Catherine Ivory was born in Dunshaughlin, the daughter of James Ivory and Ellen Hand. She was baptised in Dunshaughlin Church on 4 June 1833. Below is a copy of the entry in the church register from that year.
NLI: Catherine Ivory Baptism 4 June 1833. Microfilm 04177.
Catherine was in Dunshaughlin Workhouse in 1849 when she was one of 16 girls selected for the Earl Grey Scheme of assisted emigration to Australia.
She arrived in Sydney on 21 November on the ship William & Mary, and was recorded as a Roman Catholic house servant aged 16, who could neither read nor write. The fate of her father is not recorded in the shipping record, but her mother was living in Dunshaughlin.
Catherine was allocated to the Bathurst depot from where she was employed by George Toole, a landholder, at a wage of £7 to £8 per annum for two years.
A Catherine Iveray (sic) married William Drew on 30 January 1852 at St. Michael’s Church. Michael Kearns of Bathurst and Ellen Drew of Kelso witnessed the ceremony, which was officiated by Fr. Jerome Keating. There were no children to this marriage, and it seems that
Catherine and William soon separated. It is possible that this girl was the orphan Catherine Ivory. If so, it would explain why Catherine Ivory, the orphan, lived in a common-law union with George Israel Hall from about October 1852. The couple never married, though they had 11
children.
George Hall was born on 22 March 1826 in Winburndale Creek near Bathurst and baptised on 11 June 1826 in Kelso, the fourth child of John Hall and Ann Amelia Andrews. John Hall arrived as a convict on the Baring in 1815 and married in 1820 while still serving his life sentence. His wife, Ann Andrews, arrived as a convict in 1816, on the Mary Anne, and was freed by servitude. After George’s birth, John was granted a ticket of leave for Bathurst in August 1827, and the following year’s census shows the Hall family living at Bathurst. John received a conditional pardon in 1848. George Hall and Catherine moved to Victoria about 1853, where they farmed, and their 11 children were born:
- George Israel: b.14 June 1853, Woodend, Guildford, Victoria; m. Naomi Rowling 16
March 1882, Glenlyon, Victoria; m. Catherine Flindt 1896 Temora, NSW; d. 28 January
1933, Coast Little Bay, NSW. - Charles: b. 15 October 1855, Guildford, Victoria.
- Susan: b. 1857, Guildford, Victoria.
- William: b. 1859, Victoria.
- James: b. 1860, Victoria (not registered).
- Humphrey James: b. 1863.
- Thomas: b. 1864, Guildford, Victoria; d. 1929, Temora, NSW.
- Matthew Martin: b. 8 March 1866, Yandoit, Victoria; m. Mary Catherine Cantwell 1890,
Victoria; d. 23 October 1943, Seymour, Echuca, Victoria. - Eliza Jane: b. 1868, Guildford, Victoria.
- William Henry: b. 24 October 1870, Castlemaine, Guildford, Victoria; m. Elizabeth
Lindsay 1895, Temora, NSW; d. 15 January 1943, Kelvin Grove, Queensland. - Elizabeth: b. 18 November 1872, Kennedys Gully, Guildford, Victoria.
Bathurst-born George Hall died on 15 May 1873, aged 48, at Limestone Creek, Guildford in Victoria and was buried at Campbells Creek cemetery. William Drew, Catherine’s first husband, died in Duramana, Bathurst, in early January 1877.
As a widow, Catherine Hall (nee Ivory), married 27-year-old Charles Henry Winter on 18 December 1876 at the Registry Office in Castlemaine, Victoria. She was recorded as a farmer of Kennedys Gully and Charles as a farmer from Launceston Gully. Charles was born in 1850 in Moonee Ponds, Victoria, the elder son of Charles Winter and Charlotte Cole. Catherine’s parents were recorded as George Ivory (her father was in fact James) and Ellen Hand. Catherine and Charles had one daughter:
- Sarah Daphne Winter: b. 1877, Guildford, Victoria; m. Alfred Robert Frank Meredith 1898, Leederville, Western Australia; d. 1909, Blackwood, WA. The Winter family moved to Western Australia about 1897 and lived in Greenbushes, Swan, and Cue, Coolgardie. Catherine Ivory Winter died on 18 February 1914, aged 81, at Greenbushes and was buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery there. The informant was her husband, who recorded her place of birth as Co. Westmeath, Ireland, that she had lived for two years in New South Wales, 43 years in Victoria and 17 years in Western Australia, and that she had one previous marriage.
Her obituary in the Southern Times, Bunbury on 26 February 1914 reads in part: Death of a Pioneer
The deceased, who was 78 years of age, left her native land (Ireland) when quite a child, and spent the early part of her life amongst the gold rushes in the Eastern States, travelling many hundreds of miles in the pre-railway days in bullock wagons and other primitive conveyances.
One of her treks was from Sydney to Melbourne behind the oxen, and (she) had many strange experiences by flood and road in those lawless days. Mr & Mrs Winter were amongst the earliest pioneers of Greenbushes, where the former did useful work in prospection and helping to open up the tin area. Later they engaged in business in Leederville….
Charles Winter died in 1922 in Perth, Western Australia.
Source:
‘Fair Delinquents’ ?
Irish Famine Orphans of Colonial Bathurst and Beyond
By Leonie Glynn Blair & Perry McIntyre