The Story of Michael Farrell

This post tells the story of my maternal Great Great Grandfather, Michael Farrell (1834 - 1917).  

Photo shared by Lawrie McCane

There are differences in the ages recorded on Michael's marriage record and his death record, but his baptism record showed that my great great grandfather was born in November of 1834.  

His father was Thomas Farrell and his mother was Anne Conoly.

Baptism Register Nov 4 1834 - Michael Farrell - Diocese of Ardagh - Kiltoghart Parish, County Leitrim

Michael's church baptism record shows he was baptised on the 4th of November in the Carrick-on-Shannon district of the Kiltoghert Parish in County Leitrim, Ireland.

I have not been able to track down any records that could provide the names of any siblings born either before or after Michael, nor do I have any information about the life of his parents (my 3x great grandparents). 

I did a bit of research about the Kiltoghert Parish though and found this little gem of a passage written in 1837, just a few years after the birth of Michael.

It gives a bit of a picture of the area itself and the size of the townlands at that time.

"KILTOGHART, a parish, in the barony and county of LEITRIM, and province of CONNAUGHT; containing, with part of the post-town of Carrick-on-Shannon, and the villages of Drumshambo, Leitrim, and Jamestown, 16,434 inhabitants.

It comprises 20,669 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act, and valued at £11,942 per annum: the land is chiefly under tillage, and there is much bog and mountain, also quarries of freestone and limestone.Part of the mountain Slieve-an-irin and several small lakes are in this parish, in which rise the hills of Sheemore, said to contain caves of considerable depth. There is a church at Carrick-on-Shannon, and one in Drumshambo. In the R. C. divisions the parish forms two unions or districts, one called Kiltoghart and Gowel, which has chapels at Carrick-on-Shannon, Jamestown, and Gowel; the other called Kiltoghart-Murhane, which has a chapel at Murhane.There are twelve public schools. About 1000 children are educated in these schools, and about 100 in three private schools. At Port are the remains of a monastery, which was converted into a castle to command the ford across the Shannon."
from Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837.

Not long after this description was published however, life for the majority of people living in this area was about to take a tragic turn!

Looking into the history of County Leitrim, and Carrick-upon-Shannon in particular, between 1845 to 1852  (the years of The Great Hunger). resulted in the creation of a vivid picture of the circumstances for most of the population living there at that time.  

Leitrim was one of the most underdeveloped and deprived parts of Ireland before the Great Hunger, and then it suffered a dreadful fate.  In 1845 County Leitrim experienced its first devastating potato blight.  Then in 1846, the potato crop failed completely in the area around Carrick-upon-Shannon.  This resulted in widespread illness, rampant starvation and death.  

The Carrick-upon-Shannon workhouse, planned as part of 1838's Poor Law and built in 1841, had become overcrowded very quickly by 1845.  Whilst it had the capacity for up to 800 inmates, scores of forlorn people would keep turning up every week and the situation became desperate, with up to 12 deaths or more every week.

In an excerpt taken from the Ireland Reaching Out website ...

"During the famine years, Carrick-on-Shannon suffered greatly. By the end of 1846, the workhouse was bursting at the seams, with the inmates lacking food, clothing, proper sanitation, and having only straw for bedding. Diseases such as dysentery and typhus were rife and a dozen deaths a week were occurring. At the end of 1846, the Quaker James Tuke visited a number of workhouses and reported:

I have already stated that owing to the want of funds, great difficulty exists in many Unions in providing for the inmates. The worst which I visited was that of Carrick-on-Shannon (which opened in 1842); it is in a miserable state and the doors were closed against further admissions; and although built for 700 had but 280 inmates; gates were besieged by seventy or eighty wretched beings who in vain implored for admission. Numbers of them were in various stages of fever, which was terribly prevalent in the neighbourhood, and the fever-shed overcrowded. Two months before my visit, the doors of the workhouse were opened and the inmates expelled, entailing upon them the most dire misery."

I can only assume that they Farrell family, along with so many others, probably ended up is quite dire circumstances when faced with the harsh reality of life in a famine-stricken land.  The family might have attempted to gain entry into the workhouse, perhaps successfully, or they might have ended up like many others living rough, outdoors under bridges or trees, wherever they could find shelter.  

