Bateman

Two Women Called Elizabeth Kennedy: Untangling the Albatross Eliza

For many years, I believed I might have found the arrival of my ancestor Elizabeth Jane Bateman, also known as Elizabeth Kennedy.

When Elizabeth married James Murphy at St Matthew’s, Windsor in 1844, she gave her name as Elizabeth Kennedy.

Later records, however, identified her maiden name as Bateman and named her parents as Henry Bateman and Maria or Mary Alphonso. How Kennedy fitted into her life and how she reached New South Wales, remained uncertain.

Image: St Matthews, Windsor c1896. Wikimedia Commons

A promising candidate appeared in the immigration records of the Albatross, which arrived in Sydney on 30 November 1841. Among its bounty immigrants was fifteen year old Eliza Kennedy from County Limerick. The name, age, birthplace and arrival period seemed to fit. Elizabeth Murphy’s death certificate stated that she had lived in the colony for thirty-five years, suggesting an arrival around 1840. Her birthplace was recorded as Limerick. Could the young Albatross passenger have been my Elizabeth?

The answer initially seemed possible. A much fuller reconstruction of the Albatross Eliza’s life now suggests otherwise.

Eliza Kennedy aboard the Albatross

The immigration indent described Eliza Kennedy as a fifteen-year-old Roman Catholic child’s maid who could read. She was the daughter of Michael Kennedy, a plasterer, and his deceased wife Mary. Eliza travelled with two older siblings:

The indent also recorded that Eliza and Margaret were under the protection of Robert Fitzgerald and his wife.

In 2021, I discovered that Robert Fitzgerald and his wife, Margaret Dundon, had themselves travelled aboard the Albatross. They came from the Kildimo area of County Limerick. Robert was a shoemaker who established a shop and workshop in Market Street, Sydney, before later moving to the Braidwood and Araluen district.

This was not the prominent Robert Fitzgerald associated with Windsor and the Hawkesbury. There were two different men of the same name and earlier attempts to connect the Kennedy immigrants with the Windsor pastoralist had confused them.

The marriage to Thomas Willis

A New South Wales index records an 1844 marriage between Thomas Willis and Eliza Kennedy (Registration: V1844226 131, district LD). The index does not provide details of the church, the couple’s parents, residences or witnesses. The original church record therefore needs to be examined before all the details attributed to this marriage can be accepted. Jane Ison’s research states that Margaret Kennedy witnessed the marriage and that she holds a copy of the original record. This is strong evidence that the bride was the same Eliza who travelled with her sister Margaret aboard the Albatross. My only doubt being that Margaret was married by this time and presumably she would have signed her name Margaret Bull.

A convict named Thomas Willis was also assigned to an “R. Fitzgerald” in Sydney. If this employer was the shoemaker Robert Fitzgerald who protected Eliza, rather than the Windsor pastoralist, the connection explains how Thomas Willis and Eliza Kennedy met.

The Willis family

Thomas Willis and Eliza or Elizabeth Kennedy appear to have formed a family of their own. Their children included Thomas, Mary Ann, James, Anastasia and Rachel, as well as several children who died young. The surviving evidence is incomplete, but the family can be followed through baptismal, civil, institutional and gaol records.

The most important record concerns the youngest child. A daughter was registered as Margaret Willis after her birth at East Maitland on 22 April 1860. A child of the same parents and with the same birth date was baptised as Rachel Willis on 27 May. Ison concluded that Margaret and Rachel were the same child.

The Catholic baptism reportedly named her parents as Thomas Willis and Elizabeth Kennedy. The associated birth information identified her mother as Eliza Kennedy, born in Limerick City and her father as Thomas Willis, born at Trowbridge in Wiltshire. This evidence connects Rachel’s mother with both the Kennedy surname and Limerick. It does not, by itself, prove that she was the Albatross passenger. That connection comes from the later gaol records.

Eliza and Mary Willis

Rachel Willis entered the Newcastle Industrial School in July 1868 after her mother and sister had been imprisoned for keeping a disorderly house in Maitland. Earlier interpretations of the records suggested that Rachel’s mother used the names Mary and Eliza Willis interchangeably. Ison noted appearances by Mary Willis in the Maitland courts from about 1864 to 1866, followed by appearances under the name Eliza Willis from 1868. Because the names did not appear together in the material then considered, it seemed possible that they referred to one woman.

