The Killion, Quinn and Hand Families of Port Macquarie and Kempsey and their Feeney Family

Today's one hundred and eighty years since the arrival in Sydney of our many times great-grandmother, Jane Feeney (nee Baker or Bourke), and her older daughters, Eliza and Ann, on board the Columbine.   They where three of the two hundred and sixty three "bounty immigrant" who'd left Liverpool, England on 20 August 1841.  The bounty reward scheme ran from 1835 to 1841. Immigrants were selected by colonists who paid their passage. When the immigrant arrived, the same or another colonist would employ them. Colonist were then reimbursed by the government for all or part of the cost of the passage.  Jane and her girls were bought out by Messrs Aspinall, Brown and Company who it appear were heavily involved in bringing immigrants to New South Wales. Their immigration records are attached but the task remains to transcribe their details and find out more about their lives and employment in Sydney. The three are shown as "unmarried female immigrants" but Jane was a...

There was only one place for Australasian family history enthusiasts to be for four days from 9 March - the 15th Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry at the International Convention Centre, Darling Harbour. Congress was hosted by the Australian Society of Genealogists. As president of SAG, Martyn Killion, our family historian, was Congress convenor. Martyn addressing delegates I was one of the lucky 620 delegates to attend. Local and international speakers covered a huge variety of topics with four sessions running concurrently for most of the day!  Often wanting to be in two or three sessions at once, I chose ones that aligned with my family history interests, using  technology  and genetic genealogy. I'm there amongst all the "geneabloggers" at Congress So after four days of excellent speakers talking on interesting subject and with lots of laughs and fun along the way, I've pencilled the date in my diary for 2021! My Congr...

You may have noticed that we've changed the spelling of Jane's family name from Feeny to Feeney and welcomed descendants of Edward and Thomas Feeney in a recent post..... Genetic genealogy, commonly referred to as DNA testing, is one of the new tools being used by family historians.  Quite a few of the Killion cousins have tested and we're looking forward to Quinn and Hand cousins testing!  So it's been a busy few months on the DNA front following matches between Killion cousins and descendants of two brothers, Edward and Thomas Feeney.  We've been working hard to piece together the story.  With all the evidence that we've gathered, we're confident that Edward and Thomas were Jane's brothers!!  We also appear to have found Jane's mother, also named Jane, and two sisters, Eliza and Ann.   The search continues and the DNA matches keep coming.  However, it seems a good time to share an overview of the Feeney family.... Jane Feeney snr arr...