Move Over Ersatz Forbears

Move Over Ersatz Forbears …

All the branches of the family tree on which I was a statistic, disintegrated when a bombshell - primed in 1944 - detonated. I discovered I was adopted! My life story took a massive unexpected turn. I had lived a lifetime in a house built on a secret foundation, and it felt like a rug had been pulled out from under my entire history

Horrifyingly, my identity flew out of the window. Unearthing seventy-year-old secrets felt less like discovering a truth and more like surviving a landslide. Instead of the convict ancestry I had been led to believe was mine, I unearthed Irish Castle owners; Irish refugees; and Australian Free settlers. The revelation didn’t just rattle the branches of my family tree; it tore up the roots. A startling metamorphosis began and a secret unexpected version of Me began to unfurl. 

My new found maternal O’Halloran ancestors were an illustrious Irish family who had been dispossessed of lands in Galway at the end of the Twelfth Century. An Aunt, Marianne Lacathon de La Forest (nee O'Halloran), of my newly discovered grandfather, Sylvester, relates the story:

It happened somewhere in Ireland (I do not remember the place). One evening, my grandmother's grandfather was seated, surrounded by his family, in the principal room of his castle. Suddenly the door opened, and one of the farmhands all out of breath came in to announce that a party of English soldiers was about to enter the courtyard in order to search the castle and obtain a list of rebels which was known to be in possession of the master, their leader. Before the officers, who could be heard approaching, has entered, the latter has time to hide the list in question behind a brick in the fireplace, making each one swear to reveal nothing, no matter what might happen. Questioned by the English officers, he refused to  reply.Threatened with being hanged at dawn if he continued to keep silent, he did not yield and, despite their great fear, those with him likewise remained silent. In the morning, before sunrise, our ancestor was hanged, the castle burned and the whole family, driven out of their country left for Australia.[i]

           The O'Hallorans of the Eighteenth Century were well represented by the most eminent Doctor Sylvester, an Irish surgeon with an influential interest in Gaelic poetry and history (grave inscription: His country’s honours and good name ever found in him a ready and unflinching champion), and his brothers, Sir Joseph - a Major General in the British Army in India, who received a Knighthood from King William IV in 1835 “for his long meritorious and gallant services as well as the consecration of his eight sons to the service of his country”. And George - a renowned Irish Silversmith and Jeweller. The distinguished military and colonial services rendered to the British Empire in the Nineteenth Century by these illustrious sons of a prosperous farmer from Caherdavin, Limerick, Michael O’Halloran, and his wife Mary McDonnell, ensured their secure social and economic position in the world. 

           An Australian branch took root when two of Joseph's sons came to the newly founded colony of South Australia: William, as secretary to Governor Grey in 1836, and Major Thomas Shuldham O'Halloran, a member of the Coldstream Guards before his arrival in South Australia. Thomas became Chief of Constabulary in 1839, establishing a farm and vineyard on O'Halloran Hill, where his descendants still live and after whom the area was named.

John O’Halloran, an Australian grandson of Dr Sylvester, and his wife Eliza, sprouted the Sydney branch on board the merchant ship “Isabella”. During a massive shipping bottleneck in Capetown several merchant ships including the “Isabella” became stranded indefinitely. Their daughter Marianne O’Halloran was born in 1850 in the waters off the Cape of Good Hope whilst her “Free Immigrant” Irish parents were migrating to Australia. Her brother William Peter was born in Capetown in 1851. Because his father, John, arrived as a free citizen with capital, it was not long before he was a successful merchant and property holder,

By the time he died in 1880, John had achieved a respectable social and financial standing in colonial New South Wales during the mid-to late 19th Century. He and Eliza had lived in the affluent Eastern suburbs of Sydney in Woollahra and had forged strong ties with the Catholic community. He became known as a well-connected Irish-Australian Sydney resident. His social standing enabled his family to network globally, leading to the auspicious occasion of the marriage of his aforementioned daughter, Marianne, (My mother Helena’s great aunt) to the eldest son of an Aristocratic French family. Marianne now became Mrs Charles Camille Lacathon de La Forest. Husband Charles was a French Diplomat of illustrious French Lineage, who served as the Chancellor of the French Consulate in Sydney. 

Unfortunately John’s son William, my great grandfather, did not enjoy a happy relationship with his father. After being dismissed from the family home he went to live in Orange NSW, where he met and married Helena Matilda Curran. The wedding took place on 28 January 1877. Children John (1879), George Sylvester (1881) Lilian (1883), William (1885), Edmund (1888), and Fergal (1890) were the result of this union.

This is where I come into the picture. I find I am the secret seventy year old illegitimate offspring of George Sylvester’s daughter, Helena O’Halloran of Singleton NSW, who was aged thirty-seven when I was born, on 18 August, 1944. This unknown mother of mine grew up in a: 1904 grand federation residence offering stunning architectural features of the era. [ii] Her father was George (known as Sylvester) O'Halloran and her mother Eleanor. Sylvester was a VIP in Singleton, being:

… elected seven times mayor and the gentleman who distinguished a proud record of public service by officially welcoming the King and Queen, when as the Duke and Duchess of York, they stopped at the Railway Station during their 1927 tour. Sylvester enjoyed meeting people in his 22 years as an alderman and met many other notabilities, including the Dukes of Windsor and Gloucester.[iii]

Sylvester had been born at Orange, NSW, but moved to Ryde in Sydney as an infant, and was aged twenty-five when he went to live in Singleton, having married Miss Eleanor Goodman the year before. Nevertheless, he was no stranger to the town, often staying with his uncle, another well-known local identity, Mr John Shelton. Brother Jack joined Sylvester and they formed "O'Halloran Bros", The 'Economic' Drapers of Singleton. This was the scenario when unbeknownst to all, Helena secretly and illegitimately brought me into the world.

