the first draft

Genial Rogue or Scoundrel? - Uncovering William Courtney and other Mysteries in the Parish of Passage West

31 August 2026

By the time I started to investigate the COURTNEY side of my husband's family his Mum, Bernadette, had already passed away. She died quite young, about a month before her 57th birthday and as we had lived overseas during the first few years of our marriage I only had about eight years to get to know her.

Fortunately I got to know older members of her family and I could talk to them about family history. Her sister, "Aunty Marg", was happy to chat about old family stories. She only died at the end of last year, at the age of ninety-five. I also knew "Aunty Mare" who was like a mother to Berna and Margaret after their mother, Alice Jane Carraher, died. She was Alice's older sister and she helped Ray's grandfather Pop Courtney to raise both the girls. Mary who lived to ninety-years of age, had married late in life and didn't have children of her own, so she had been the grandmother figure to Ray, his sister, and Margaret's three daughters. There was also quite a lot of research online about the Carraher side of the family.

Ray's Pop, Henry James Courtney was the 3rd youngest child of William James COURTNEY and Hannah Margaret SMITHERS. There was also lots of information on the maternal side of his family because both of Hannah's parents were convicts so it was easy to trace them through the excellent convict records in the Tasmanian archives, but when it came to the paternal side Pop Courtney's father William was a bit of a mystery. Not being a convict there were few records in Australia about how he arrived here from Ireland and when I started tracing this side of the family there were not many of the older Irish records online. A lot of official copies of both civil and parish records were destroyed in the fire at the Four Courts building during the "Troubles" of the early 1920s. It's only in recent years that more of the old Irish records have been recreated from original parish sources and made available in digital format.

The task of investigating William Courtney's life was made more difficult by the fact that like many people of that time he wasn't very particular about what information he put on official records. On his marriage record to Hannah Smithers in 1873 he claims to be 30 years old which would put his birth date around 1843. His parents are listed as James Courtney and Hannah (surname unknown), and his birthplace as Cork Ireland. His Occupation was Fireman living on board a ship, which suggests he was a stoker for the steam engines which powered ships of that time. On his son Henry's birth certificate he claims he was 42 in December 1887, which suggests a birth date around 1845. I couldn't find any Irish records of a William Courtney born in the mid-1840s near Cork.

The Marriage certificate does give a small clue to William's past, showing he was a widower with one child (living). Without the name of the child or other information about his deceased first wife it was difficult to pin down the time or place of the first marriage. There was a transcript on ancestry of a marriage between a William Courtney and Ann Davis, a widow, in Sydney in 1863, but there is no father's name recorded for the groom, just his mother named as H CALLINAN, and his Age is given as 27 which would make his birth year 1836 - at least 10 years before the William I was looking for. Also his birthplace was given as Waterford and his occupation was transcribed as Tailor. It seemed a bit of stretch to match a ship's fireman (stoker) from Cork to a Tailor from Waterford. Other information on Ancestry linked this William to a death in Sydney in 1903 at the age of 67, about right for someone born around 1835 but not for the mid-1840s. So without further details to match what I already had, I discounted this information and went on with other research, thinking it wasn't worth getting a death certificate. I wish I'd followed up on this as the death certificate, when I later saw it, had all the links I was looking for.

Many Courtney family trees on Ancestry claimed that William Courtney who married Ann Davis in 1863 was the same man who married Hannah Smithers in 1873. As proof they usually referred to the funeral notice for a Hannah Courtney who died in Sydney in 1867. The name Hannah was often shortened to Ann so it could have been referring to Ann Davis. A transcription of the death certificate for Ann, which I also found online said that her father was Michael Davis and she had 2 children at her death a boy and a girl which raised the question of why only one was mentioned on William's second marriage certificate in Melbourne. As Ann was a widow when she married William, perhaps that's who the other one her death certificate was (not William's child but from her previous marriage). About this time I saw a copy of the handwritten certificate for the Courtney/Davis marriage, on Ancestry, and noticed the handwriting could have said Sailor rather than Tailor One small step closer to a link but still not conclusive enough to convince me to buy the death certificate of William Courtney who died in Sydney in 1903, when my Courtney family were all in Melbourne.

More time passed while I was researching my side of the family tree and then, as the internet would say, "you won't believe what happened next!". A real breakthrough came several weeks ago when I was contacted on Ancestry by Kingsley MASON, who explained that his grandfather Walter had been adopted into the family and his research had uncovered that Walter's birth parents were George SHARMAN and Rubina or Lavinia Courtney, Pop Courtney's eldest sister. He wanted to know if I knew any more about the Smithers side of the family and offered to share some information on the Courtney side which he had traced through a professional researcher at the Irish Archives.

