WEP

Family History

Nathaniel Pidgeon

Elsie Clare Pidgeon

Kilmore Footsteps

Pidgeon Researchers

The Ryan Family: Pioneers Of Pyalong

The Kilmore District recently saw the sad passing of Pat Ryan, a third generation native son of Pyalong. His name continues among the families of his seven sons…

“Let us not forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labour of man” – Daniel Webster.

The Mollison Brothers first settled and named the agricultural area of Pyalong, Victoria in 1838 in what was then known as the Port Phillip District.  This was Victoria’s Pastoral Age.[i]  

The small township and agricultural district of Pyalong we know today was surveyed and proclaimed in 1854,[ii] one hundred and fifty years ago. It is situated on the Northern Highway between the townships of Kilmore and Heathcote on the road to Bendigo. It is here that my pioneer ancestors, Thomas Ryan and his wife Bridget Keane settled and raised their family.

Nothing is known about my Great Great Grandfather’s childhood in Ireland.  There are no known records, which record his actual date and place of birth.  We do know from his marriage certificate that he was born about 1840, in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of Jeremiah Ryan and Bridget, nee Harrigan.3  This is the County were the Ryan clan is most prominent. 4 Jeremiah was a farmer 5 and Thomas probably grew up in spartan conditions with a number of siblings. The great famine hit Ireland in 1845.  The potato blight effected farmers very badly and by the time Thomas reached adulthood he realized that there were better opportunities to be had in a new land. Gold had been discovered in Victoria in 1851 and he was keen to join the rush. He took on the brave decision to travel to the other side of the world where he hoped prospects for a better life may be.  I have not been able to locate a specific arrival time from the assisted or unassisted shipping indexes for Thomas*. We know that Thomas stated he was aged 22 in June 1864 when he was married.6 His death certificate states he was 50 years in Victoria in 1913 7 so a first point of call in looking at the indexes is the period immediately prior to his marriage. There are some possibilities that have been located.  I have yet to view the actual microfilm.  From the Unassisted Immigration to Victoria 1852-1911 shipping index prepared by the Public Records Office Victoria we find:

Ryan Thos 21 Jun 1863 “Royal Dane” and

Ryan Thomas 22 Nov1863 “Commodore Perry”8

There is also the possibility that Thomas arrived via a different Port and then travelled to Melbourne.

Bridget Keane was born about 1830 in County Limerick.  She was the daughter of Thomas Keane, a farmer and Bridget Ryan.9 With her brother John,10 she also decided to leave her native country behind.  Her death certificate indicates she was 63 years in the colony in 1920,11 making her arrival around 1857, aged 17 years. I have not been able to locate Bridget or her brother John’s arrival details at this stage.

Thomas Ryan, a labourer and Bridget Keane, four years his senior, a domestic, were married in Victoria’s first catholic church, 12 the Church of St Francis in Melbourne on June 25^th, 1864. Bridget signed her name on the official document. Thomas made his mark.13  Later documents indicate that Thomas learned to at least sign his name. I presume that Bridget may have taught him to write.

Both Thomas’s obituary14 and the published local history A Brief History Of Pyalong”15 indicate that Thomas and Bridget settled in Pyalong in 1863 where he was involved in road contracting and then spent some time on the McIvor goldfields.  McIvor began as a large rush and became an important goldfield in 1853.  It became a disappointment after people had flocked there from the Bendigo fields. 16 It was considered pretty much over by 1864. 17

I suspect that Thomas probably ventured with many to the McIvor fields, almost from the shipping docks, before his marriage and it may have been at that time that he first inspected land at Pyalong.  He clearly was not married until 1864 but could have maintained his job as a road contractor through out this time.  His occupation of labourer, stated on his marriage certificate certainly could encompass making roads. It is curious, though, that his present and usual address at the time of his marriage was listed as “unknown”. 

The couple’s first-born child, Margaret Annie Ryan was born in Melbourne in 1865.18  

Nearly six million acres of Victorian countryside were sold under the Land Acts of 1860, 1862 & 1865. It was intended that the land should become farms of not more than 320 acres and able to be worked by a single families. 19

Land records indicate that by June 1870 Thomas Ryan had selected 60 acres in the Parish of Pyalong.  He built a two-room residence with mud walls, plastered and white washed with a bark roof .20 He spent the following years on the land clearing and cultivating it and expanding it to include land in the neighbouring Parish of Tooborac “acquiring a valuable property”.21 His original selection and home were situated where two elm trees still stand in a paddock across the Northern Highway, from the locally named "Hanging Rock" 22 between Pyalong and Tooborac. Known as "Black Springs" (because of the composition in part of black soil) or “The Springs”, the property remains in the Ryan family today. Documents from the 1870s describe Thomas as a contractor and farmer. The 1908 electoral roll later describes him as a grazier.  Certainly, Thomas was a very hardworking man.

