O’Hara Family Association of
Killinkere, Co. Cavan, Ireland

        Puzzling to O'Hara family researchers has been why William Sheils, a native of Coolnacola townland in Killinkere Parish, County Cavan, Ireland, did not appear on the passenger list of the Mangerton under that name when it arrived in Sydney on the 28 July 1855 ¹, and why his wife Jane appeared on the list under her maiden name of Jane O'Hara.
       Although not on the passenger list it was a reasonable assumption William would have been on the vessel either as an assisted immigrant listed under another name or as a crew member. Married only six weeks prior to leaving on the first leg of the journey to join the Mangerton for its departure from Plymouth in the south of England his pregnant wife Jane would not likely have departed on the world’s longest migration journey down to Australia whilst leaving William behind to later find a way to join her. Instead they would have come together later on another ship.
       The purpose of this article is prove William Sheils was on the Mangerton when it arrived in Sydney Harbour in 1855 and that he arrived as an assisted immigrant under the name alias of his wife's first cousin Samuel O’Hara accompanied by an unidentified female posing as Samuel's real wife Martha née McAuley. This was undoubtedly the reason William's real wife Jane appeared on the official passenger list of the vessel under her maiden name of O'Hara instead of her married name of Sheils. The real Samuel O’Hara and William’s wife Jane were first cousins. William Sheils's August 1859 Australian death registration record had his mother's name as Ann O’Hara suggesting she was possiblely a sister to Jane's father Joseph and his brother Samuel Sr. So it seems very possible William and wife Jane were also first cousins! ^{2, 24}
       In addition to William Sheils, his real wife Jane O'Hara, and William's impostor wife, the Mangerton family party comprised Jane’s younger sister Margaret O'Hara, Eliza O’Hara who was a sister of the real Samuel O’Hara, plus two Kellett sister cousins named Eliza and Jane who were daughters of Samuel's sister Mary who later came to Australia herself. Of these others Eliza O’Hara in 1859 married Englishman Thomas Wilkinson in Sydney. Her marriage record listed her brother Samuel as a witness and the Sydney newspaper notice gave her previous abode as Lismagiril townland which adjoined her parents townland of Greaghadossan - Lismagiril also being the townland in which her brother John O'Hara who came to Australia in 1863 appeared as a farm occupier in the 1857 Griffith Valuation of Ireland ^{4, 5}.
      The real identity of the lady in the Mangerton party, who posed as the bogus Samuel O'Hara's real wife Martha O’Hara née McAuley will likely never be known. She stated for the immigration record her father was dead. Assuming it was the truth it is the only clue to her identity. If by now a reader is assuming the real Samuel O’Hara and his wife Martha may have met with foul play before embarkation, thus permitting William Sheils and the unknown lady to assume their identity, then you are wrong and maybe lately have read too many detective stories. 

     FOR THE DETAILS OF THIS 150 YEAR OLD DECEPTION - READ ON !

A Second Coming !