The original 1868 gaol admission records changed that conclusion. Eliza Willis and Mary Willis were admitted together. They appear as consecutive prisoners in March 1868 and again in June. They were therefore two separate women. The most coherent explanation is that Eliza was Rachel’s mother and Mary was Rachel’s older sister. This corresponds with the newspaper reports that Rachel’s “mother and sister” were serving sentences.

A March 1868 description recorded Eliza Willis as forty years old, born in Ireland, five feet two and a half inches tall, stout and fair, with brown hair and grey eyes. Most importantly, it stated that she had arrived aboard the Albatross in 1841. The age implies a birth around 1828, only about two years later than the birth estimate derived from the immigration indent. Such a variation is not unusual in nineteenth century records.

The combination of name, Irish birth, approximate age, ship and arrival year provides strong evidence that Eliza Willis was the Eliza Kennedy who arrived aboard the Albatross.

What Jane Ison’s research established

In 2024, Jane Ison told me that she held numerous records concerning Rachel, including her marriage and baptism, her sister’s marriage registration and several undigitised records confirming that Rachel and Anastasia, also known as Annie, were sisters. She stated that these records all confirmed that Rachel’s mother was Eliza Kennedy. Having now examined much of the evidence, I agree it builds a persuasive case:

  1. Eliza Kennedy arrived aboard the Albatross in 1841.
  2. A marriage between Eliza Kennedy and Thomas Willis was registered in 1844.
  3. Thomas and Eliza or Elizabeth Willis had children together.
  4. Rachel’s mother was identified as Eliza or Elizabeth Kennedy from Limerick.
  5. Rachel’s mother, Eliza Willis, was recorded in gaol as an Irish-born 1841 Albatross immigrant.
  6. Newspaper reports connect Rachel with the imprisoned Eliza and Mary Willis.
  7. Institutional evidence identified Anastasia Croft as Rachel’s sister.

Meanwhile, another Elizabeth Kennedy

My ancestor followed a different path. Elizabeth Kennedy married James Murphy on 21 April 1844, at Windsor. Their family developed alongside the Willis family, but on the South Coast of New South Wales in the Shoalhaven district:

  • Margaret Murphy was born on 29 August 1846;
  • James Murphy was born in 1848;
  • an unnamed infant was born around 1849 or 1850;
  • John Murphy, my great-grandfather, was born in 1851;
  • Elizabeth Murphy was born in 1853;
  • Charles Murphy was born in 1856.

Image: Shoalhaven c1906. State Library of New South Wales

Charles’s birth certificate states his mother was born in Limerick. This was one reason the Albatross passenger appeared to be such a promising candidate. The overlapping families now present the greatest difficulty for any theory that the two Elizabeths were one woman.

In 1844, one Eliza Kennedy married Thomas Willis while another Elizabeth Kennedy married James Murphy. During the following years, children were born into both the Willis and Murphy families. In 1860, Rachel was born to Thomas Willis and Eliza or Elizabeth Kennedy while my Elizabeth remained part of the Murphy household.

By 1868, Eliza Willis was in the Maitland gaol system and Rachel was entering the Newcastle Industrial School. The Murphy family, meanwhile, was presumably still residing in the Shoalhaven district.

Two women, not one

The evidence now points strongly towards two different women.

The first was Eliza Kennedy, daughter of Michael and Mary Kennedy. She came from County Limerick, arrived aboard the Albatross with her siblings in 1841, married Thomas Willis and became the mother of Rachel Willis.

The second was Elizabeth Jane Bateman, who used the surname Kennedy when she married James Murphy in 1844. She was later identified as the daughter of Henry Bateman and Maria or Mary Alphonso. Her arrival in Australia and her reason for using the Kennedy name remain unresolved.

The similarities between them were real:

  • both were Irish;
  • both were associated with Limerick;
  • both used Eliza or Elizabeth Kennedy;
  • both appear to have reached New South Wales around 1840 or 1841;
  • both married in 1844.

They are not, however, sufficient to overcome two simultaneous marriages, two overlapping groups of children, two geographical histories and two different sets of parents. The Albatross Eliza once looked like the answer to my ancestor’s arrival. Researching her more fully has shown that she had her own life and family.

Bateman and Alphonso

The Bateman name appears in the Murphy family’s records by 1867. When the death of Elizabeth and James Murphy’s son James was registered, his mother’s maiden name was reportedly given as Bateman. The informant was his father, James Murphy. When Elizabeth died at Back Forest in March 1875, her death certificate identified her parents as Henry Bateman and Mary or Maria Alphonso. This accords with the family story that her father was an English sea captain and her mother a Spanish woman.