It is a strange thing to rewrite the prologue of my life when I am already in the final acts. Not surprisingly, the first piece of the puzzle of finding my secret, true, identity I glean from a long hidden original ‘Birth Certificate’ dated 18 August, 1944. Helena actually named me Frances Anne O’Halloran. My only birthday present! No father was mentioned. I was born at St Margaret’s Hospital but did not leave with the mother who bore me. There is no information as to when I actually left the hospital, but there is a Baptismal Certificate dated September 1944, showing the address of my adoptive parents. According to the Child Welfare Department, an Order of Adoption was made on 3 November 1944, but The Memorandum for Registration of Order of Adoption was not registered until 25 January, 1945. What has happened to me in those precious intervening months? Was I borrowed and then put back? After an agonising wait of two years, the Child Welfare Department formally informed me, misspelling my name in the process, that as per company policy all records before 1950 were destroyed!! Thus the details will remain forever secret!

Instead of Frances Anne O’Halloran I now became Anne Patricia Stephenson, daughter of William and Ellen Stephenson of Kogarah. The details on my newly minted legal birth certificate now permanently reflected this altered status. It read as if I were their real daughter, born to them. The shameful secret, Frances Anne O’Halloran, was now consigned to the locked basement at the Mitchell Library with the rest of the medical records of St Margaret’s Hospital. Severed by this deed too, was any connection with my natural mother, whose tragic last utterance aged ninety-one, I sadly find, was, “Why won’t they bring me my baby?”[iv]

As the secret of my beginnings was revealed so late, my paternal ancestry was a complete mystery, until intense research put me ‘hot on the trail’ of a romantic sounding Mr D’Arcy, Francis, to be exact. My delvings picked up his name in a love letter to mother given to me by a new-found Tasmanian cousin. Drum roll please - he was in the Singleton Army Camp around the appropriate time. And, she had named me Frances! These tantalising shreds were all I had to patch together the far-reaching events of this time.

Hopes were immediately dashed by a phone call from a Perth cousin, who was with my mother when she confided my father’s real name just before she died. These details had lain dormant in a drawer since 1998 as no-one knew what to do with them.[v] Back to the drawing board. 

With this additional information, Army records now revealed my biological father to be Private Keith Fraser Routley, of Marnoo in Victoria, height 5’6½” (another drum roll - I am exactly 5’6½”). He had blue eyes, fair complexion, grey hair; and the files showed, rather significantly from my point of view, that he was married with three children during his time of service 18 April, 1942 to 12 November, 1944. He saw no overseas service and was demobbed at the end of the war.

The town of Singleton was the only thread that connected my new found mother and father with each other. Helena was living at home and her father had been the Lord Mayor of Singleton for a decade around this time. Keith was stationed in the local army camp not far from the family home. The O’Halloran family had a holiday house at Terrigal to which “chaps from the Army Camp were often invited!”[vi] A clue perhaps?

A connection between Frank and Keith and Helena at Terrigal was confirmed in a letter dated November, 1944, from a good friend who refers to himself as 'big brother' Maurie

"….  And sorry to hear that you have not fully recovered but hope you will soon be well to get about and enjoy yourself. ….  Did you say that Frank's friend (sic) name was Routley. … That Terrigal must be some place.  I fear the “not fully recovered” part refers to my birth and her seeking my father.

There was scant information about Keith’s family in the Army records. But research on Scottish clans revealed the Routley family name of McLennan[vii]. Tracing a half-sister, Dawnne, to Melbourne, I made contact with her through the Facebook page of her daughter-in-law, Bernadette. After I very tactfully explained the whole story to a very surprised new found nephew Keith, he and Bernadette, rushed up to Sydney to fill me in first hand on my Routley family, which excitingly included two half-sisters, aforesaid Dawnne Figgis (née Routley, formerly Higson); the other, Heather Rieger (née Routley) who had been an American resident for sixty years, and was in the early stages of dementia, and a deceased half-brother, Keith Fraser Routley Junior.

My investigations were continuing apace, when the plot recently thickened. Whilst tracing my (adopted) Stephenson family name of McLean (clan McLennan[ix]) I had discovered my great great paternal grandfather came from a village called St Cuthberts in Leith, Scotland.

My new found Routley family name is McLennan (also clan McLennan[x]). A Routley cousin traced my great great Routley Grandfather to this exact same little village.

Astoundingly it appears very likely that both my natural and adopted fathers have a common ancestor!

Move over formerly secret forbears. The branches may have all fallen off my former grafted tree, but a burgeoning healthy new branch is budding furiously. Now into my eighties, I can be found eagerly honing my gardening skills!

                                                                                                         (Word count: 2028)

[i] deBérard, Pierre, letter dated 10.1.1983. (Stories told to him by Marianne Lacathon de La Forest (née

O’Halloran the eldest daughter of John O’Halloran) translated by Anthony Hunt, O’Halloran family

Archivist.

[ii] Real Estate Ad in The Singleton Argus 1.5.2015

[iii] The Singleton Argus 3.2.1975ibid

[iv] Thorns, Dorothy. (Niece of Helena O’Halloran) Verbal first hand account 

[v] ibid

[vi] Correspondence from cousin, Marist Brother Anthony Hunt

[vii] Clan McLennan Association Australia, Scots of Victoria Resource Centre Carlton. Victoria

[viii] myheritage.com, internet site, via Adopted cousin , Liz Stephenson

[ix] myheritage.com,internet site, via paternal cousin John Figgis