      The real Samuel O’Hara and his wife Martha née McAuley actually arrived in Australia on the 26 May 1855 - about two months earlier than the same name imposter couple in the Mangerton party. They arrived on board the 694 ton Truro under the command of Capt. Duncan, which departed from Liverpool in England on 14 Feb 1855, whereas the Mangerton did not depart Plymouth until the 22 April ^{1, 6}. They arrived in company with 315 other immigrants at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) in Queensland, then still part of NSW, accompanied by a daughter born during the 102 day voyage who was named in the immigration record as Martha ⁷. The official birth registration of Martha McAuley's first Australian born child Mary has her elder sister named as "Eliza aged 2 years". However the age of 2 years for her given in the record confirms Eliza was the same child named Martha born during the voyage of the Truro ⁸.
      Despite obvious errors in the Truro immigration record of Samuel’s parent's place of residence being incorrectly recorded as County Clare, and his age as 23 contradicting a then likely age of 27 as derived from the 26 years recorded in the church register when he married the previous year, there can be no doubt it was the real Samuel and Martha O'Hara who arrived on the Truro. Their native place appeared in the record as County Cavan, religion as C of E, and that each could read and write ⁶. The C of E religion and ability to both read and write is consistent with the same attributes possessed by Samuel’s siblings as disclosed in the immigration record of his sister Sarah who arrived earlier at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) in 1853 in the Florentia ⁹,  and his sister Eliza who was to arrive on the Mangerton two months later ¹⁰, and elder brother John who arrived with his family in Sydney in 1863 on the John Vanner ³.  All were identically described as of C of E religion and able to both read & write. Also in respect of religion the death record of their brother William, the last of the Samuel Sr. children to come to Australia who arrived with his family on the Peterborough in 1880, indicates he too would have been C of E as he is buried in that section of Rookwood Necropolis Cemetery ¹¹. The Samuel O’Hara of Greaghadossan line, likewise to that of his brother Joseph O’Hara of Drumfomina, were clearly Established Church (Church of Ireland) although their ancient Irish name indicates at some time in the past an ancestor must have ‘turned his coat’ from the Roman Catholic religion perhaps in order to hold on to land or for marriage reasons.  (note - the original R.C. religion of the O'Hara ancestors is definitely not a line of research worth pursuing as there are no relevant Catholic Church records going back far enough that have survived for the Diocese of Kilmore that cover Killinkere Parish and its surrounding parishes).
       Samuel O'Hara Jr. was listed in the Truro records as a labourer and his parents appeared as Samuel and Elizabeth. These parent names are fully in accord with that given in other accepted sources that his father was Samuel and his mother was Elizabeth Jordan. Martha’s parents were listed as Andrew McAuley and Elizabeth both alive in County Cavan. Such is in accord with Samuel and Martha’s Bailieborough District 2 Mar 1854 marriage registration that listed her father as Andrew McAuley ¹². This marriage was in the Bailieborough Presbyterian Church, however such only indicates Martha, then of Drumoosclin in Bailieborough Parish, was at that time a Presbyterian. The 1856/57 Griffith Valuation had a John McAuley in Drumoosclin who may have been her brother. However her likely father Andrew McAuley appeared in Gola townland ajoining husband Samuel's townland of Greaghadossan, indicating in accord with her immigration record that father Andrew McAuley likely was still alive when Martha entered Australia in 1855. Both bride and groom signed the marriage register and that confirms their Truro immigration data they were both literate. Samuel was listed as having a sister "in Moreton Bay" (perhaps a mermaid?) and two sisters in Sydney. The Moreton Bay sister was no doubt Sarah who had arrived at Moreton Bay with her cousin/husband Thomas O’Hara in 1853. According to Thomas O'Hara’s 1896 death certificate the couple initially resided in Queensland for 5 years so were still there in 1855 when the Truro arrived with Sarah's brother Samuel and his wife aboard ¹³. The two then Sydney resident sisters were Mary O’Hara who married Hugh Wauhop in Sydney in 1852 after the death of his first wife Jane Edmonstone/dson in 1851 ^{14, 15}, and Matilda who married Andrew Love in Sydney in 1854 who had arrived from Cavan, County Cavan on the Lloyds in 1850 ^{16, 17}. Martha’s age of 24 as listed in the immigration record is the same as the 24 recorded as her age in the register when she married the previous year in County Cavan so was approximately correct. The single fact that Martha's record correctly gave her father’s name as Andrew McAuley and stated he was still living establishes beyond any reasonable doubt she was the genuine Martha McAuley.