Death certificates can contain errors, particularly when informants have incomplete knowledge. However, the Bateman name did not appear only on Elizabeth’s death certificate. Its earlier appearance in the registration of her son’s death makes it more difficult to dismiss.

How did my Elizabeth reach New South Wales?

Separating the two women resolves one problem but provides another: if my Elizabeth was not the Albatross passenger, how did she reach New South Wales?

Given there is no ‘Application to Marry’ record, it seems unlikely she was a convict. A search of arrivals before her 1844 marriage has not identified an obvious candidate. Only two possible Kennedy arrivals have been found, both through Port Phillip in Victoria and seem unlikely to be our Elizabeth.

No female Bateman arrivals have been located and searches for Alphonso produced only one convict, a black man from Dominica.

Image: Leaving Ireland, origin unknown.

I also investigated whether Elizabeth might have come to the colony to join an established Bateman family. None of the early Bateman families examined so far provide a convincing connection. One possibility that needs further investigation is the convict Henry Bateman, born about 1805, who arrived aboard the Royal Charlotte in 1825 and received his Certificate of Freedom in 1832. He was in the Windsor area around the period in which Elizabeth might have been born. There are substantial problems with this candidate. He was tried in Middlesex so presumed English, Elizabeth says she was born in Limerick. Her later records indicate that she did not arrive in the colony until about 1840. Unless several pieces of information are wrong, the convict Henry Bateman seems unlikely to have been her father. What happened to him remains a mystery.


Where to next?

There are still several women, including convicts, who need to be eliminated or investigated more closely. They are:

  • an Elizabeth Kennedy, born about 1802, recorded in the 1828 census;
  • an unidentified convict Elizabeth Kennedy for whom a certificate of emancipation survives;
  • Jane Kennedy, who arrived aboard the Margaret in 1837 and was associated with John Welch;
  • an Elizabeth Kennedy who arrived aboard the Mary Anne in 1841 after being tried in Kilkenny and transported to Van Diemen’s Land; and
  • not to forget the two Kennedy’s who arrived via Port Phillip. A Jane aboard the Orient in 1840 and an Elizabeth aboard the Dale Park in 1844. Whilst unlikely, they remain possibilities.

Other possibilities concern women who acquired the name Kennedy through marriage:

  • Eliza Boyle or Carroll, who arrived aboard the Palambam in 1831 and married James Kennedy;
  • Jane Young, who had married a Kennedy in Van Diemen’s Land;
  • Elizabeth McAvoy, who arrived with her husband Hugh Kennedy and their family aboard the Lascar in 1841; and
  • Elizabeth Bowler, who arrived aboard the Marquis of Hastings in 1828 with her husband John Kennedy.

Several others have already been excluded because of their ages, husbands, destinations or documented family histories.

Can DNA provide the answer?

The documentary evidence has taken me far enough to separate the Albatross Eliza from my Elizabeth, but it has not yet revealed my Elizabeth’s origins. The next step is to examine the DNA evidence. Matches among descendants of James and Elizabeth Murphy already confirm connections within their family, with some matches pointing towards the Kennedy surname and families from Limerick and Tipperary.

The challenge will be to distinguish DNA inherited from James Murphy from DNA inherited from Elizabeth to determine whether her genetic connections lead towards the Bateman, Kennedy or Alphonso families. DNA may not provide her name or arrival ship, but, combined with documentary research, it may help identify the family and community from which she came.

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Do you know more about the families mentioned in this post? If you are connected to any of them (particularly if you have DNA tested or are interested in doing so) I would love to hear from you. It’s the power of DNA that can help us break through our brick walls!

I would be especially interested in hearing from anyone descended from Elizabeth through an unbroken female line. Such a descendant may carry Elizabeth’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which could add another piece to the puzzle.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me by sending a message via the sidebar of this blog or through Ancestry, Wikitree or Facebook.

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Elizabeth Murphy: Bateman or Kennedy?

52 Ancestors #14

My maternal second great-grandmother Elizabeth has presented me with the sort of problem genealogists claim to enjoy.

She married as Elizabeth Kennedy.

Her children’s records say she was born in Limerick.