I was able to send him information I had uncovered on one of Hannah Smithers' sisters whose birth in Tasmania was registered under the surname Nex for some mysterious reason. I too had puzzled over the name of the eldest child of William Courtney and Hannah Smithers, as there is a birth registration for a Lavinia but no death registration in that name, and also a death registration for Rubina but no corresponding birth registration. I could now confirm for Kingsley that her correct name was Rubina because when I had preiously asked Auntie Marg whether she had an aunt with either of those names she immediately said "Oh that's Auntie Beenie". She then regaled us with family stories of Beenie's life of "sin" having not married George Sharman before their children were born. I agreed with Kingsley that this seemed like the most likely reason that George & Rubina's first child Walter was "adopted" out of the family. She was 21 and George was about 17 when Walter was born so we suspect that William arranged the informal adoption in the hope of restoring his daughter's reputation. If that was his expectation it didn't work because the couple went on to have 4 more children, the last one only 4 months after their eventual marriage in 1908.

On the day I asked about Rubina, Ray was photographing some of Margaret's old framed photos and she also told us that the the man in this photo was her Grandfather Courtney. The family called him "Old Bill" and he was reputed to be, in her words "an Old Devil" who had more than one woman in his life and "ran off", but no one knew what happened to him. Kingsley generously shared information from Ireland which sent me back to the Parish registers online to confirm that William Courtney was actually born in 1835 in Passage West near Cork and that his parents were Hannah CULLINANE and Dan Courtney (not James as he claimed on his marriage to Hannah Smithers - although he did have a brother named James.

The information on his death certificate was provided by his eldest son William junior, the child from his marriage and provides all the information needed to link him to the marriages with Ann Davis and Hannah Smithers. He died in 1903 at the age of 67 which confirms his correct birth year is 1835.

His current address before his death is also shown as that of William junior.So it seems that's where "Old Bill" had run off to. It's such a shame I couldn't tell "Marg" about it. I wondered aloud to my husband how Margaret would have known about all these family stories even though her Grandmother Hannah had died 2 years before Margaret was born, and when Berna would only have been about 4 years old. Ray immediately said the youngest Courtney sister Dorothy, would have told her. He recalls visiting Auntie "Doll" and her husband Uncle Fred (who attended our wedding in 1972) and listening to his Mum and Auntie "Doll" talk about family history and about a lot of other memories of the past. Uncle Fred usually declared he was "going to the shed" and disappeared for a while. When Ray was old enough to wonder about this expression because he knew that Fred didn't have a shed he asked about it and Auntie "Doll" told Fred to show Ray where he was really going. From then on Fred always took Ray with him down to the Pub on the corner where he bought him a big glass of Sarsaparilla, while Fred had a glass or two of beer.

This is one of the reasons I write this blog now even though no one in my immediate family shows much interest in genealogy. I know from experience how sad it feels when you finally take an interest in this sort of thing and find out the truth about old family stories and wish that the people who told you the bare bones of the tales were still here to listen to the explanations and details you uncover to fill in all the gaps. I often find myself thinking "if only they were still here so I could tell them about what I've found". I'm sure if more records come online in future there will still be gaps to be filled but I at least want to make it easier for any descendants who follow me into this weird pastime.

Genealogy is not only interesting in the historical sense but it sometimes provides all the fun and entertainment of a mystery novel. Once I had the right location in Ireland to search, as well as William's birth in 1835 I was able to locate the birth of three other children to Dan Courtney & Joanna Cullinane: James (1829), John (1832), & Daniel (1837)

In spite of spending a few hours trawling through the available scans, on Ancestry, as well as index records on Family Search I was unable to find the marriage of Daniel Courtney and Joanna Cullinane. However while searching the marriage records I was able to solve the mystery of Mary Silk. Many people on ancestry claim they she the mother of Joanna (Hannah) Cullinane and that Joanna's father was William Cullinane. There is a baptism record for Joanna Cullinane to William Cullinane & Mary Silk in December of 1806.

Meanwhile William Cullinane was recorded as marrying Mary Teedy in February that year.

Mary SILK is recorded as marrying William MAHONY in August 1802, when Mary would have only been about 14 years old. In spite of Jane Austin stories this was actually very young for girls to marry unless they were from Aristocratic or Royal families who arranged to marry off their young daughters to forge family alliances.

The baptism records also show that William Mahony had a son with his wife Mary TEEDY in 1804

At various points in the parish registers there are notes about the changes among the Priests and Vicars of the Parish Church and by following the timeline from 1802 to 1806 it would seem that Rev. John Foley (who only became Vicar in March of 1802) had made a mistake in the brides name on the original marriage record in August 1802, perhaps because John Silk (Mary Silk's father) was a witness to that wedding. Later after a the brief tenure of Rev. Moses Byrne, Rev. A Fitzgerald assumed the role of Vicar in the Parish and rather than go back and fix the earlier entry he simply decided to change the brides name on the marriage of John Cullinane & Mary Silk to Teedy. Ensuring that both brides were officially recorded as married but not at the right time or to the correct groom! At least both Vicars managed to get the right parents in the Baptism register for James Mahony & Joanna Cullinane. Rev. Fitzgibbon must have noticed the error in the first marriage, otherwise why would he use "Teedy" in the later record. Did he think it was too hard to fix someone else's mistake? Perhaps he would have had to explain to the Bishop, which might have caused problems for Rev. John Foley. Or maybe accuracy in marriage records wasn't considered as important as in baptisms. After all both brides would henceforth be known as Mary, wife of...