John Tighe

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D Wong on 23rd July 2014

John Tighe’s made four attempts to bring his family to New South Wales between 1841 and 1853 and is another example in determination. The family was eventually reunited in 1858, 25 years after John had left Sligo. From the 9th Irish Famine Memorial: Feeny was writing in August 1848 to John Tighe of Wollongong, New South Wales. John Had applied under an Imperial government scheme administered by New South Wales as a time expired convict—he had been transported in 1833 from County Sligo for manslaughter—to have his wife Margaret and daughters Honora and Mary brought to the colony. He had also contacted Caroline Chisholm who had persuaded the British Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, to re-establish a scheme, dropped in 1840 at the cessation of transportation to Sydney, to reunite convict families. As Feeny penned in his letter from the parish of Riverstown, County Sligo, possibly in the presbytery, he said this in a postscript: Your wife is at my side while I write this letter: She requests me to send you her most affectionate love—she has never forgotten you and never shall—the children also have desired their fondest love to you. In the body of this letter Feeny outlined the family’s situation. They had been evicted from their small cabin in the townland of Heapstown along with all the other smallholders. They had been taken in by Margaret Tighe’s brother Pat McDonough and were living with him in the townland of Annaghcarty, but ‘in very poor circumstances’. Any financial help John could send from Australia would be welcomed. John's brother, Hugh, had left the previous year for New York from which place Feeny had received a letter from him telling of Hugh’s safe arrival. The priest also remembered the time—probably in mid 1847, ‘Black ’47’ again—when a letter had come from Caroline Chisholm in London offering the family free passage to Sydney from London but they were not able to get there in time. Another offer came to sail on the Waverley, a ship contracted to carry female convicts from Dublin to Hobart. This time the family was ‘in the fever, some of them recovering slowly, others in thecommencement of it’. No other offer came from Caroline Chisholm, Feeny reminded John in Wollongong of the ‘great poverty and distress in this country for the last two years’ and painted a terrible prospect for the parishes of south Sligo in the coming year: the potato crop is entirely blighted in this district and the accounts from all parts of Ireland as we read in the newspapers confirm the sad prospect. It was a prospect John could read about in Wollongong as similar accounts were printed in the Sydney press and it is no surprise that John’s name turns up on those lists of subscribers to Irish famine relief published in those same papers. 25/10/1885: John Tighe died at Keelogues, Wollongong aged 88. Wife Margaret McDonough was born in 1812 and died 12/8/1880 at Keelogues, Wollongong aged 68.

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Carol Axton-Thompson on 22nd July 2014

John Tighe was transported to New South Wales, Australia on the 'Parmelia' 1834. There is a record in the Colonial Office of John applying to bring his family out to the Colony, in 1841 when he was 'free by servitude'.