Later records identify her as Elizabeth Bateman and name her parents as Henry Bateman and Maria, or Mary, Alphonso.

She died from strychnine poisoning, after which her husband was charged with her murder.

An eventful life, even before we begin discussing her name.

The adjacent photograph has been traditionally identified as Elizabeth and James Murphy, but not verified. It appears to date from the late 1860s or early 1870s. James was born about 1810, while Elizabeth may have been approximately fifteen years younger. The couple in the photograph seem younger than I would expect—but appearances in nineteenth-century portraits are unreliable. For now, they remain “possibly Elizabeth and James.”

Elizabeth’s life in the records

Elizabeth was born in Ireland, probably somewhere in County Limerick, but neither her birth date nor her parentage has been securely established.

Her age varies from record to record. The birth certificate of her son Charles points to a birth around 1821. Her death certificate suggests about 1819. In 1959, the rector of All Saints’, Nowra, tentatively transcribed her weathered gravestone as “Aged (70?) Years.” A photograph taken when the grave was rediscovered in 1991 suggests that the inscription more probably reads “50 years,” placing Elizabeth’s birth around 1824 or 1825. The evidence from the stone is examined below.

For the moment, the most sensible conclusion is that Elizabeth was probably born during the early 1820s. Both Charles’s birth certificate and her own death certificate say that she was born in Limerick, giving us at least one reasonably consistent starting point.

Marriage to James

The first Australian record that can be attached to her with confidence is her marriage.

On 21 April 1844, Elizabeth Kennedy married James Murphy in the Roman Catholic Church at Windsor, New South Wales. Both described themselves as being from Windsor. James and Elizabeth both signed the register, rather than making a mark. Their witnesses were John Rafter (although the surname is unclear) and Maria Ryan.

MURPHY KENNEDY marriage at Windsor 1844

At this point she was not a Bateman, nor an Alphonso. She was Elizabeth Kennedy. This does not necessarily mean Kennedy was her birth name. Perhaps she was a widow? Unfortunately, it only means that Kennedy was the name she used when she married James Murphy.

Witnesses to the marriage

There was a John Rafter who arrived in New South Wales aboard the China in 1839. He was reportedly born at Ballingarry, County Tipperary, about 1813 and had been living at Windsor for approximately five years. He seems the strongest candidate if indeed he was the one who witnessed the marriage of James Murphy and Elizabeth.

His obituary, published in the Freeman’s Journal on 2 February 1859, remembered him as “one of the truest Irishmen that ever breathed in New South Wales.” More usefully for understanding his presence at the marriage, it described his active role in promoting Catholicism in the district and his generous support of the clergy with both “voice and purse.” He could have been a friend, sponsor or parish witness—or simply someone the priest trusted to stand beside a young immigrant couple.

Maria Ryan, the other witness, remains unidentified.

Other women of this name were already living in the colony in 1844. One Maria Ryan appears in the 1841 census, born in the colony and recorded as the child of A. Kelly needs further investigation.

A Mary Ryan who married John Kennedy in Sydney in 1823 initially looked attractive because she brought the surnames Ryan and Kennedy together. On closer inspection, she is a weaker candidate. As John Kennedy’s wife, you would expect she would call herself Mary Kennedy in 1844, whereas the witness signed “Maria Ryan.” She was also substantially older and does not appear to have a connection to Windsor.

The most intriguing candidate is the Mary Ryan who arrived aboard the Albatross in 1841 from County Limerick. Also on board was a 15 year old Eliza Kennedy from County Limerick. Mary would have been about thirty-two when Elizabeth married. Mary and Maria were often treated as equivalent names in Catholic records.

For now, the Albatross passenger seems the most interesting possibility.

Family in the Shoalhaven

Elizabeth and James went on to have six known children:

  • Margaret, who married John Joseph Foley
  • James, not married, no known children
  • a son whose name has not been identified and died young
  • John Bede Murphy, my great grandfather
  • Elizabeth, who married Arthur Poole Davis
  • Charles, who married Susan Kelly but had no children

By the time Margaret was born in 1846, the family was living in the Shoalhaven district at the historic settlement of Coolangatta, a short distance up river from the commercial hub of Terara. Numbaa lay south of the Shoalhaven River, immediately east of Terara, while Back Forest was across the river to the north. During Elizabeth’s years in the Shoalhaven, repeated flooding transformed the district. Major floods in 1860 and 1870 damaged Terara, and many residents and businesses eventually relocated from the floodplain to the higher ground at Nowra.