Give Away Errors

        However in marked contrast to the above noted basic correlation of the immigration data of the Truro couple with data available from other sources, the immigration data recorded for the bogus Samuel and Martha O’Hara who arrived in Sydney on 28 July 1855 on the Mangerton lacks points of significant correlation, with the only exception being that of a claimed brother-in-law relationship to Hugh Wauhope (sic). The very fact the two impostors, in answer to the question "do you have any relations in the colony?", answered "a brother-in-law Hugh Wauhope living in Strawberry Hill" indicates something was not quite right about the couple. Queensland was still part of the colony of NSW until separation in 1859. So their natural answer should have been the same as that given two months earlier by the real Samuel & Martha, that Samuel had a sister at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) and two sisters in Sydney and Martha had no relations in the colony. It was not even the case that Hugh Wauhop was the only brother-in-law in Sydney who could have been named as such as there was also Andrew Love married to Matilda O'Hara. Presumably this question was one the impostors had not anticipated being asked so had not rehearsed an answer and on the spur of the moment were thus only able to provide the one name of Hugh Wauhop as relations they had in the colony. His name would have been well known to all in the Mangerton party as his hotel The True Irishman in Sarah Ann Street at Strawberry Hill (Surry Hills) would have been the immediate destination for the party after the immigration board inspection was completed on 29th July and they were released from quarantine ¹⁸.
       As stated above the real Samuel O'Hara was literate as disclosed by his marriage registration, and accordingly he had answered "both" to the Truro immigration question as to whether he could read or write. However the false Samuel (William Sheils) was not literate, as indicated by him having signed the marriage register for his 1 Mar 1855 Billis Church marriage with his "mark" ¹⁹, which his sister Nancy had also done when she had earlier married Thomas Wilson on 5 Apr 1854 in Bailieborough Presbyterian Church Meeting House ²⁰.  Such indicates the Sheils children likely had little or no formal schooling. In Australia William Sheils confirmed he was not literate when he signed the birth registration of his daughter Anna with his ‘mark’ ²¹.  The answer the false Samuel gave for the Mangerton immigration record was that he could ‘neither’ read or write. William Sheils answered that question truthfully. However at the time to have done otherwise likely would not have appeared a viable option as the official taking down the details could have handed him a piece of paper and said "show me" or asked him to sign his name to the record of his details. In any event it is possible he did not know whether or not the real Samuel possessed the read/write attribute. A failure to fully anticipate there would be specific questions concerning parents names etc. asked at the Australian end as part of the entry formalities is evident from the several erroneous answers given by the impostors.
        There is only minor divergence from otherwise established fact in respect of the religion of the false Samuel and Martha as it appears in the Mangerton’s Ship’s List and in the arrival immigration records compared to the religion of the real Samuel and Martha. In the immigration record such appears correctly as Church of England but on the Ship’s List it was recorded as Roman Catholic. However it seems the RC in the Ship’s List could have been a clerical error arising from the couple listed immediately above having been RC and by an erroneous running down from them of ditto marks. Such errors could easily have occurred as the immigration record lists the names in alphabetical order for each class of person so are clearly a transcription and collation of the individual records taken at the actual time of the immigration board inspection. Whilst there are seemingly reliable pointers to William having been a Presbyterian, such as his sister Nancy having married in that church in Bailieborough, and his first child Margaret born on 1 Dec 1855 at Manning River having been baptised in the Presbyterian Church ²², there can be little doubt William was aware from his own marriage in his wife Jane’s C of I Church in Billis etc. that the O’Hara family and thus the real Samuel O’Hara was C of E. Thus as an impostor he would have had no problem correctly answering the religious denomination question.
       The decisive divergence of the immigration data from that of otherwise established fact occurred in the names the false Samuel and Martha gave for their parents and for their own places of birth. The townland of Greaghadossan given for Samuel as native place was correct. It is the same the real Samuel gave for his church marriage record in 1854. So too was the father’s name of Samuel. However the mother’s name was listed as Matilda. It should have been Elizabeth who lived on in County Cavan until 1873. The real Samuel did have a sister Matilda who was already in Sydney and had married Andrew Love there the previous year. There is no way anyone other than an impostor could have made such a glaring error of mixing up the two names!
         In the case of the bogus wife Martha the townland of Knockbride given as her native place, which may have been intended to be the Parish of that name, was not strictly in accord with the townland of the real Martha at least in so far as her residence in 1854 when she married was given as Drumoosclin in Bailieborough Parish. However her answer of Knockbride may be considered correct as Drumoosclin townland does have Knockbride Parish joining it on its northern boundary thus the variance can be viewed as an excusable error of detail and likely only indicates the Martha impostor was a quick thinker who knew where the real Martha had lived and had just thought Drumoosclin was in Knockbride Parish which was almost the case. However similarly to her bogus husband Samuel the listing of her parents names as John and Martha with mother still living and father dead was absolutely not in accord with the parentage of the real Martha McAuley as disclosed by other records. The real Martha's 1854 marriage record stated her father was Andrew McAuley and indicated he was then alive. Whilst an examination of the 1856 Griffith Valuation for Drumoosclin does not disclose Andrew McAuley's name as a land occupier there it does have a John McAuley in the townland who may have been the real Martha's brother with whom she may have been living at the time of her marriage. However an Andrew McAuley who was likely Martha's father does appear at the Griffith Valuation in Gola townland which joins Greaghadossan townland where the real Samuel O'Hara Jr. lived. Such indicates Andrew McAuley would have been alive in 1855 when the emigration occurred. However whether he was dead or alive then is of little significance and may never be established except from later marriage records of his other children. The salient point in respect of establishing that the immigration deception occurred is that each impostor gave a parent name incorrectly and such of itself totally decides  the matter.