Victims of the Irish Potato Famine arriving in Liverpool, Eng.;
illustration in the Illustrated London News, July 6, 1850.

Whilst soup kitchens were set up in Carrick-upon-Shannon around 1847, they went a very little way in alleviating some of the hunger.  

Disease was extremely difficult to eradicate in these circumstances as well, and so it was that leaving Ireland became a necessary option for so many.

It seems that Michael was one of those who made the decision to leave Ireland (at some point before he turned 30) and he never returned.

It appears he made his way to Scotland where, in January of 1865, Michael Farrell married Susan Downey (spelt Downie on the record of marriage).  They were married in the Parish of Hawick in the County of Roxburgh in Scotland.  

Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scotland

When I found this record, my immediate thoughts were  ... 

What was Michael doing in Scotland? 

How long had he been in Scotland?  

I have surmised that either Michael left Ireland with his parents and possibly siblings when he was young; or Michael left home as an adult and went to Scotland for work.  Either way, it seems he became one of the many millions of Irish who went off in search of a better life.  

Hawick was at that time the centre of a thriving textile industry.  As described in John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles, dated 1887, "Hawick is a manufacturing town ... an ancient place ... now the chief seat of the hosiery manufacturing and one of the chief seats of woollen manufacturing in Scotland."

Looking more closely at the information provided on the marriage record it appears that the parents of both Michael and his wife (my 2x great grandmother) Susan were deceased by 1865 and the witnesses did not appear to be family members.  Were Michael and Susan by themselves in Scotland by this stage?  

Whatever the circumstances, Michael was living and working in Scotland in 1865.  Interestingly, the age recorded on his marriage record appears to be wrong.  It states he was 24 years of age, but having been baptised in 1834 it's not possible he would have been in his early 20s in 1865!  He would have actually been 30 years of age when he married Susan.  

In November of that same year, Michael became a father for the first time.  

My great grandmother Margaret was born in 1865.  Her birthplace was recorded as Newcastle-Upon-Tyne though, so that means Michael and Susan had left the border town of Hawick in Scotland and moved to north-eastern England.  

Perhaps they had gone in search of a better-paying job or more permanent employment.  

Michael and his wife Susan stayed in north-eastern England for the next 22 years and went on to have eight more children.  

After Margaret's birth in 1865, Thomas was born in 1868.

Michael was born in 1870.

Helen Ann came along in 1872.

Elizabeth was born in 1873.

Sadly, that same year, Michael and Susan lost their second-born son Michael. He died at the age of 3.

Another son was born in 1876, and he was also named Michael.

Patrick Joseph was born in 1878.

James was born in 1880.

Then Matthew Felix came along in early 1887.

Census records of 1871 show that Michael, his wife Susan, and their first three children, Margaret, Thomas and Michal, were living in Hinde House in the township of Holmside, County Durham.  

This means the family had moved from Sandgate in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where their first child Margaret had been born.  They had also moved from the birthplace of the two other children, Thomas and Michal, who had both been born in East Field Cottage near Holmside.

Why was the family moving around so much? Was it because that's where work was to be found or was it because change in circumstances meant they need somewhere more affordable to live?  Or both?  In 1871 there was another family living with them - a Bridget Heamey, recorded as a lodger, and her three small children.  

That means there were 3 adults and 6 children under the age of 6 likely living in one or two rooms.  Obviously things were tough for Michael and his family, given that they had taken in a lodger with children in such a small house.  Was the lodger a relative?  Or was she just someone providing much needed extra income?

Michael's occupation at that time was listed as Coke Worker.  An interesting insight into the lives of the working Irish who moved to Durham comes from Robert Moore's book Pitmen, Preachers and Politics, published in 1974.  He stated that 

"With the sinking of the shafts in mid-Durham, new jobs were found for Irishmen, again the heavy labouring involved in shaft sinking.  Once the shafts were sunk, the Irish were employed in labouring and on the coke-ovens ... Only slowly were the Irish able to gain skilled, piece-rate jobs at the face."  

