The Story Of Richard O'Donnell (Daniel)

This is my attempt to tell the story of my maternal Great Grand Uncle, Richard O'Donnell / Daniel (1855 - 1916?).  It will be a story that's rather scant on details though, as Richard has proven to be one of brick walls in my research efforts.

Our Common Ancestors are:  John O'Donnell and Catherine Joy.

Family tree research is full of highs and lows, which makes the work both fascinating and extremely frustrating!  I started researching twelve years ago with a rather brief list of the names of my maternal and paternal aunts and uncles, my four sets of grandparents, and my own parents.  Now I have a family tree with many, many branches and leaves containing around 3,000 names.  

The O'Donnell side of my family tree stretches back to my Irish-born 4th great grandfather, but as the tree gets that far back there are very few branches, less and less leaves and quite sketchy information.  That's the negative aspect of researching Irish ancestors.

Very few records exist before the period between 1845 - 1852. Sometimes information can be found in the few surviving Catholic Parish registers from 1800 onwards, but there are many missing records as the priests did not routinely write down information about baptisms, marriage or deaths in their parishes.

Thankfully, I've certainly experienced some highs during my research on the O'Donnell side.  The oral history passed on from distant relatives, the existence of well-kept church records, the information and photos that have been shared by cousins, particularly in relation to the children of my 2x great grandparents, John O'Donnell and Catherine Joy, these have all been absolute highlights of my research.  I've also been fortunate enough to meet or make contact with children and grandchildren of that sibling group, my second and third cousins in Ireland and the U.S., whom I never knew existed twelve years ago. 

My maternal great great grandparents, John O'Donnell and Catherine Joy, had thirteen children, all circled in yellow in the diagram above (along with their spouses).    

Two of John and Catherine's children lived their lives in Ireland, but eleven of them emigrated.  Oral family history tells that of the eleven who emigrated, all but two, moved to the U.S. to build their new lives.  One of those eleven eventually returned to the family farm in Killonerry and remained there for the rest of his life.

The two children who emigrated elsewhere and not to the U.S., were my great grandfather, Edmond O'Donnell, and his older brother Richard (known as Dick).

possible photo of my great grandfather
Edmond O'Donnell

Edmond O'Donnell was the Irish immigrant, along with my great grandmother (of course), who established my particular branch of the O'Donnell family here in Australia.  Sadly his life was cut short and he died only ten years after emigrating.  

The story passed down in family oral history was that Edmond had married in Australia.  The family story didn't include any details about who his wife was, other than she became a Mrs. O'Brien after Edmond's death in a mine accident.

The few details told in this story were not all correct (Edmond didn't die in a mine accident and he married a girl he had known from home who had travelled out to Australia with him) so it was clear there had been very little contact between Edmond and his family after he had left Ireland.

  

Richard, Edmond's older brother, emigrated to Australia as well, according to oral family history, but that was the extent of the information passed on by the family.  I had almost no facts to start with, and have found few confirmed facts since starting my research, so the bulk of the following brief story is supposition and guesswork.  Maybe the simple act of putting his story out there, into the online world, may lead to some breakthroughs.  Fingers crossed!

Richard O'Donnell was born in County Kilkenny, in April of 1855.  That is one part of his story I can tell with accuracy.  At that time, under British rule, his family's surname had been anglicized to Daniel and that is what appears in the baptism record that follows.

Richard's baptism record shows he was baptised on the 15th of April.  His parents were recorded as John Daniel and Catherine Joy, and the sponsors were John Joy and Margaret Daniel.

Richard's father John O'Donnell (Daniel), was aged 41 at the time; and his mother, Catherine Joy, was aged 27.  Richard's baptism record shows that the family were living at Killonerry in County Kilkenny at the time, in the Templeorum Parish.

At the time of Richard's birth, there was only one other sibling, his older brother Patrick (known as Patsy), who had been born the previous year.  Eleven other siblings were born over the next seventeen years, so all-in-all Richard had twelve brothers and sisters:

Patrick (Patsy) born in 1854

Margaret, born in 1856

Michael, born in 1857

William, born in 1859

John, born in 1861

Edmond (my great grandfather), born in 1862

Peter, born in 1864

Ellen, born in 1865

James, born in 1867

Thomas, born in 1870 and sadly died the same year

Catherine (known as Kate), born in 1871

Mary (known as Minnie), born in 1872.