Elizabeth appears to have spent the remainder of her life in the Shoalhaven, away from Windsor and far from the Ireland she had left behind. These records show her not simply as the mysterious woman with three surnames, but as a wife and mother raising a family in colonial New South Wales.

Views to Back Forest from Numbaa
Numbaa

Elizabeth’s final days

Elizabeth’s life ended at Back Forest in the Shoalhaven district in March 1875. The cause of death recorded as strychnine poisoning. Her husband James Murphy was charged in connection with her death but later acquitted.

It is the most dramatic episode in the surviving story of Elizabeth’s life—and deserves a careful account of its own, based on the inquest, court proceedings and contemporary newspaper reports. The coroner’s proceedings raised sufficient suspicion for James to be prosecuted, but an inquest verdict was not a criminal conviction. Two trial juries subsequently acquitted him after the Crown failed to prove murder beyond reasonable doubt. See the full report here.

For the purposes of identifying Elizabeth, her death certificate is particularly significant. It gives her the middle name Jane, calls her Bateman and names her parents as Henry Bateman and Mary Alphonso. It is worth noting that “Jane” does not appear in earlier records. Before 1875, she was usually just referred to as Elizabeth. The middle name may have been hers, but the death certificate is currently the earliest known record of it.

Elizabeth was buried at Numbaa Cemetery near the Shoalhaven River. Her son-in-law Arthur Davis witnessed the burial.

Finding the grave

The subject of Elizabeth’s headstone had been of interest in the family as long ago as 1959 when my Uncle Laurie started researching the family in the late 1950’s. At that time, the rector’s reading of Elizabeth’s age was explicitly uncertain: “Aged (70?) Years.”

When my Aunty Margaret and her husband Lionel Gilbert visited Numbaa Cemetery in 1991, finding Elizabeth was no simple matter. They arrived in gumboots, having been warned about snakes and found the cemetery choked with lantana and flood debris. Elizabeth’s grave was nowhere to be seen and the plan displayed on one of the cemetery plaques proved inaccurate. After searching unsuccessfully, Lionel began probing the ground with an iron bar. They tried another position and, at last, the bar struck stone—first the buried plinth and then the headstone itself. “It was such a thrill!” Margaret wrote. “I was nearly in tears.” They said a prayer for Elizabeth, took photographs and paced the distance from the surrounding monuments so that a more accurate map could be drawn. It had taken two hours on a hot day, but Margaret declared it “well worth it.”

The photograph Margaret enclosed allowed the inscription to be examined again. Although it remains faint, the first digit appears more like a five than a seven—suggesting that Elizabeth died aged fifty, not seventy.

Although weathered, the stone appeared to read:

Erected by James Murphy

In memory of his wife
ELIZABETH MURPHY
who departed this life
March 29th 1875
Aged 50 years

May her soul rest in peace, Amen

If Elizabeth was fifty when she died on 29 March 1875, she was born between 30 March 1824 and 29 March 1825. This is younger than the ages implied by her death certificate and the birth certificate of her son Charles, but remarkably close to the estimated birth year of the fifteen-year-old Eliza Kennedy who arrived aboard the Albatross in November 1841.

It does not prove that the two women were the same person. Gravestones can contain erroneous information and we may not be reading the inscription correctly.

A possible journey aboard the Albatross

Elizabeth’s death certificate says that she had lived in New South Wales for about thirty-five years and was 20 years old when she married. If approximately correct, that places her arrival around 1840 and birth c1824. This brings us to a particularly tempting immigration record.

On 30 November 1841, the Albatross arrived in Sydney after leaving Dublin on 23 July. Among its assisted immigrants was an Eliza Kennedy, aged fifteen. She was Roman Catholic, could read and had been employed as a child’s maid.

Her native place was recorded as something resembling “Kilanoy” in County Limerick.

Also aboard the ship were Margaret Kennedy, aged twenty one, a kitchenmaid and William Kennedy, aged nineteen, a mason. The records appear to present the three as siblings. Their father was Michael Kennedy, a plasterer and widower, and their mother Mary was deceased. Margaret’s record suggested she was from Kildowy, Limerick.

Eliza and Margaret travelled under the protection of Robert Fitzgerald and his wife. Michael appears to have remained in Ireland.

