Remembering Ann Wilkinson (nee Feeney) our many times grandaunt - sister of Edward, Thomas and Jane

Well I couldn't let the day pass without remembering Ann who died 170 years ago at just 24 years of age.  She's the second child we know of our many times great-grandparents, Edward Feeney and his wife, Jane.

Ann's only been mentioned before when we reunited "our" Jane (Feeney/Killion/Seward/Moran) with her birth family.  You can read the earlier post HERE.

It seems that Edward Feeney senior had died before his wife, Jane, set out from Dublin in 1841 with her daughters, Eliza and Ann.  They arrived in Sydney on 3 December 1841 on board the Columbine.  Ann was 15.  


It seems that Ann settled with her mother and sister in Sydney.  They were joined by brothers, Edward and Thomas, two years later leaving "our" Jane back in Ireland until her arrival in 1849.  The family settled around the Kent and Clarence Street area in Sydney.

On 18 December 1848, Ann married Richard Wilkinson at the York Street Chapel.  In this precious document, you can see the signatures of both Ann (adding an "e" to her name) and her mother, Jane.  We know nothing of her husband, Richard.


It was just 19 months after her marriage that Ann died at her mother's home in Clarence Street on 4 August 1850.  Ann was buried at Camperdown Cemetery.  Without the requirement for death certificates, the information on Ann's burial details are a rare find.  We see that her cause of death is "decline".  Hard to understand in such a young woman but these were hard times.  We don't know anything about the fate of her husband.  Less than two years later, her mother died following a cooking accident.  Jane senior was buried with her daughter.  



Camperdown Cemetery was a private cemetery in Newtown that was consecrated in January 1849 - just a few months before Ann's death.  It remained the main burial ground for the Church of England until the opening of Rookwood in 1868.  St Stephen's Anglican church was built in the middle of it in the early 1870s.  All but 4 acres of the cemetery were resumed in 1948 to become the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park.  So we can't visit the graves of Ann and Jane but we can visit their burial site minutes from the busy King Street in Newtown.

Aerial view over Camperdown Cemetery before resumption, July 1946
https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/62089



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