In 1873 Bridget Hanorah was born in Pyalong.23  Her eight-year old sister must have been pleased!  Thomas Patrick followed a year later. 24 Finally on December 26 1876, Mary arrived as a late Christmas present for her brother and sisters. 25 The older children would most likely have attended the local catholic school, which operated from 1859 to 1877 thereafter all would have attended Pyalong Primary School which recently celebrated 125 years. It was established in 1878.26 

In 1881 Margaret married fellow Pyalong pioneer Nicholas Michael Cooke.27 As a child, he and his parents with three siblings arrived in Australia from County Limerick in 1854.28  Nicholas was only eight years younger than his father-in-law and fifteen years older than his wife.  Together they had 13 children raising their large family of 6 boys and 6 girls (an infant died in 1888) at “The Pines” in Pyalong.  Nicholas and Margaret left the district in 1921 after losing one of their son’s – Richard Thomas Cooke in “The Great War” ** and also following the deaths of both of Margaret’s parents.  Margaret died in Ascot Vale in 1947 aged 82 years. She was buried with her husband, who had pre-deceased her in the Kilmore Catholic Cemetery.29

Bridget married Daniel Comans of Bylands30 in 1907 at the relatively old age of 34. Daniel’s parents had both settled from County Tipperary as well. Daniel was 41 years old. They settled in Bylands, south of Kilmore where one son, Thomas Cornelius Comans was born in February 1910.31 Like his father-in-law, Daniel was successful in his farming pursuits.

The Spanish pneumonic influenza took hold of Australians following World War 1 with returning troops from Europe carrying the disease. During the second wave of the epidemic 32 Daniel “suffered a severe bout of the prevailing sickness, and his wife assisted to nurse him. Bridget contracted the malady and was also laid up and serious developments set in.  It was not till after Mr. Comans had warded off the crisis and was well on the way to recovery that he was told the sad news that his wife had passed away many weeks before”.33 On May 24, 1920 Bridget succumbed to the illness and died aged 47 years.34  While Daniel had been ill after initially caring for his wife, Bridget died followed shortly by her mother who also died at Bylands. 35 Bridget Ryan, nee Keane died on May 28, aged 90 years. She had been a “long resident of Pyalong” and was “highly esteemed”.36 Her husband, Thomas had pre-deceased her in August 1913 after a short illness, aged 73 years. 37 Bridget was buried with her husband in the Kilmore Catholic cemetery. They are a few metres away from the Comans family plot where their daughter Bridget was buried. Both mother and daughter were buried on the same day.

I believe that the widowed Bridget Snr, may have wanted to spend time with her daughter in Bylands when she became seriously ill.  She then became ill herself along side her daughter and son-in-law.  It must have been a terrible time for Daniel Comans’s unmarried sister Bridget Comans (the informants on both Bridget Ryan and her sister-in-law’s death certificates) who helped care for them and young Tom, Bridget and Daniel’s only child.  Margaret especially, in Pyalong busy with her large family, must also have felt a great deal of grief and confusion when this most infectious disease called on her family.

The male heir Thomas Ryan married Mary Frances Carroll in 1905.  She was from Mudgegonga and her mother was Margaret Cooke, brother to Nicholas who married Margaret Ryan.  They settled at “Myrtleville” Pyalong and had eight children together.38 Thomas died on the cusp of World War 2*** on September 11 1939, aged 65 years. He was described as “a very staunch member of the Catholic Church, a devoted father, and a friend of every person he came in contact with.”39

Records have revealed a sad story for Mary.  For a long time her whereabouts were unknown to family members – indeed as generations got older some members were unaware of her existence.  A letter surfaced dated July 1914 stated she was “in town not well in a mental hospital”. Up until at least aged 31 when she was a witness to her sister Bridget’s wedding in July 1907, she undertook home duties with her mother in the family home.39a (St Patrick’s marriage register bears her signature Mary Agnes Ryan – but no other evidence of this as her middle name has surfaced.)   Records reveal that in June 1914 at the age of 38 she was received at the Sunbury Mental Asylum, later, “Caloola”, via Royal Park Hospital, Melbourne.  Her mother and sister Bridget admitted her.  It appears that deafness may have been a contributing factor for a lot of the symptoms, which led to her placement.  After 26 years at Sunbury, for reasons unknown and despite her poor general health, Mary was moved to “May Day Hills” the Beechworth Insane Asylum in September 1940.  There she died on October 28 1945 of carcinoma of the stomach and cardiac failure.  She was 68 years old.40  It was not easy to locate what happened to Mary due to inaccuracies in official records. For example her death certificate indicates Warrnambool as place of birth, age 57 years and the name of an Evelyn Ryan (Snr) in East Melbourne in her hospital files as a next of kin.  Probate documents confirm that this was indeed “our” Mary.  Mary was buried in an unmarked grave in the catholic section of the Beechworth cemetery.  She was laid to rest in a grave with two unrelated men also patients at the hospital, who had died in 1908 and 1922.41

One hundred and forty years on, descendants of Thomas and Bridget still reside in Pyalong and district. Pat Ryan, the son of Thomas and Mary, nee Carroll died in March 2004 aged 86.  He and his wife Patricia raised seven boys, all of whom are farmers.  They were profiled in an article in "The Weekly Times" last year.42 Patricia and Pat Ryan celebrated their 57^th wedding anniversary in June 2003.43 Another grandson arrived in August 200344 to carry on the Ryan name. Pyalong’s landscape now includes a Ryan Court on its plans.45

I am descended from Bridget Ryan and Daniel Comans, through my maternal line.  Ironically my maiden name is Ryan, but my Dad’s side is another story!

*           The commonality of his name serves to make this task more difficult! I have three direct ancestors by this name.

**          See “Kilmore Connections” March 2002.

***         3rd September 1939, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany.