Mystery woman of County Clare: Honora Boyle 1841 - 1901

Honora Boyle 1841 - 1901

The lady in the photograph is still somewhat of a mystery to me. She is my great-grandmother, Honora Boyle. She's the mother of my Australian grandmother, Alice Grady. I don't know where or when the photo was taken. Probably somewhere in Mudgee or Gulgong, New South Wales where Honora lived after arriving in the colony.

As often happens with family history research, more is known about Honora's later life, because it is still within living memory. My 95-year-old aunt Joan says my grandmother, Alice Grady, was effectively orphaned at the age of 19 when Honora Boyle Grady (the lady in the photograph), died in Gulgong, New South Wales in 1901. Honora originally came from Miltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland.

Over the last few months I have pieced together some of Honora Boyle's story.

Early Life in County Clare, Ireland

Honora Boyle was born in County Clare and baptised on 4 June 1841 in the parish of Kilmurry Ibricken, Clare, Ireland in the Diocese of Killaloe. Her parents were Peter Boyle and Mary Daly from Seafield, a hamlet on the Clare Atlantic coast. Honora's younger sister, Mary Boyle, was baptised on 27 Mar 1844 at the Kilmurry Ibricken parish. 

Miltown Malbay was a market town close to the parish of Kilmurry Ibricken where the sisters were baptised. It is about six miles from Seafield where their parents were living when the children were born.

In 1855 Peter Boyle, Honora's father, was listed in Griffith's Valuation as renting a house in Seafield, Clare.

Arrival in the colony of New South Wales in 1864

Sometime in late 1863 or early 1864, Honora Boyle and her younger sister Mary left Ireland and made their way to Plymouth, England to board the Sirocco, bound for New South Wales. Their wooden sailing ship was carrying a large group of "government immigrants" comprising 145 women, 121 men and 48 children. Honora and Mary Boyle were in that group and they arrived in Sydney on 3 October 1864 as sponsored unaccompanied single women. A shipping immigration record from Ancestry places the 20-year-old Honora Boyle and 16-year-old Mary Boyle on the Sirocco (2). Both Honora and Mary are listed as dairy maids, Roman Catholic, not able to read or write and from Miltown, Malbay, Clare, Ireland. Another document says they were servants so it is most likely that they were brought to New South Wales to work as servants, as the colony was short of female workers at that time.

Once in New South Wales Honora found her way to the town of Mudgee in a wheat and wool farming district 200 miles north west of Sydney. I am not sure when she arrived in Mudgee, but do know that the woman who sponsored them, Ellen Egan, went to there too. Two years later, in 1866, gold was discovered in nearby Gulgong and the great Gulgong gold rush began, swelling the town to 20,000 inhabitants by 1872.

Around that time a young man from Ireland, Peter Grady, arrived in Gulgong and applied for a gold lease in 1875. Honora and Peter Grady met and were married in 1879 in the Catholic Church in Mudgee.

Their first child, Mary Grady, was born in 1879 and their second child, my grandmother Alice Grady, in 1882. Tragically, young Mary Grady died of scarlet fever at the age of six in Gulgong in 1885. I remember my Gran telling me about her older sister dying so young: "only the good die young" she used to say. Gran would have been three at the time and she was their only surviving child.

Eventually the gold ran out and the population of Gulgong fell to 1212 by 1881. But Honora and Peter Grady stayed on and farmed at a property at Stoney Creek. Sadly, Peter Grady died of bronchitis in 1890, leaving Honora and her daughter Alice Grady on the Stoney Creek farm.

 

Honora Grady was accounted for in the 1901 Census living at County Phillip, Mudgee, NSW. But a few months later, in November 1901, Honora died suddenly in her sleep. An announcement appeared in the local newspaper, the Mudgee Guardian and North Western Representative:  she was "a well respected resident of this district, well liked by everyone who knew her". 

Honora is buried with her husband and daughter Mary in the Gulgong Cemetery. Amazingly, there is a photograph of Honora GradyBoyle's grave at Gulgong on the Australian Cemeteries Index site.

Unanswered questions

Many details of Honora's early life in Ireland have eluded me, thus far, such as:

Why did she and her sister leave Ireland alone?

They were sponsored by Ellen Egan. Was she someone from their town? There are quite a few Egans in the same parish and the name Egan keeps popping into the story.

What happened to Honora and Mary's parents in Clare?

The girls would have been small children during the Great Hunger in Ireland from 1845-1852. How did this shape their destiny?

And what happened to Honora and Mary Boyle after they arrived in New South Wales in 1864? 

By 1879, Honora was in Mudgee and the photo, a cabinet photo, appears to date from the 1870s. But what about Honora's sister Mary Boyle? She seems to have disappeared and I can find no record of her death in NSW.

One great source for information on the Boyles of Clare is:

The Family Boyle Website which mentions "our" Boyles and other connections around the world. Some Boyles of Honora's generation from the parish of Kilmurry Ibricken emigrated to USA. 

One great Clare resource is Clare County Library Clare Genealogy &Family History links

 

According to the County Clare Library GenMaps, the name of Boyle in Clare is most common in the parish of Kilmurry Ibricken where Honora and Mary were baptised. See the bright orange spot on the left of this GenMap showing Kilmurry Ibricken as the greatest concentration of Boyles in Clare in the 1901 Census of Ireland.

Boyle name occurrences in Clare 1901 from Clare County Library GenMap

I plan to write another post about the journey of the Sirocco and what I can glean about the arrival and dispersal of the Boyle girls in New South Wales in 1864. Richard Reid's book, Farewell My Children: Irish Assisted Emigration to Australia 1848-1870 is a great resource for this.