I had initially thought the Fitzgeralds had sponsored the family and would be providing work in the colony – Robert Fitzgerald was a well known pastoralist and politician in Windsor. However, it turns out this Robert and Margaret Fitzgerald arrived on the same ship as the Kennedy’s. He was a shoemaker who firstly lived in Market Street, Sydney but later moved to the Braidwood–Araluen district. His wife was Margaret Dundon and his mother was Bridget Flannigan. Whether any of these people were relatives of the Kennedy children remains unknown.

There does not appear to be a place called Kilanoy, or Killdowy in Limerick. Other suggestions have included Killcullen, Killeedy – names that might have been misunderstood somewhere between an Irish speaker, a clerk and a nineteenth-century passenger list. Robert Fitzgerald and his wife Margaret came from Kildimo, County Limerick, which may be the mysterious place name referred to in Eliza’s entry.

The immigrant Eliza Kennedy is a good candidate for my Elizabeth:

  • she had the right name;
  • she came from Limerick;
  • she arrived at approximately the right time;
  • she was close to the expected age;
  • and she was Roman Catholic, as was the woman who married James Murphy.

It is a neat fit.

However the passenger list says that Eliza’s father was Michael Kennedy. Later Australian records name my Elizabeth’s father as Henry Bateman. The Albatross passenger may be my Elizabeth—but the evidence does not yet prove it.

The name Bateman appears

For more than twenty years after Elizabeth’s marriage, the records are silent about the name Bateman.

That changed in 1867 when Elizabeth and James’s son James died. His death registration named his mother’s maiden surname as Bateman. The informant was his father, James Murphy. This is important because it predates Elizabeth’s own death certificate and appears to show that Bateman was not simply an error introduced after her death.

Eight years later, Elizabeth’s death certificate named her parents as Henry Bateman and Mary Alphonso. Morton Richards of Cambewarra, a solicitor acting as coroner and Elizabeth’s son Charles were associated with the information recorded on the certificate.

Year Record How Elizabeth was identified Informant or source
1844 Marriage to James Murphy Elizabeth Kennedy Original marriage register
1851 Baptism of son John Elizabeth Kennedy Baptismal register
1867 Death of son James Elizabeth Bateman Husband, James Murphy
1875 Elizabeth’s death Parents named as Henry Bateman and Maria Alphonso Morton Richards of Cambewarra, identified as a solicitor, and Elizabeth’s son Charles
1891 Death of husband James Elizabeth Jane Bateman Son, Charles Murphy

Other records either leave Elizabeth’s maiden name blank or identify her only by her married name, Elizabeth Murphy.

Family tradition adds another layer. Elizabeth’s mother was said to have been a Spanish woman—a Castilian of noble blood, with grey eyes—who may have worked as a lady’s maid. Her father was remembered as an English sea captain and an “Hon.” who had supposedly “whisked Maria off the estate.”

The surname Alphonso may have preserved a genuine connection, inspired the Spanish tradition or acquired details as the story passed through successive generations. At present, no contemporary record confirms the noblewoman, the sea captain or the whisking.

Why did Elizabeth marry as Kennedy if she had been born Bateman? At present, we do not know.

The “Spanish Lady”

One intriguing photograph has survived from Rebecca Cassidy’s photograph album. The album was given to Rebecca on her wedding day to Elizabeth’s son John Murphy, 23 June 1880 by her friend John Morton of Glen Innes. It contains many photographs of people who are now unidentified and the original position of this particular photograph in the album is no longer known.

Unlike most of the unidentified photographs, a fragment of family memory survived with this one. She was always known as “The Spanish Lady” and said to be a relative of some kind.

I once wondered whether she might have been Maria Alphonso herself, but dating of the photograph suggests that to be unlikely. Perhaps she was a cousin or another extended relative? For now, her identity remains unknown.

What makes the photograph worth noting in this story is not that it proves a connection to Maria Alphonso, it doesn’t, but the family memory of a Spanish relative did survive alongside documentary evidence of Spanish ancestry in the Murphy family.

Was there a Mr Kennedy?

One explanation is that Elizabeth had married a Kennedy before she married James Murphy. That possibility has found its way into family trees, where an “Unknown Kennedy” sometimes appears as her first husband, however there is no evidence of this marriage. The original 1844 church marriage entry, does not contain any statements about the marital status of either Elizabeth or James.

If Elizabeth was the fifteen-year-old who arrived in November 1841, she had less than two and a half years in which to marry a Kennedy, lose or leave him, move to Windsor and marry James Murphy. Possible, but not evidence.

