nile with her. Both Mary and Michael were also sponsored by the Donegal Relief Fund.

The Donegal Relief Fund supplied passage for 1,384 passengers to emigrate from Ireland to Australia between May 1859 and June 1864.[3] All of the eight ships landed in Sydney.

Read more

http://donegalgenealogy.com/fiveshiploads.htm 

https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/9153/8/06Chs7-8_Reid.pdf

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ireland/famine.htm