Other Proofs

       Compelling evidence the Mangerton’s Samuel O’Hara was in fact William Sheils is also provided from later Australian records. The first child of William Sheils and Jane O'Hara was born at the small settlement of Manning River in NSW on 1 Dec 1855 and baptised on 27 Feb 1856 as Margaret O’Hara ²². Their second child was baptised there on 26 Feb 1858 as Hannah O’Hara - ‘Hannah’ being the phonetic equivalent of Anna which is how her given name was subsequently spelt when her birth was officially registered on 11 Dec 1857 ¹⁴. Both baptism records gave the father’s name as William O’Hara. This establishes that in the then small isolated pioneering settlement at Manning River, from arrival there between August and December 1855 up until at least after the time of the second child's baptism, William used the O’Hara surname as an alias. He was also likely known as such in that community right up until his death in August 1859. Having continued to use the O'Hara name alias after moving to the small community he would have been locked into its continued use there although for the purposes of offical records having legal implications he used his real name. His first child Margaret was born before the legal requirement for BDM registration commenced in NSW. That William as informant registered second daughter Anna’s late 1857 birth under the surname of ‘Shields’, being a phonetic equivalent of Sheils, in no way negates the scenario of his continued use of the O'Hara name in the Manning River community as there were legal obligations and penalties for failure to correctly register a birth. Similar applied to his 20 Dec 1858 purchase of 60 acres at Mitchell’s Island the transfer of which was recorded under another phonetic variation of his actual Sheils surname ²³.  Becoming a freeholder in a new country was an important event in the life of any son of an Irish tenant farmer. William would naturally have purchased the land in his correct name instead of under the O’Hara surname alias as he would have feared to do otherwise may have meant his ownership could later be able to be disputed.
       Also when Jane died on 27 Jul 1886 her second husband John Thomas Williams as record informant gave the name of her first husband as Samuel Shields, the Samuel being the given name part of William's entry alias of Samuel O'Hara ²¹. John Thomas who was a blacksmith by trade may have been at Manning River when William & Jane arrived in 1855, or arrived there at any time up to William’s 1859 death, thus could have even known William personally before his death by the name of Samuel O’Hara. In itself this is not a strong point of proof as second husband John Thomas was more than likely told by Jane of the immigration deception episode, and under the traumatic circumstances of her death from pneumonia after a 6 day illness which left him a widower and licensee of the London Tavern in Elizabeth Street in Surry Hills with several very young children, could understandably have just mixed up the names of Samuel and William when giving the name of Jane's previous husband to the funeral director for the death registration record. Such a state of mind is certainly evidenced by much of the other data he gave for that record such as Jane’s age at death, age when she first married in Ireland, and the ages for the three Sheils children which were all a long way out (i.e. Jane appears as 56 when she was actually 50 when she died, Margaret 38 was actually 30, Anna 34 was 28 & Susan given as 36 was 26). Due to the state of mind of informant's at such times it is common to find errors such as these on death certificates.