Richard grew up on the family farm in Killonerry, County Kilkenny.  I'm assuming he stayed on the farm until he had at least turned 18 or so, which would have been around 1873.  What happened next in Richard's life is shrouded in mystery.  I have been looking high and low, but despite all my research efforts, I still don't feel as if I can tell the true story with any degree of certainty. 

As I've already mentioned, the story passed down through generations of the O'Donnell family is that Richard emigrated to Australia, but the family lost all contact with him after that.

To start to put pieces together, I checked the facts around emigration for Richard's siblings, to see if I could perhaps narrow down the time period for Richard's move to Australia.  His sisters and brothers who emigrated to the U.S. appear to have done so from 1880 to 1900.

• Patrick O'Donnell's U.S. Death Certificate indicates he arrived in the United States in 1880.  He was the eldest of all the siblings, and was 26 when he left Ireland.  It appears he was the first of the siblings to emigrate.  

• Michael O'Donnell - the third-born son - is likely to have emigrated around the same time as his older brother Patrick, and would have been around the age of 23 or 24.  I have not yet been able to find any solid evidence that confirms this.

• Peter Paul O'Donnell emigrated to the U.S. in 1890 (according to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census record), when he was 26.  He was the sixth-born son. 

• William O'Donnell emigrated to the U.S. sometimes around 1890, but I have not yet been able to find out the actual year.  William was aged 31 at the time, but he only lived in the U.S. for a few years and returned to Ireland sometime before 1894.   

• Catherine O'Donnell emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 (according to the 1910 U.S. Federal Census record).  She landed in New York.  Catherine was the elder of the two youngest daughters and was 21 when she left Ireland.

• Mary (Minnie) O'Donnell - the youngest daughter - emigrated to the U.S. in 1900, (according to the 1930 U.S. Federal Census record), when she was 23 and also landed in New York.

• James O'Donnell's arrival date in the U.S. is still not known, although it's likely he emigrated around the same time as his younger sisters, between 1892 and 1900.  He was living with his sister Catherine in New York by the time of the 1905 New York, U.S. State Census record)

So ... it was over a period of 20 years that these siblings left their home in Ireland, which is a much longer period of time than I was expecting and not particularly helpful for research purposes.  I  had been pining my hopes on the siblings all leaving home around the same time, which would have given me a much briefer period of time to check for immigration records to Australia.  Not to be!

So the question still remained ... when did Richard leave Ireland and head to Australia?  

Did he leave before all the other siblings, around 1875?  He would have reached his adult years by then.  He would have been 20 years old, old enough to head off on his own, or did he head off around the same time as his brothers Patrick and Michael, which would have been 1880?

Was it more likely that Richard left Ireland around the same time as Edmond, as they were both headed to Australia, unlike their other siblings?  My great grandfather Edmond emigrated in 1883.  Richard would have been around 27 years of age then.  Perhaps Richard went to Australia first, before Edmond, when he would have been 25 years old ... which would have been 1880? 

My thinking had narrowed down the window of possible emigration to the time period 1880 to 1883, so I began scouring Australian immigration records from those years.  I checked records under both surnames - O'Donnell and Daniel - and this took quite some time, as there were loads of records.

Eventually, I ruled out so many records because ages didn't match, and/or details of parents' names didn't match, and/or details about birthplace didn't match.   This narrowed the search considerably. 

The only real possibilities that came up during this period of time were:

1.  On an 1872 Unassisted Immigrant Passenger List, an Irish seaman named Richard O'Donnell was listed amongst the crew that arrived in Sydney from the Port of Broadsound aboard the ship 'Amy Robsart'.  If this was my great grand uncle Richard, then he would have been 17 years old, but the record didn't list an age, so it's hard to prove a match.

That record made me wonder whether Richard had left the family farm in Ireland when he was a teenager and become a seaman?  How did that happen?  It seemed a little implausible, but I didn't rule it out.

Ten years later, in 1882, an Irish seaman also named Richard O'Donnell arrived in Sydney from the Port of London.  I wondered if this was the same man from the 1872 record.  This time his age was recorded.  He was aged 22, which doesn't match either the young man from the previous record, or my great grand uncle who would have been 26 years old in 1882.  I definitely ruled out this individual.

