The
Kersleys in Australia
Thomas Kersley (1826-1896)
After arriving in Australia, Thomas made his way to Ballarat where he married Bridget Buckley by licence in the local Church of England on 18 March 1856. He was a bachelor innkeeper aged 28 years and she was a 21 year-old spinster who worked as a servant. Bridget came from Michelstown in County Cork in Ireland. Her father was a farmer called Daniel Buckley and her mother was Bridget Mahony. While I have yet to discover the exact date, it seems that she emigrated to Australia in the early 1850s. Winnie believed that she was employed by a Byrnes family to look after their children during the voyage from Ireland to Australia and that she parted from the family on arrival.[1] Teen thinks that Thomas may have been a sailor on the ship and that Bridget met up with him on the journey out.
Thomas and Bridget (pictured on the left) had eleven children who
were born in a number of different places 
in the area between Bendigo and St. Arnaud in Victoria: William Henry
(born in Dunolly in 1857), Emily (Back Creek, 1859), Mary Jane (Inglewood, 5
March 1861), Thomas John (Moonambel, 1863), Lucy Ann (St. Arnaud, 1865),
Cornelius (Peters Diggings, 1868), Alice (Peters Diggings, 1869), Henry and
James (Stuart Mill, 1872), and Ellen (Stuart Mill, 1876). The birthplaces of
the older children in particular coincided with the onset of gold rushes in the
different areas and suggests that Thomas and Bridget and their family may have
joined the throngs of people who constantly moved from one digging to the next.
By the early 1880s, they had either made sufficient to live on or Bridget had
had enough. The couple took up residence in St Arnaud where they remained for
the rest of their lives.
Thomas died of acute bronchitis on 13 August 1896. He was aged 69 years and was, according to the St. Arnaud Times, 'one of the oldest identities’ of the town. Following a large funeral procession, he was buried at the Roman Catholic cemetery in St. Arnaud on 16 August 1896. Bridget died on 15 May 1903 in Balmain in Sydney, NSW while visiting her youngest daughter Ellen Smith. She had left St Arnaud in November the previous year but had fallen ill and could not return home. While she wanted to be laid to rest alongside Thomas in St Arnaud, she was buried at the Rookwood cemetery in Sydney. Her last will and testament shows that, at the time of her death, Bridget owned no property or substantial assets. Her estate was worth a mere 24 pounds, eight shillings and three pence of which 15 pounds had to be paid to Ellen in Sydney in order to cover Bridget’s medical, undertaking and cemetery fees.
Thomas Kersley and Bridget Buckley.
Taken in St Arnaud in the early 1890s
Thomas
and Bridget’s Family
Nothing is known of James and Henry James Edward
(‘Harry’) Kersley except that they were born at Stuart Mill in 1872
(I’m assuming they were twins but they may have been the same person). At
the time of his mother’s death in 1903, William Henry Kersley was living
in Kookynie (near Kalgoolie) in Western Australia where he worked as a gold
miner. Emily Kersley married Samuel Claxton in 1883. They had a son, Thomas
Edward Claxton in 1884. Emily died in 1886 and was buried in the Roman Catholic
section of the Beaufort Cemetery (RC/37) on 7 April that year. Alice Kersley
died at St Arnaud on 18 October 1888 from burns received from a fire that had
been lit outside the house to heat water for the family’s washing. She
was just 19 years old. She is buried next to her father in the Roman Catholic
section of the St Arnaud cemetery. Thomas John Kersley married Christina Howes
in 1885. They had eleven children between 1887 and 1909.[2]
In 1903 the family was living in Bendigo where Thomas worked for the Victorian
Railways. Thomas died in Kenton, Victoria in 1932. Christina died in Kensington
in Melbourne in 1957. One of their sons, Thomas Ernest Kersley (shown in the
photo), served in the First AIF between 12 August 1915 and 1 March 1919.
Ellen Louise and Alice Kersley taken in
Fitzroy around 1888
Mary Jane Kersley and William
Joseph Laurence
Mary Jane Kersley married William Joseph Laurence in West Melbourne on 3 July 1884 in the local Roman Catholic church. William was 29 years old and Mary Jane was 24. William's best man was James Burns, who married Mary Jane's sister Lucy Ann Kersley the following year. The bridesmaid was one Annie Clancy. According to Teen, William and Mary Jane met at a boarding house that was probably in St Arnaud and was either run by her mother or was where the family was then living. William and a number of other young men were staying at the boarding house at the time. In discussing which of the visitors they liked best, Mary Jane declared that she favoured William: the ‘one who was giving Mum cheek at dinner time’. At the time of their wedding, William was living in Melbourne and working as a labourer and Mary Jane was living in West Melbourne where she worked as a domestic servant.
