McIllree Family

1849

Henry McIllree (1824–1882)

Henry McIllree (1824–1882) was the youngest son of Irish Protestants John Drope McIllree (c. 1782­–1855) and his wife Margaret McIllree nee Quigly (1783–1846). Henry was born in Belturbet, County Cavan on 1 September 1824 and christened the next day. His parents had high aspirations for their nine children who had survived at least to teen age. (Four known sons had died as infants, Anne at about the age of 18 and Elinor at 14).

Henry’s older brothers, John and Edward entered the medical profession as doctors. Robert was employed in Irish banks. William became a clergyman. He was to die young also, from cholera, at the age of 23 in 1841. Henry’s parents wanted him too to join the church, however at the age of 14, c. 1838, Henry ran away to sea. For the next 11 years or so he sailed, possibly at first with merchant ships, joining the British Navy ship HMS Castor as an Able Seaman at Hong Kong in 1844. The Castor spent time in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australian waters in the mid-1840s, calling in at ports like Sydney and Hobart town. Henry was looking for other opportunities. He would have heard about the colony of South Australia where ‘free’ immigrants were wanted and could find work.

According to Robert Gordon McIllree, one of Henry’s sons, the latter was paid off from a ship that arrived in Adelaide in 1849. No record has so far been located of what the name of the ship was, as crew lists were not kept back then, however there is scant evidence in Post Office records of Henry’s brief time in South Australia.

King William Street [Adelaide], Looking South, from an original sketch by O. Korn, 1849.
State Library of South Australia photographic collection.

South Australian immigrants left in droves by sea and overland to go east after gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851. Henry apparently took the sea route on the coastal packet, Phantom, as a paying passenger. At Ballarat he was not successful in finding gold, but the Woolshed goldfield near today’s Beechworth yielded enough gold to set Henry up. On 21 January 1855 at Belvoir (Wodonga) he married Isabella Johnston, an Irish girl from Belfast aged about 19. The couple made their home in the small customs post where six months after their marriage, Henry became the second pound-keeper, acquired land, ran a farm and a vineyard, was involved in town committees and leased grazing lands in the district. Henry and Isabella had 11 children between 1855 and 1878. Two sons, Edward and William, died as toddlers. In 1877 Henry moved the family to Biggara station in the Upper Murray, where he and his older sons bred horses and cattle. Henry’s and the McIllree’s story are recounted in Proud to be Irish: The Journey of Henry McIllree from Ireland to Horse Breeder in Colonial Victoria, Australia, Calico Bag Books, 2021