Michael was one of those labouring Irish, the poorest paid, and it doesn't appear as if Michael ever worked his way up the ranks to the lofty heights of coal-face coal miner.  

According to the census records of 1881, Michael was by then employed as a 'coke drawer - burner'.  Essentially his job would have been to draw out the finished coke from the retort in which coal was heated to produce coke.  

Coke drawer working at a coke oven

He would have scraped the scorching hot coke out of the coke oven using an iron rod (known as a scraper), fork it into a wheelbarrow, and then push the wheelbarrow to a railroad car and emptied the hot coke into the car.  It would have been strenuous and dangerous work.  The only saving grace would have been that he was working above ground and not in the dark depths of a coal shaft.

By 1881 Michael, his wife Susan, and family of  6 children were living at House No.140 in the hamlet of Havanna, near the village of Stanley.  The coke ovens of the Stanley Colliery were nearby.  The Farrell family also had a lodger living with them, probably paying a very small amount of rent for the privilege of having a roof over his head.  

It appears that Michael's eldest daughter Margaret (my great grandmother) had left home at this stage and was working as a live-in domestic servant at a house in the same street, but at the "posh end".

Example of miner's row housing

There were 160 houses in the hamlet of Havanna, and most of the residents worked for the coal mine nearby, living in pitrow or miner's row housing - long rows of one or two room houses on either side of a street.  Living conditions would have been cramped and unsanitary and the tenants would have been classed as "the working poor".

No surprise then that Michael and his family made the decision to emigrate to Australia.  No doubt they were convinced it would be their only chance to build a better life and the long journey offered the promise of a rosier future.

Looking at the immigration passenger list record, I once again have to question the age recorded for my 2x great grandfather.  If he was supposedly aged 38 when emigrating in 1887, then he would have been 16 when he got married in 1865, and 17 when his first child was born.  Whilst I know this is possible, it is not the reality.


Given that I tracked down the baptism record with the exact names of the parents who were listed on Michael's marriage record, then I think it's more correct to say that at the age of 52 Michael, his wife Susan and their children Thomas (aged 18), Elizabeth (aged 12), Michael (aged 10), Patrick (aged 8), James (aged 5) and baby Matthew (incorrectly listed as another Michael) only aged 4 months, left London on August the 10th 1887 headed for Australia. 

My great great grandfather's two eldest daughters, Margaret (my great grandmother) and Helen, had already emigrated in 1886.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out any details about the trip of the 'Cheybassa' from London to Townsville in late 1887, other than the fact that the ship arrived safely in the port of Townsville on the 28th of September after a six-week voyage, and then sailed on to Brisbane.

Michael and his family disembarked in Townsville and would have taken a train out to Charters Towers where they met up with their two daughters who had been working there for over a year.  Charters Towers was to be Michael's home for the remainder of his life.

I don't have much more information about Michael's life after he settled in Charters Towers, apart from a few details gleamed from electoral roll records for the years 1903, 1908 and 1913.  Michael was living at Bridge Street in Charters Towers for each of those years - so it's safe to say that was probably the family home that Michael and Susan established not long after they arrived in the town.  

The 1895 City Directories record lists Michael Farrell and his occupation is recorded as: Miner.

Michael would have been 61 years old in 1895 so it appears that he began working in the mines soon after he arrived in Charters Towers and then worked in mining for at least nine years.

Information just recently gleaned from "The History of Queensland, its people & industries" Vol. 111, compiled by Matt. J. Fox (published 1919-1923) provides confirmation that Michael was employed in the mining industry.  

While researching the husband of Michael's daughter Elizabeth, Frank Shaw, I found mention of Michael as Elizabeth's father:

"In the year 1897, he (Frank Shaw) married Elizabeth, daughter of the late Michael Farrell, who was one of the oldest representatives of the mining industry of Charters Towers, where he was connected with Municipal affairs in the most flourishing days of the town."

On each of the 1903, 1908 and 1913 electoral roll records, Michael's occupation was listed as 'labourer', so he remained fairly active well into his early 80s.

Information found in the obituary for Michael provides more information about Michael's employment, for the years mentioned above - 1903, 1908 and 1913.