William Laurence is a bit of a mystery man. His wedding certificate
states he was born on 1855 in Creswick in Victoria.[3]
It also states that Creswick was his 'usual place of 
residence' suggesting that he may have grown up there as well
although I have found no other evidence to support this. Creswick is located
about 18 km north of Ballarat and halfway between Beaufort and Daylesford.
William's parents, said on his marriage certificate to be Alexander and
Catherine Laurence, had probably moved to Creswick, or met there, during the
gold rush. Gold had been first found there in early 1852, before the township was
established. With news of the find, people flooded in and by the time of
William's birth in 1855, more than 25,000 people lived and worked there. There
is no record of William's birth which may not be unusual for the times for, as
Norman Lindsay wrote in his 1930 novel Redheap,
in those days Creswick was 'one of those eruptions of human lunacy called a
mining centre. Its population of muscular adventurers spread themselves over
the earth like feverish ants, tearing at it, piling it up in heaps, burrowing in
its depths, and slashing its grey-brown surface with great scars of mullock and
gravel, thrown up from the beds of buried rivers'. Creswick was literally a
tent city which spread haphazardly in every direction, with only poor amenities
and very little civic administration or sense of civic responsibility or
ownership on the part of its itinerant inhabitants.
William was said by Teen to be a ‘bigoted Catholic’ who lived with his two sisters and one brother (whereabouts unknown) but walked out on them after the girls forgot to iron his collar for mass. She thinks that either his mother’s maiden name or the married name of one of his sisters may have been Murphy. He was a drinker and was possibly violent although he was always good to his grandchildren when he visited his daughter Alice Maud’s farm in Skipton. She thinks he was of Irish decent which seems to be born out by him: 1) castigating Alice for renouncing her Catholicism and not supporting Archbishop Mannix, and 2) being critical of Australia’s involvement in the First World War and stating that ‘he would not let his sons fight for England’. The reason Alice left the Catholic Church was that, at the urging of William, she had given money she could not afford to the local priest in Narrandera to give to her mother Mary Jane. The priest and William ended up spending the money on drink. Winnie’s memoirs describe the adult William as an Irishman, tall for the times (‘five feet eleven inches’), fairly thick set, with ‘a mop of curly sandy coloured hair and a very likeable personality, which made him very popular, especially with his work mates’. He was also ‘a bit too fond of alcohol to suit Marn’ (his wife Mary Jane) who, when he imbibed, would ‘tell her children ”your father is a good man” [which] seemed to fix everything’.
After their marriage, William and Mary Jane moved first to Kiama and then onto land near Narrandera in New South Wales (the lives and times of the Laurence family are detailed below). They had ten children: Florence May (1884-1915), Mary Jane (1886-1913), Emily (1888), Alice Maud (1889-1967), Catherine (1891), William (1893), Bridget Ellen (1895-1934), Lucy (1898), Alexander (1900) and Robert Thomas (1906). Mary Jane died in Narrandera on 24 January 1919. William Joseph died in Sydney ten years later and was buried next to his wife in Narrandera on 18 June 1929.
Lucy Kersley and James Napoleon Burns
James Burns was a close friend of William Laurence. He was the best man at William’s wedding in Melbourne in 1884 and married Mary Jane’s younger sister, Lucy Kersley, at Dunolly in 1885. The couple had nine children: Mary (1885-1885), Ellen Maud (1886-1942), Albert James (1889-1965), Thomas Roy (1892-1972), John Charles (1895-1951), Mary Veronica (1889-1899), Veronica Mary (1901-1941), Bernard William Joseph (1904-1961) and Doreen Monica (1907-1972). The family lived for a good while in St Arnaud – they were there at the time of the death of both of Lucy’s parents – before moving to Melbourne where they bought a house in Preston. Although Lucy and James lived in Victoria, they remained in close touch with Mary Jane and William Joseph Laurence, visiting them as often as they could. As described in the story of the Laurences, the children of the two families were also very close especially during their younger years. Two of their sons, John and Roy Burns, served in the 1st AIF during the First World War. Roy was with the 8th Infantry Battalion. He enlisted on 18 August 1914 and returned to Australia on 30 Janurary 1918. James and Lucy both died in Preston in 1942 and 1951 respectively.
Lucy Ann Kersley and James Napoleon Burns
and their daughter Ellen Maud (taken around 1888)
James and Lucy
Burns and their family (probably taken in St Arnaud in around 1903)
William Joseph and Mary Jane Laurence and
James and Lucy Burns. Taken during a visit of the Burns to Gillenbah around
1910.