How So?

       An overriding question requiring an explanation is how circumstances could have arisen in Ireland in 1855 to enable the immigration as assisted immigrants (with the colony of NSW paying most of the then substantial steerage fare of a likely £12 to £15 per adult person - the average in the 19th century England to Australia was £17 ), of a couple named Samuel and Martha O’Hara from Greaghadossan in Killinkere Parish in County Cavan as TWO couples each bearing the same names departing two months apart from different places in England on separate ships and arriving at places in Australia separated by a thousand kilometres of coastline ?
        On the face of it the O’Hara/Kellett Mangerton party would have originally included the real Samuel and Martha, his sister Eliza, and his four female cousins plus Jane and her sister Margaret and the two Kellett sisters Jane and Eliza. The party of six women would have intended to travel to Australia with Samuel as their sole male escort/protector. Perhaps when applying for places in the assisted immigration scheme, or later after they were advised they had been selected and when forwarding the required fare deposits to London, married couples may have been permitted to nominate a month or time band preference for departure as an alternative to just being allocated to the first available ship by the immigration authority. The thinking here is that sometime late in 1854 or in early Jan. 1855 Samuel for some reason had an expectation they may not be leaving for a few months, and at that time it was apparent to him that a departure if left until then would likely mean the baby his wife Martha was expecting would be born early in the voyage to Australia so would have little chance of surviving the long voyage.
>       Apart from the obvious hazard to the survival of a newly born baby through not being able to keep milk down during prolonged periods of rough weather, Samuel would have had direct knowledge from his own sister Sarah’s letters home of her experience of having a baby on her voyage to Australia in 1853. She and her husband Thomas O’Hara, the elder brother of Jane and Margaret who came on the Mangerton, had travelled to Australia two years previously arriving at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) on 25 April 1853 from Plymouth in the Florentia after a voyage exceeding five months duration. Whilst O’Hara genealogies sighted incorrectly list their first child Joseph as having been born on 27 April 1853 two days after the vessel actually arrived in port it is clear from the immigration records he was born on the high seas. The newspaper reports of the Florentia’s voyage stated 12 children were born during that voyage and 12 children and 5 adults died. The immigration records indicate about half of the children born on the voyage died ²⁵.  So there can be little doubt Samuel O'Hara would have been fully aware of the potential hazard in that respect. Also the immigration authority strongly advised intending emigrants, because of the high mortality rate for children born at sea, to regulate their marital relationships to avoid that possibility ²⁶.
        So the suggested scenario is that upon becoming aware Martha’s baby would likely be born early in the Mangerton’s voyage which could have lasted for up to 5 months, Samuel who it is known could read and write must have contacted the Colonial Land and Emigration Committee (CLEC), who was the authority responsible for arranging assisted immigration to NSW and the chartering of the ships etc, and either through an agent in Ireland or by letter direct to London requested his and wife Martha’s departure be brought forward by several months so as to permit their baby to be born after arrival in Australia or at the least close to Australian shores. Perhaps he just asked for an immediate departure. It is suggested the request must have been favorably considered by the immigration authority and that they were offered an available passage on the Truro which they accepted even though as it turned out their baby Martha was still born on the high seas. The suggestion is also that the bringing forward of a departure on account of humane considerations would likely have been quite unusual as few would have ever taken the initiative to make such an application as evidenced by the fact that many babies were born at sea. Being a departure from normal administration procedures for allocating immigrants to ships, it must have somehow resulted in the overlooking of the need to delete them from the list allocating them with the other members of the originally intended O'Hara/Kellett party to the Mangerton. It is suggested that such a situation may explain how embarkation documents could have subsequently issued for places for Samuel and Martha in the Mangerton party even though they had already departed for Australia on the Truro. As there is a reasonable assumption available to demonstrate how it could have come about the precise way it did is not particularly important.
       A suggested scenario is that following Samuel and Martha having successfully brought forward their departure date and departed by steamer from Newry or Drogheda for the 140 mile trip across the Irish sea to Liverpool to join the Truro for its 12 Feb 1855 departure for Australia, the mails arrived at Killinkere Post Office with letters confirming the allocation of places for all seven members of the original family party including the names of Samuel and Martha to depart from Plymouth on the Mangerton, and calling for the forwarding of the required deposits by postal order, or alternatively if the offers of places on the ship had been previously made and the deposits paid, just enclosing the embarkation documents. The impending departure of Jane and her sister for Australia, and a confirmed availability of a vacant Samuel and Martha O’Hara ‘place’ on the Mangerton, could even have been the catalyst for Jane O'Hara's 1 March 1855 marriage to William Sheils in Billis where she had been born circa 1836 ^{19, 27}. Perhaps another more distant cousin or a friend of someone in the Mangerton party, regretful she was not accompanying the others, was willing to fill the available vacancy for Martha née McAuley as the wife of Samuel O'Hara whose identity was to be assumed by William Sheils.
       So off they all went to Plymouth perhaps confidently expecting the Samuel and Martha alias would succeed as it did. They may have known of instances of others who had successfully adopted a false identity in order to utilise a double booking opportunity arising from persons having their names down for more than one ship or arising from a person having been accepted for a ship but due to changed circumstances having changed their mind and been unable or unwilling to take up an offered place, or perhaps even of an identical substitution to that postulated of a couple who had brought forward their departure date and departed on an earlier ship leaving a place on the later departing ship available to others to go in their place by adopting their identity. This was a no passport required era when Ireland was just a part of the UK, and a claimed identity evidenced by embarkation documents entitling a person to board a vessel would have just been accepted.

