Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Whelans

Good Lord. I haven't posted in over six months.

I have been hard at coping with life's strange and unwelcome barrage while trying to get some information on my great grandfather John Whelan, seaman of Newmarket-on-Fergus, Clare, Ireland. He married Johann Scully in Melbourne in 1875, I think, and had two children: Patrick and John. Just where did all the family photos go?

-destroyed I expect, by the harridan who married Patrick after he was widowed because he had some money. She isolated him from his friends, made him move suburbs, farmed her step-children out as slaves to her sister and when he died, then bolted, taking no pains to secure the house (which was plundered) nor even tell my grandfather, John Whelan, hairdresser, that his father had died. Patrick's daughter thought her brother had ignored the funeral and there arose a lifetime rift.

A little bit of bitch goes a long, long way.

My chances of finding any pictures, which are usually good, are zero.