Cornelius Kersley
Cornelius (shown below) was born at
Peter’s Diggings near Ballarat in 1868. The Victorian register of births,
deaths and marriages show that he married a Minnie Burrows in 1890. It is
thought that the couple may have had a daughter Amy. At the time of
Bridget’s death in 1903, Cornelius 
was living in Queensberry St North Melbourne and was working as a
blacksmith. While there he met Wilhelmina Alice Campion and had three children
with her: John or ‘Jack’ Kersley (1904-1953), Roy Kersley (1905)
and Henry Kersley (1905-1935). According to his granddaughter, Barbara Moore,
Jack Kersley served in the RAAF flying boat squadron during the Second World
War. He and his wife Olive had three boys – John, Sydney and Raymond
– who are all now deceased. John junior drowned at age 12, Sydney died of
cancer in 1963, aged 33 years, and Raymond died of a heart attack around 1980.
Jack Kersley died in Sydney in 1963. His wife Olive died in 1992 or 1993, aged
89 years. Barbara thinks that she and her brother Raymond, who are the only
children of Sydney Kersley, are the last of this line of the Kersley
family.
Cornelius and his three sons: Jack, Henry and
Roy
Ellen Kersley and Hugh Smith
Thomas and Bridget’s youngest
daughter, Ellen Louise Kersley (pictured below with James and Lucy Kersley) was
born at Stuart Mill in Victoria on 21 January 1876. She spent her early years
in St Arnaud with her family but eventually moved to New South Wales where she
married Hugh Smith in 
the St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on 4 November 1902. Like
many of the other Kersley in-laws, Hugh was of Irish descent. His father was
Cornelius Sheridan Smith and his mother was Bridget O’Neill. Ellen and
Hugh lived initially in Roselle in Sydney before moving to Gladesville and then
to Balmain. They had six children: Gladys (1904-1971), Myrtle Mary (1905-1983),
Kathleen Maud (1907-1970), Cornelius Sheridan (1908-1983), Josephine Mary
(1911-1999) and John Roy (1916-1974). Gladys married Joseph Robson, Myrtle
married Charles Yates in 1941, Kathleen married Joseph Stewart in 1930,
Cornelius married Eileen O’Keefe, Josephine married Ernest Sargent in
1936 and John married Grace Hall in 1942. Ellen died in Balmain on 16 July 1931
and was buried at North Ryde cemetery two days later. Hugh died in 1937.
Robert Kersley (1834-1915)
Robert Kersley was baptised in Mapledurwell in the
county of Hampshire in England on 13 August 1834. He emigrated to Australia in
1855. He eventually made his way to the Mudgee area in NSW where he married Catherine
Murray on 16 May 1867. The couple’s wedding
certificate shows that Robert was a bachelor and a labourer and Catherine was a
spinster. His normal residence was Rylestone and hers was Mudgee. She signed
the certificate with a mark. The witnesses were an Owen and Isabella Oxley. No
details were provided of the couples’ ages, places of birth or parents.
Robert and Catherine had eight children: Letitia
Catherine (born in 1868), Mary M. (1869), Edgar Prince (1871), Annie May
(1873), Emily Jane (1875), Albert William (1878) and Clara I. (1881). Edgar
Prince Kersley moved to Narrandera in southern NSW around 1897 at about the
same time as his cousin, Mary Jane Laurence (nee Kersley) and her family
arrived there from Kiama.
Robert Kersley died in Yass on 23 March 1915. The
informant for his death certificate was his daughter Annie May Rutherford. The
certificate showed that he was a retired teacher who died in Yass of senile
decay and cerebral thrombosis at the age of 81 years. His father was said to be
William Kersley, a baker, and his mother was Letitia Prince. He was born in
Hampshire, England and had been 60 years in NSW. He married Catherine Murray in
Mudgee at the age of 34 years and his children at the time of his death were
said to be Letitia C. (aged 46 years), Mary M. (44), Edgar P. (43), Annie M.
(41), Emily J. (39) and Albert W. (36) who were all living. One female - probably Clara - had died.
The following obituary was published in the Yass
Courier on 29 March 1915:
‘A sad death occurred on Tuesday when Mr R. Kersley, late of
Rylstone, passed away at the residence of his daughter (Mrs A. J. Rutherford)
at the age of 81 years. Mr Kersley came over here to spend Christmas with his
daughter but had the misfortune to be stricken down with paralysis which
necessitated him takin to his bed, and though everything possible was done for
the poor old gentleman, he never rallied and on Sunday last had another stroke
and never regained consciousness, passing away at 12.45 on Tuesday morning. Mr
Kersley was well known in the Rhylstone district where he was a resident for
over 60 years’.
Robert was buried in the Church of England section of
Yass cemetery. His headstone reads: Sacred to the memory of Robert Kersley
beloved husband of Catherine Kersley who was born in Mapledurwell, Hampshire,
England and died at Yass March 23rd 1915 in his 81st year. Lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is there will be your heart
also’.
Not long before he died, Robert met his brother Thomas’ son-in-law, William Joseph Laurence, in Narrandera where Robert told William that the paths of the two brothers in Australia had never crossed.