Repercussions

       It seems likely the deception of the false identity to travel to and enter Australia as an assisted immigrant, accompanied by a fear he may have incurred a criminal liability for fraud as the New South Wales government had paid the fare to which he had no entitlement, and prior to embarkation not having been accepted by its agency in London as a suitable assisted immigrant or not having personally made the required of all accepted a financial contribution to the fare before the embarkation documents issued, explains why William Sheils in his early years on the Manning River as a farm servant continued to use the O’Hara surname alias under which he arrived. Most likely after arrival in Sydney he was engaged by an agent for a Manning River employer under that alias. For the reasons noted he did not use the alias in late 1857 when registering daughter Anna’s birth or in late 1858 when he purchased land not long before his death. However Anna's 1857 birth registration still evidenced a degree of deception regarding his identity, as whilst the 1 March 1855 date of his marriage given in the birth registration was accurate as confirmed by his Bailieborough District Marriage registration record, the place was incorrectly given as Knockbride. It should have been Billis located some miles to the south. Two years after a church marriage a 24 to 25 year old could not have been mixed up about where his marriage took place whilst accurately recalling the exact date !¹⁹. There is just no way a person raised in Coolnacola townland could have been confused as to where Knockbride was in relation to Billis - Knockbride parish was north of Coolnacola and Billis well to the south. Also and wife Jane's Drumfomina residence was only about a mile west of the Billis Church of Ireland where they married!

