Mary Kerr (1824-1906) was 23 years old and had agreed to marry Thomas Hillard (1825-86) and to emigrate with him, and the rest of his family, to what was then the Port Phillip district of the colony of New South Wales. For a girl that had probably lived her entire life within a small radius of where she lived, it is unlikely that she would have had any real concept of the journey that lay ahead of them. Within the first few days, she would have seen things that she’d never seen before – railways, large ships and large cities.

Not only that but she would have to manage her infant daughter Jane Hillard (1850 -1923) who had been born only six months earlier. Fortunately, the voyage on the “Statesman” turned out to be much quicker than anyone could have expected as the Captain took a much more southerly route than was usual. This meant that the ship arrived in Geelong only 77 days after leaving Plymouth but it also meant that they had a full month of the ship careering through the high latitudes of the Southern Ocean in freezing cold conditions. Being used to the cold of an Irish winter did not prepare them for conditions where the ship was encountering icebergs.

Mary was seventh in a family of ten children and she probably would have helped care for her younger siblings the youngest of who would have been born when she was 12 years old. But, from such a large family, it must have been very hard to leave knowing that she would probably not see any of them ever again. As it happened, her younger brother Thomas also emigrated in 1857 so at least she did have one member of her immediate family with her.

The Kerr family were Methodists and, while she would have attended a Church of England church for most of her life in Australia, she was buried in the Methodist section of the cemetery when she died.

Her elder siblings appear to have remained in Fermanagh and some are buried in the cemetery of the church that is very close to where they would have lived their whole lives. Mary’s younger sister Elizabeth (1831-1915) also emigrated with her husband James Mitchell to Milton Junction, Wisconsin in the USA. All of Mary’s siblings had children who emigrated so Mary had at least seven nephews and nieces living in the USA.

Mary’s parents – John Kerr (1780-1844) and Jane Beatty (1791-1856) – and her elder siblings are listed in one of the surviving fragments of the 1821 Census. Their occupations are given as weaver and flax spinner so they would have been producing linen on a loom and spinning wheels installed in their home. That farm remained in family ownership until 1981 and the house remains but is derelict.

There are very few records of Mary’s father, John Kerr, but DNA links to 23 descendants (in Canada and the USA) of other Kerrs from Galloon Paris (on the border of Fermanagh and Co Monaghan) suggests that he was a younger son of the Kerr family of Feaugh (near Newtownbutler).

Mary’s mother, Jane Beatty, was from a family that were prominent in the parishes of Aghavea and Aghalurcher and they appear to have been established there since the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s. The Beatty spelling of the name that is usual in this area was memorialised in later generations by being used as a fore or middle name (although sometime mis-spelt).