John Meharg
| First name | John |
|---|---|
| Last name | Meharg |
| Country of Origin | Ireland |
| Date of Birth | 1841 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1874 |
| Submitted by | Mary Manning |
Story
My great grandparents – John Meharg was born in Rathfriland, County Down, Ireland sometime in 1841, his wife Margaret Kernahan in Cornehaugh, County Down, Ireland sometime in 1848. So their early lives were spent in very poor conditions with the Potato Famine from 1845 to 1851 and the Cholera epidemic of 1847/48. The Potato Famine was caused by Potato Blight which destroyed all the potato crops and potatoes were the staple diet of the Irish; consequently many thousands of people and children died of starvation. Also wages were low, rent was high and taxes had to be paid on beer, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, soap, paper and windows. Millions migrated to America, Canada New Zealand and Australia.
John\’s father , Margaret\’s father and John were all labourers. Margaret does not have an occupation at the time of her marriage. John and Margaret were married in Newry on 21st August 1870 and both made their mark X when signing the church records. Samuel was born in 1871, Joseph was born in 1872. In 1873 John and Margaret boarded the ‘Great Britain’ in Liverpool, and set off for the unknown in Australia. The ‘Great Britain’ was a steam ship as well as a sailing ship and the journey was considerably shorter than by sail alone. It took only 66 days from Liverpool to Moreton Bay. There were only 247 passengers on board and of these 46 were children under twelve. They arrived in Moreton Bay on 1st January 1874.
Of interest is the fact that the Great Britain was built in 1843 and was the worlds first iron hulled, screw propeller-driven, steam-powered passenger liner and is now the only surviving 19th century example of the type. She was rescued from the Falkland Islands in 1970 and has had extensive restoration and is to be found in a specially constructed dry dock in Bristol England.
After arriving the Meharg family are supposed to have spent some time in Ipswich before traveling on foot with pack horses to Pikedale, some kilometres to the west of Stanthorpe, close to the NSW border. John selected a plot of land to work but the land wasn\’t suitable for agriculture, the soil was poor and the crops were a failure. He moved to Sugarloaf just outside Stanthorpe to work a tin lease. Sometime later when he now had seven children he owed the local shopkeeper so much money they took his land in payment. From here he walked to another tin mining area named Boonoo Boonoo (pronounced Bunna Bunnu) just over the border near Tenterfield. My grandfather Jack would have been no more than about two at the time as he was carried all the way by his older brothers, so it must have been about 1884. Two more sons were born at Boonoo Boonoo.
In 1894 John\’s oldest daughter Agnes selected land at Eukey about twenty kilometres out of Stanthorpe. A bark hut was built and Margaret and her three girls lived here until each one married. John and his sons worked the creeks for tin and gold, coming home only to replenish stocks of food etc. One day John didn\’t arrive home but his horse did. A search party found him lying unconscious on the track where he had been thrown off his horse. He apparently suffered brain damage as a result of the fall as he died, in 1905, in the hospital for the insane at Goodna, ‘from softening of the brain and pneumonia’, on 22 June 1905, aged 64 years.
Margaret spent time with each of her children until her death on 22nd Sept 1923. From poor Irish folk scratching the earth for tin and gold grew a huge family of descendants all of whom John and Margaret would be proud of.