2. In 1884 (the year after my great grandfather had emigrated) a Richard Daniel, aged 26, and his brother Peter, aged 22, sailed from Plymouth, England aboard the ship Chyebassa.  The brothers were listed on a Queensland Passenger List.  I was hopeful that I might be on to something with this record, as my great grandfather Edmond had emigrated to Queensland as well.  It seemed sensible that Richard would head to the same place.  

The Richard and Peter Daniel mentioned in the 1884 passenger list stepped off the ship in Brisbane to begin their life in Australia.  My great grandfather Edmond has disembarked in Brisbane and had then travelled on to Toowoomba to start his new life, so it seemed plausible his brothers would also disembark in Brisbane.  Could this be my Richard and his older brother Peter?  

Knowing that Peter Paul O'Donnell emigrated to the U.S. in 1890, I wondered if perhaps he had travelled with his brother Richard to Australia first, and then headed off to U.S. six years later?  Unfortunately, the ages don't match - my great grand uncle Richard would have been 28 in 1884 not 26, and my great grand uncle Peter would have been 19 not 22.  Given the ages for both men were out by a couple of years, it seemed too much of a discrepancy for me to confirm that these two were my great grand uncles.  I also found no evidence that a Peter O'Donnell had then emigrated to the U.S. from Australia around 1890.  So, I ruled out the possibility this was the correct record of my great grand uncle Richard.

My search for a date of emigration continues, as I feel I've been unsuccessful so far.  

I didn't give up on Richard altogether though.  I then starting searching through Australian Electoral Roll records, which started around 1900, to see if I could find a Richard O'Donnell registered somewhere in Australia as a voter.  Given that his brother Edmond (my great grandfather) lived his life in Toowoomba, Queensland, after emigration, I thought it highly likely that Richard would have also lived around the same area - in southern Queensland, or possibly northern New South Wales.   It didn't seem logical that Richard would move far away from the only other family relative he knew in Australia.. 

An extensive search led to a possible lead: 

Queensland Electoral records for the years 1908, 1912, 1913, 1915, and 1916 list a Richard O'Donnell living in the Maranoa Region, which is a local government area in south west Queensland.  Ah ha!  This seemed like I was on to something.  The Maranoa Region is very close to Toowoomba in Queensland.  The Richard O'Donnell, in these electoral records, was living and working as a labourer on various sheep / cattle stations, so it was likely the same Richard O'Donnell in each of these records.  This sounded promising!

In 1908 a Richard O'Donnell was recorded as living at Noondoo, which was a station near Dirranbandi in the Maranoa Region, about 280 miles from Toowoomba which was where Edmond had been living before his death in 1893, and where his family were still living at the time of this electoral record.  

Location of Noondoo Station, and distance from Dirranbandi to Toowoomba.

Perhaps this could by my great grand uncle Richard and he had been working on remote sheep / cattle stations in south western Queensland for around twenty-five to thirty years.   If that were true, then he would have been aged 53 by this time and had probably remained unmarried.  It's likely he had kept in contact with his brother in Australia, and knew that Edmond had died, but Richard was likely to have been unaware his brothers Patrick and James had died in the U.S.

Then I looked more closely at the records, and the 'perhaps' turned into a 'mmm, I'm not sure any more'. There was another O'Donnell in the area as well, a John Francis O'Donnell, but I haven't clue about who that might have been.  This made me wary of confirming the Richard as my Great Grand Uncle.  

It could have been a coincidence that there was another O'Donnell in the same remote area of south-west Queensland, but it was also possible they were related somehow.  As there were no other siblings of Richard's or Edmond's that had emigrated to Australia, this relationship did not match any on my O'Donnell family tree.  I did continue looking at the records though.

In 1912 a Richard O'Donnell was living at a station named Noorindoo. near Surat in the Maranoa Region.  Could I make the assumption that this was the same Richard as the one in the previous 1908 record?  Again, there were other O'Donnells living in the same area around Surat, so I continued being hesitant in confirming this Richard as my great grand uncle.  I had no idea who John Joseph and Alice Louise O'Donnell were, nor the John O'Donnell also listed.

Then there were the 1915 & 1916 electoral records, which showed only a Richard O'Donnell still living and working in the Maranoa Region.  The other O'Donnells seem to have moved on from the area.  Could I look at that as an indication they were not related after all, and simply had the same surname ... or they were related, and the others were younger, ready to leave the relatively isolated life on a station and move into a township, whilst Richard was older and settled in his ways?  Lots to ponder!