Was she raised by the Kennedys?

Another family theory is that Elizabeth was born a Bateman but was taken in by the Kennedy family, some used the term ‘ward of the state’. This would explain why she travelled and married under the name Kennedy while later records preserved Bateman as her birth name. It might also explain why the Albatross record apparently places her among Michael Kennedy’s children. There are many ways such an arrangement might have arisen: fosterage, guardianship, informal adoption, the death of a parent, remarriage, or simply a child being absorbed into another branch of a family.

Formal adoption did not operate in nineteenth century as it does today and relationships were not always described accurately. A girl could be raised as a daughter or sister without leaving behind a paper trail explaining the arrangement. There is no direct evidence yet that this happened to Elizabeth.

An intriguing newspaper notice reports the death of a Mrs Mary Kennedy at Broad Street, Limerick, in August 1840 a lady who “devoted herself to religious works and all attendant virtues”. Could she have been Michael’s wife, caring for Elizabeth? Could her death have prompted the Kennedy siblings, or the Fitzgeralds, to bring the girl to Australia? At this stage, the newspaper notice belongs in the interesting but unproven pile.

Religion

Elizabeth married in a Roman Catholic church but was buried in a Church of England cemetery. It is tempting to use this as evidence that she had really been born into an English Protestant Bateman family and only appeared Catholic while living with the Kennedys. That would fit rather nicely.

However, burial in a Church of England cemetery does not prove that Elizabeth was raised as an Anglican. The choice might have depended on geography, available burial grounds, family wishes, cost or local practice. Religious identity could also change during a lifetime. Her burial place at Numbaa is part of her story, but it cannot carry the weight of proving her parentage.

So, who was Elizabeth?

Here is what the evidence currently suggests:

  • The woman who married James Murphy at Windsor in 1844 was called Elizabeth Kennedy.
  • She was born in County Limerick, probably in the early 1820s.
  • Her death certificate suggests that she arrived in New South Wales around 1840.
  • She raised six known children with James and spent her later years in the Shoalhaven district.
  • By 1867, her birth surname was being recorded as Bateman.
  • When she died in 1875, her parents were named as Henry Bateman and Mary Alphonso.
  • She may have been the fifteen-year-old Eliza Kennedy who arrived aboard the Albatross in 1841 with Margaret and William Kennedy.
  • She may have been born Bateman and raised within the Kennedy family.
  • She may have married a Kennedy before marrying James Murphy.
  • Or, two women with similar names, origins and ages may have been combined into one story.

At the moment, Bateman is supported by records created by Elizabeth’s immediate family. Kennedy is supported by her own marriage record. Alphonso appears in the information supplied at her death. None of these names can simply be discarded.

So for now, we can only identify her as Elizabeth Bateman – also known as Elizabeth Kennedy, the wife of James Murphy.

Where to next?

Clearly, more research is required. Areas to explore might include:

  • baptismal records for a Bateman or Alphonso family in County Limerick;
  • records connecting Henry Bateman or Maria/Mary Alphonso with the Kennedy family;
  • further information about Michael, Margaret and William Kennedy;
  • records associated with Robert Fitzgerald and Margaret Dundon;
  • a contemporary document in which Elizabeth herself used the name Bateman;
  • DNA matches that can be assigned specifically to Elizabeth rather than jointly to Elizabeth and James Murphy.

To date, DNA matches only confirm connections with descendants of Elizabeth and James, we cannot identify which shared segments came from which member of the couple. Matches pointing towards Kennedy families in Limerick and Tipperary are intriguing, but the documentary trail still needs to be firmed up.

For now, Elizabeth remains Bateman, Kennedy and Murphy: an Irish immigrant, a colonial wife and mother, and a woman whose own story deserves to be remembered while we continue our search for her origins.

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Do you know more about the families mentioned in this post? If you are connected to any of them (particularly if you have DNA tested or are interested in doing so) I would love to hear from you. It’s the power of DNA that can help us break through our brick walls!

I would be especially interested in hearing from anyone descended from Elizabeth through an unbroken female line. Such a descendant may carry Elizabeth’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which could add another piece to the puzzle.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me by sending a message via the sidebar of this blog or through Ancestry, Wikitree or Facebook.

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Featured Image: King John’s Castle, River Shannon, County Limerick. Courtesy of WIkicommons

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