One of the Wild Ones

I have spent the last few days searching out some of my distant cousins  -  the descendants of the brother of my only Irish forebears.  I can trace the family back to my great great great great grandfather whom I suspect emigrated to America since the family seems to have separated during the Great Famine in Ireland.  

The two brothers who landed in Australia set sail in 1841 and arrived in Sydney early in 1842.  My great something grandfather married in Sydney but his wife died in their second year of marriage  -  probably during childbirth as usually happened when a death occurs early. Multiple childbirth  is also dangerous for the woman and his second wife died aged in her mid 30s at the same time as her last child.

The older brother  first went to Queensland where he got into trouble with the police and where he married.  He and his wife produced seven daughters and I have been able to trace most of their progress  -  two of the daughters married the same man but the with second marriage the pair were 'full age'  -  a marriage term designating a couple who obviously didn't need their parents' consent.  This particular couple were in their fifties.

The brother continued to have problems with the police and is recorded as being gaoled for two days for drunkenness and once for theft but I need to go into the police records to investigate further.

One of the problems which I have encountered is that Australia was not a Federation until 1901, being a collection of individual states under The Crown and Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria were all a part of New South Wales, so do I designate the states as they were before 1901 or not? I suppose that ultimately is depends on people looking at my family tree and if they know Australia's history.

Despite the time and the different progenitors these cousins are really fairly close, being first cousins variously removed so maybe some will be unearthed by DNA testing although, so far, I haven't discovered anything new from my DNA.  It hasn't told me anything I didn't already know and most of my supposed cousins do not have family trees so there is no way of discovering any new family that way.

This Limerick takes a bit of unscrambling but is fun anyway:  It was written by Monsignor Ronald Knox.

"Knox once persuaded an unwary newspaper editor to run this 'classified advertisement":

Evangelical vicar in want of a portable second-hand font, would dispose of the same for a portrait (in frame) of the Bishop-Elect of Vermont.