I'd be thrilled to hear from other descendants of the Boyles of Clare, who may know more the family fortunes or misfortunes. Just post a comment below.

The Supreme Sacrifice

The following piece of my writing originally appeared in the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Past Tense Anthology in June 2016

The Supreme Sacrifice

Sgt Herbert Gerald (Bud) Baggs 1922–1943

My grandfather, Herbert Baggs, came through the Great Depression with his job intact. He was blessed. By 1939, his daughter (my mother) Marg had joined the workforce and her younger brother Gerald was in high school. At the end of the decade Grandpa and Nana Mollie settled into a grand new house in Toronto and life was rosy. But, with the war clouds drifting across Canada, his greatest crisis was on the horizon.

Herbert's only son Gerald was born in 1922, ten years into their marriage, when Mollie was 39. He was the longed-for son, who was always affectionately known as Bud. There was a gap of seven years between Bud and my mother. Marg doted on her adorable little brother. Bud grew into a tall lean lad, with brown wavy hair and hazel eyes. He was a superb swimmer and won several medals for the school swimming team.

Bud enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in 1941, at the tender age of 19. He had no previous flying experience but, like many others, was keen to contribute his youth and energy to the cause. At his recruitment, the interviewing officer singled him out as potential officer material. He was streamed into the pressure-cooker pilot training program and worked his way through the system, serving 15 months at six different training locations in Canada. On 4 February 1943, Herbert and Mollie were proud to see their son's name printed in the daily newspaper – he had graduated as a RCAF pilot. No sooner did he have his wings, when he was assigned to train other recruits.

On 21 February 1943 Gerald wrote to his sister Marg:

Dear Marg,

Well here I am, still trying to be an instructor. What a job! All we do is fly around in light little biplanes which always feel like the motor is about to drop out. After flying twin engines at Brantford it is quite a letdown. But I am beginning to get used to them.

I got both your letters and your telegram. You will have to excuse me for not answering them sooner but they keep us pretty busy on this station. I always seem to be rushing somewhere ...

Has the weather been any better in Toronto lately? It has been pretty nice here for the last few days and today the sun is really warm. I sure hope it stays like this. Last week it was down to about 40 below and I just about froze to death.

Well, I have to start flying right now so I'll see you next weekend if the air force doesn't change its mind again.

Love,

Bud

P.S. how do you like my snappy personal stationery.

The Air Force posted Bud to the number Ten Elementary Flying Training School at Pendleton, Ontario in March 1943.

On the afternoon of 20 April 1943 Herbert and Mollie were at home listening to the radio, when there was a knock at the front door and Herbert went to open it. A solemn young military man was standing on the porch, with a telegram in his hand. With a sense of panic and dread an ashen-faced Herbert accepted the telegram and by the time he did so, Mollie had rushed up to his side. He closed the door behind the messenger, and somehow managed to steer Mollie into the lounge room.

The telegram confirmed their worst fears – Bud had been killed in a flying accident. There were no details, just the bare facts. His Tiger Moth plane had crashed on a training flight at 10.25am on the previous day in Curran, Ontario.

Herbert stared mutely at the telegram; his eyes scanned back and forth across the printed words, trying to take it in.

Mollie wailed, 'oh no, this can't be. My sweet boy.'

Herbert turned the telegram over in his hands. Such a small piece of paper.

'It doesn't make sense. He's only been up there three weeks.'

They sat in silence in the lounge room, until the light outside faded and the room grew dim. Herbert got up and went over to the front window and peered out. The ghostly blue spruce stood sentinel on their front lawn and beyond that their neighbour's granite wall glowed under the street light. He heard the low growl of an automobile engine starting up. Headlights shone and a car pulled out of the driveway opposite. Life in the neighbourhood continued on regardless. Herbert knew if he was to support Mollie through this, he would need to mine a deep reserve of inner strength.

Several days later, on 24 April 1943 the name of 21-year-old Sgt Herbert Gerald Baggs was printed in the Toronto Globe and Mail among the list of air casualties. He and four other Canadian airmen had made the supreme sacrifice on that day.

In May 1943 a Court of Inquiry investigated the flying accident. The enquiry provided no solace at all to Herbert and Mollie. It found that Bud was the pilot at the controls in the front seat of the Tiger Moth at the time of the accident. His student was in the back seat. The report laid it out bluntly:

On a practiced forced landing approach, the aircraft was put into a steep side slip and it stalled at a low altitude, and struck the ground before control could be regained. The pilot was killed and student seriously injured.

The cause of the accident, according to one witness, was – 'pilot error on part of instructor in allowing the aircraft to stall at a low altitude.'

We tend to hear about war deaths that result from combat; however a staggering number occurred as a result of accidents. My uncle was one of 856 persons to be killed or seriously injured during their air training in Canada. Wartime exigencies meant that everything about the air training program was conducted in haste. It seems incredible that two months after receiving his wings in February 1943, Bud was a trainer himself. But that was an indication of the pressure of training during war time.

Bud never married or had children and there are few around to tell his story. As one of his remaining family members, I am left with a deep sense of sorrow at so much unfulfilled promise in a life cut short. His young face is frozen for me in time – the bud that never flowered.

My grandfather never recovered from the catastrophe of losing his only son and a pall hung over the household. His health went into a decline and on 31 March 1946 Herbert died of a stroke. He was only 60. If he drew any comfort in his last years it must have come from knowing that his son had played his part in delivering supremacy to the Allies in the air war, which ultimately gave them victory. Sgt Herbert Gerald Baggs' gravestone carries the familiar inscription – 'at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember him'.