Irish Exiles from Wexford to Newcastle NSW: Writing A Family Memoir

It has been a while since I wrote about my ongoing research into my family history on my long-lost mother’s side, which is Irish.

This will form the content of my next book, and more, but for now I cannot resist sharing what I have come across today completely by chance and serendipitously as all of this research into my mother’s family has been.

For a start, last night, I had a dream… of my mother and myself in The Old Manse, the old Georgian manse my family lived in for three and a half years, in the green fields of Country Antrim in Northern Ireland, before we moved to Australia in 1975.

Then today, following up on my legal case to do with the car (which I have written of on this blog) and making my appeal to have my case heard (which was granted) I walked past a very interesting building on the other side of the street to the Court House where I made my appeal. A tall blue painted stone building, in a state of faded elegance. My eye was caught by a heritage plaque almost on the level of the footpath, which I bent down to read.

It was very blustery weather, with a high wind blowing salt spray from the ocean at the far end of the street and I was almost blown over as I read the history of the building, which is on the site of the old “Sessions House”.

Clutching onto my scarf, I read that the Sessions House was a two-storey building on the site from 1822-1890, and had served as Newcastle’s first Court House. I was fascinated to read this, as I thought my ancestor Cyrus Matthew Doyle had been amongst other things a local Magistrate who would have served close to very place, where I was standing now. Then I read that the same building was the first Post Office in Newcastle, from 1828, it served as a temporary Customs House from 1839. In 1859 it became a Presbyterian manse.  I was rather astonished to read this, as I live now in an old post office, the first post office in Adamstown, in Newcastle. I lived in an Old Manse in (Northern) Ireland, which was haunted.

My ancestors on my mother’s side came from Ireland, and as I have said here on this blog I have found out that the original ancestors who came from Ireland were political exiles, Rebels, from the 1798 and 1801 rebellions.

I was quite shocked to read of this building’s history, and the odd resonances with my own places of abode, and I walked around the corner to the seafront and had a coffee at the Estabar overlooking the stormy seas as I mulled it over. Then I returned to Adamstown on the train, a wonderful evocative train journey from the historic Newcastle Train Station, which was built in the nineteenth century and is one of the things I like most about the city.

When I sat down this evening to start my work on my book publication, I was for some reason suddenly inspired to look up post offices, in Newcastle, and found a link to a post office in Adamstown in Ireland. I though it could possibly in time, or in imagination, be a sister post office to the old post office where I am living and running Postmistress Press.

I clicked on the links, and found a webpage to Enniscorthy in Wexford home of Adamstown in Ireland, and Enniscorthy Castle. I clicked on the link to Enniscorthy and went straight to the home page of the castle where the first thing I read was that it is a tourist site which celebrates and commemorates the 1798 Rebellion, hosting the “National 1798 Rebellion Centre”.  

To my further surprise I read that this week from 23^rd-31^st August is Heritage Week 2014 at the National 1798 Rebellion Centre and Enniscorthy Castle.

A week in which there are public lectures about the Rebellion and its cultural and historical aspects.

On this very day, Friday the 29^th August, there is a lecture on “Weapons of the 1798 Rebellion” by Rory O’Connor in the 1798 Rebellion Centre.

Well, my ancestors did not use weapons apparently as they were exiled for life on the grounds that they were non-violent, a plea made by my ancestor Sophia Isabella Doyle and granted by Lord Castlereagh who she was related to.

He granted that Rebels who were non-violent could be exiled for life, instead of executed, and so my ancestors came to Australia. And they were from Dublin and the countryside near the Wicklow Mountains, rather than Wexford.

I will not go into any further details here, I have relayed some of my research so far in previous entries over the last three years, and will be writing it up into my next book or two.

But this has certainly made me feel once again that I am on the right track and have somehow, in some strange and mysterious way been brought to Newcastle to retrace, and find my long lost family, and write them back into life.

Ruth Skilbeck   August 29, 2014

The Old Post Office, Adamstown, Newcastle

The National 1798 Rebellion Centre and Ennicorthy Castle in Enniscorthy, Wexford:

http://1798centre.ie/about

Australian Dictionary of Biography entry: Cyrus Matthew Doyle
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/doyle-cyrus-matthew-1990