SOURCES:
¹   Sydney Morning Herald, Monday, 30 July 1855 page 4.
²   NSW Certificate  #879 for 23 Aug 1859 death of William Shiels (sic) named his mother as Ann O’Hara.
³   NSW Immigration, Persons on Bounty Ships, NSW Archives, Microfilm reels 2139 & 2481. Record states John O’Hara’s mother Elizabeth of Greaghadossan was alive then but his father was dead.
⁴   Advice of Gustav Schaefer who obtained the marriage certificate.
⁵   Marriage is indexed for 1859 and a notice was in Sydney Morning Herald of 13 April 1859, p.8 col. 6.
⁶   NSW Immigration, Persons on Bounty Ships to Syd. & Newc., NSW Archives, Microfilm Reel 2472.
7   Moreton Bay Courier and Northern Districts' General Advertiser, issue of 2 June 1855
⁸   Advice of Gustav Schaefer who obtained the birth certificate.
⁹   NSW Immigration, Persons on Bounty Ships, NSW Archives, Microfilm reel 2464.
10  Copies from relevant microfilm reel of Mangerton immigration records - provided by Gustav Schaefer.
¹¹  Transcript of death reg. #2302 d. 25 Dec 1911, b. 1831 at Graduson, Ireland. (i.e. Greaghadossan)
¹²  Ireland Marriage Records - Vol. 1  for 1854, LDS Microfilm  #0101353, p. 533.
¹³  NSW Certificate #9825  - 9 Sep 1896 death Thomas O’Hara states 5 years QLD & 39 years in NSW.
¹⁴  Notes accompanying a letter from Gustav Schaefer dated 30 Jan 1999.
¹⁵  NSW Death Cert. # 1877-3240  Hugh Wauhop b. ca. 1807 died 2 Oct 1877, age 70, Petersham, NSW - provided courtesy of Gwenda Andersen.
¹⁶  Notes accompanying a letter from Gus Schaefer dated 30 Jan 1999 - married Matilda O’Hara 9 Aug 1854 Scots Church, Presbyterian, Sydney d. 1903 Redfern, death index states she was a daughter of Samuel & Elizabeth O’Hara. Andrew died 5 Jul 1906, Sydney.
¹⁷  NSW Immigration, Persons on Bounty Ships, NSW Archives, Microfilm reels 2136 & 2466 - Lloyds arrived Sydney 29 Jun 1850 - Andrew Love, age 19, C of E, could R &W, parents James & Eliza - father in US.
¹⁸  Sands Directory for 1858 and 1859 - prepared late 1857 lists him as licensee. Also same street is listed a John Wauhop as a dairyman - however he is not one of the 4 brothers named Charles, William, Hugh and  Joshua, who were sons of  Edward & Susannah Wauhop , who came to Australia in the 1840s and ’50s so is likely another unknown of brother or cousin.
¹⁹   Ireland Marriage Record Vol. 1  for 1855, LDS Church Microfilm #0101362 p. 513.
²⁰  Ireland Marriage Record Vol. 1  for 1854, LDS Microfilm  #0101353, p. 537.
²¹  Transcript of NSW birth record #10498 "father - signed with his mark" - provided by Gus Schaefer.
²²  Transcript of NSW birth reg. #1093 v53 , birth 1 Dec 1855, bapt. 27 Feb. 1856 - provided by Gustav Schaefer.
²³  Letter from Charles Dulhunty dated 7 April 1998 - "William Sheills purchased 60 acres on Mitchell’s Island, Manning River, being land sold as Lot 10 pursuant to a proclamation of 22 Nov 1858 - Land Purchase Certificate dated 27 Dec 1858, enrolled by Registrar General 23rd June 1859."  Manning River Hist. Soc. 1 Dec 1998 advice to G. Schaefer was land was the Parish of Oxley, Co. Macquarie Map #21a dated 19 Mar 1958 has portion #63 of 60 acres showing original grantee as ‘William Sheilds’.
²⁴  Transcripts of the death record - provided courtesy of Gus Schaefer & by Gwenda Andersen.
²⁵  The Moreton Bay Couriey and Northern Districts' General Advertiser, Saturday, 30 April 1853 ‘Shipping Intelligence’ section, page 2.
²⁶  Robin Haines, Nineteenth century government assisted immigrants from the United Kingdom to Australia ; schemes, regulations and arrivals 1831-1900 & some vital statistics 1834- 1860.
²⁷ Transcript of NSW birth reg. #1861-8616 for  John T. Williams & Jane O’Hara’s 1st child Henry James - mother’s birthplace given as Billis, County Cavan, Ireland - transcript provided courtesy of Gustav Schaefer.