Extract from the obituary:

"He had resided on this field (meaning in Charters Towers) for 31 years, and for 14 years of that period he was employed at the waterworks."

So it sounds as if Michael worked as a miner during his 50s and early 60s, after arriving in Charters Towers, and then he changed to less physically demanding work when he reached his mid-60s.  In those days of course most men worked their entire lifetime, if possible.  That definitely seems to be the true in Michael's case.

Michael was very fortunate to have his family close while he lived.  

His sons remained in Charters Towers during Michael's lifetime, as evidenced in the 1913 electoral roll record - two worked as miners (Thomas and Patrick) and one (Michael Jnr.) was an auctioneer.  The second youngest son, James (known as Jim) had moved on and left Charters Towers to gain employment.  The youngest son Matthew was living at home with his parents as well.

Two of Michael's daughters also remained living in Charters Towers for many years after they had married, and Michael got to know many of his grandchildren.

Helen, the second eldest daughter, married in 1890, and remained in Charters Towers until around 1910.  She gave birth to nine children, although one passed away when only a few days old.

My great grandmother Margaret (Michael's eldest daughter) married in 1892, continued living and raising her family of seven children in Charters Towers until just after Michael died. 

Tragically, one of Margaret's children (Michael's grandson Edward) died as a result of a drowning accident when he was 8 years old. 

Elizabeth, Michael's youngest daughter, married in 1897, but moved away soon after with her husband to the Innisfail area.

Michael's oldest son, Thomas, lived with his parents up until they both passed.  He did not marry.

Michael's second oldest son, Michael (named after his father), married in 1901. He and his wife went on to have six children, and Michael Jnr. worked as an auctioneer for his lifetime.

I have been unable to find out much about the lives of the younger sons, James, Matthew and Patrick over this period of time, but all three enlisted to fight in First World War and their war records indicate their professions before the war.  Both James and Matthew had 'hairdresser' listed as their occupation, but I do know that Matthew had been working on a station named Bluff Downs, just outside Charters Towers for a while before he enlisted.  Patrick's occupation was listed as 'iron moulder' and he was living in Bundaberg at the time of his enlistment.

My great great grandfather Michael lived long enough to see these three sons enlist and sail off to fight in World War 1, but not for much longer after that.  His second youngest son James enlisted first, in January 1916.  His youngest son Matthew enlisted next, in July of 1916.  Then Patrick enlisted in November of that same year.  

Son, Patrick Farrell

Sadly, Michael's son Patrick was killed in action less than a year later in Belgium, in September of 1917.

Michael died just two months later in November of 1917.  His death was apparently the result of injuries caused by a fall.  I'm not sure what type of fall it was or of the circumstances around this event, despite endless searches of newspapers of the time.  

Michael Farrell died at the age of 83, just a few days after his birthday.  The cause of death on his death certificate is recorded as: accidental fractured neck of femur, pulmonary congestion and heart failure.  Falling at his age had a catastrophic effect.

Michael was buried at the Charters Towers Cemetery.

An obituary was published in the local newspaper on the 20th of November, but then the newspaper added an extra piece the following day to correct their error in recording the number of Michael's offspring.

The newspaper had stated that Michael was survived by two sons and three daughters, when in fact there were still four surviving sons.  

Two sons were listed as serving overseas.  They mentioned Patrick had been killed in action, but then listed the second son as "Matthew James".   This was basically a combination of the names of two other sons - Michael and James - who were both still serving overseas.  The newspaper had also neglected to mention the names of the other older sons, Michael (named after his father) and Thomas (the eldest son).

These errors were corrected the following day, so that all Michael's sons were correctly identified.

The newspaper also added more personal details, such as the name of Michael's wife, the number of grandchildren they had, and the fact that Michael was quite hail and hearty even in his 70s, when he was apparently walking the 8-mile journey from his workplace to his home on the weekends.    

Michael Farrell and Susan Farrell nee Downey
(Photo shared by Lawrie McCane)

Special Note to any family members:  If you have memories to add, photos or information to share, can I graciously ask that you do so.  Please use the comments box below or email me.  It may prove to be invaluable to the story and provide future generations with something to truly treasure.