If the Richard listed in these electoral records was indeed my great grand uncle (ignoring the possibility he was related to a completely different O'Donnell family to mine), then he would have been 60 to 61 years old at the time of these records.  Would a man of that age still be working as a labourer on a remote cattle station?  It's quite possible and couldn't be ruled out, but he would likely have had lighter duties around the station.

Living and working on a sheep or cattle station in the outback of south-western Queensland, would have been quite a tough, lonely life in the early 1900s and would go some way to explaining why contact was lost with my O'Donnell clan in Ireland.  

Typically, a station hand would rarely visit a township that had a postal service.  Most of their lives were lived out on the station itself with the community of fellow workers.  The pay was meagre and the hours were long, with a punishing workload for most of the year.  They would not have got much time off, and certainly wouldn't have travelled far for a lovely holiday.

Location of  Noorindoo Station, and distance of Surat from Toowoomba and Brisbane.

Noorindoo was a station just outside the town of Surat, which was around 200 kilometres from Toowoomba, and 300 from Brisbane.  

Surat, in the publication "History of Queensland: Its People and Industries" written by M.J. Fox in 1923, was described as:

"situated on the Balonne (River), 47 miles very slightly south-westward from Yeulba, on the line to Roma, 50 miles from Roma and 328 miles north-west of Brisbane, with a present population (at the end of 1920) of over 300.  

Surat is the centre of a district essentially pastoral, having about 600,000 head of sheep, 24,000 head of cattle, and over 4,000 head of horses.

Among the neighbouring stations are "Noorindoo", "Combango", "Warkon", "Canmaroo", "Yalebow", "Coogoon", and "Wallabella".

Could Noorindoo and the neighbouring small town of Surat have been home for my great grand uncle Richard for around 15 years, and could the Maranoa Region have been his home for over 30 years?  There's no way of knowing this for certain unfortunately.

I could find no further electoral records for a Richard O'Donnell in the Maranoa Region after 1916.  There were certainly other electoral records in that name after 1916 in other areas of Australia, but it seemed highly unlikely to me that he would have moved from Queensland after turning 60.  

Death records for a Richard O'Donnell who lived in Queensland and possibly died in the period from 1916 to 1955 (when Richard would have turned 100!) were few and far between ... six to be exact.  After discounting a few of these because of parent names and/or birthplaces that didn't match, I was left with just two possibilities.

There was a Richard O'Donnell who died in 1930.  His death certificate didn't have parents names listed, but his birthplace was recorded as Ireland. 

There were two problems with this record however.  The place of death was listed as Goodna Mental Asylum, which seemed an unlikely place for Richard to have ended up at.  The other problem was the age of this Richard O'Donnell.  In 1930, his age was given as 93 years.  That means he would have been born in 1837 which didn't match up with my Richard at all.

There was however another death record for a Richard O'Donnell who died in Surat, Queensland, in 1916.  Could it be that the electoral records I had been following for the Richard O'Donnell living in the Maranoa Region had stopped because he had actually died in 1916?  Was this the same Richard?  Was he my Richard?

The death certificate for Richard O'Donnell who died in 1916 seemed to match on two important details - the location and the age at death.  It didn't produce much other information unfortunately.  There were no details about parents' names and no details about marriages or children.  Those sections were left blank.  It seems that there was no relative to provide any information whatsoever upon his death.  That all sort of fits with my elusive Richard.

His brother Edmond, who had emigrated to Australia as well, had died  23 years previously and if Richard had not kept in contact with any of the family, then there would have been no-one to be with him when he died and no-one to provide important details about his family.

The cause of death was recorded as 'alcoholism' which unfortunately also matched one of the causes of death of his brother Edmond, my great grandfather.  I don't want to say it's a family trait or any such thing, but I would acknowledge that life in Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s for the lower classes would have been hard.  Many men drank a lot to break the monotonous drudgery of their tough working lives, without realising the consequences of this on their health.  It does however seem like another possible link between the two O'Donnell men.

So that's the state of Richard's story to date ... lots of possibilities, but not much hard evidence.  I'll keep coming back to this research and update when and where I can, and hope that something eventuates.