Catherine Connolly ⁶⁹²

   Cause of her death was malignant disease of the liver and an intestinal complaint.

  Research Notes:

source: Kerry Ross Boren

  Noted events in her life were:

• note. ⁶⁹² Ross Miller notes:
The Parkes
John Parkes from Halesowen in Worcester, born 1767, was sentenced at the Worcester Assizes to seven years' transportation for the theft of a greatcoat (beaver coat worth 16 shillings). He sailed with 110 other convicts on the Barwell arriving at Port Jackson (Sydney) on 18 May, 1798.
entered a de facto relationship with Margaret Southern who was transported on the Experiment arriving in the colony on June 24, 1804 and they began a family that eventually contained 12 children. Margaret was one of 338 on the Experiment having been convicted at Lancaster on 27 April 1803 of…. and given seven years' transportation. The ship left England on November 1803 and arrived in Sydney on 24 June 1804. She died on 24/3/1859 at Parkestown of influenza and fromburns received when her clothes caught fire (probably while cooking). Her parents were Thomas (1751-1847) and Margaret (Peggy) Orme from Leigh in Lancashire where Margaret was born on 5/11/1785.
John Parkes' family can be traced back through a couple of generations in Halesowen, Worcester to John(15/11/1648-1684) and Elizabeth Lanceser (1684 -) in Rowley Regis, Staffordshire and his mother Elizabeth's family to Stephen Dearn (1680-1750 and Mary Westwood (1670-1750) inHalesowen.
- trained from a young age as a nailor (hand-made iron nails) - initially worked in the Government boatyard near Circular Quay under Thomas Moore who trained him in assessing the quality of timber. Having served his time, during 1816 John was granted 50 acres in the Botany Bay district, but due to disputes over a river crossing, the grants were not awarded until 1831. In the meantime, he lived in Campbell St, central Sydney between George and Pitt Sts, next door to Ellen Stores and her son Edward.
Eventually John crossed Cooks River and set up on his 50 acres at the top of a ridge, surrounded by ironbarks, red mahogany trees and gullies full of ferns, flannel flowers and gymea lilies. The district of Earlwood has been known by four names in the times of European settlement. The earliest name was "Parkes Camp" derived from the Parkes family's name and an inference to the profession of John and his sons - at this time "camp" denoted the headquarters of a group of sawyers.
The Parkes` property was situated in the centre of modern suburb, Earlwood. The western boundary was the top end of Woolcott Street and the southern boundary was along William Street from Woolcott Street to Homer Street. The second Parkes daughter, Sarah, married her Campbell St neighbour Edward Stores in 1827 at St Stephens in Sydney. The land was divided into five are farms for the children after Margaret's death in 1859. John, Joseph and Thomas Parkes , and Edward Stores stayed on the land continuing as the sawyers of Parkes Camp, while the others retained their small farms while living elsewhere. At one stage Edward was a publican in Sydney. They had three children - Edwin, Thomas, and John Robert who was born at Cooks River - so presumably on the Parkes' farm.
By about the 1870s the name of the district had changed from Parkes Camp to Parkestown, as the timber was cut out and the local people changed their occupations to suit the resources. Some people from this vicinity gave their address as Forest Hill, a name not associated with any particular family, but described the landscape as it had once been. The first known use of the name Earlwood, or at least a close version of it, was when Mrs Jane Earl subdivided her land before she sold it in 1884. "The Earlewood Estate" was used as the name of the property when it was surveyed to bring it under Torrens Title later that year.
John died about 1839 at Parkes Camp and Margaret died there on 24 March, 1859. Margaret was born in Manchester in 1783 at the time of long hours in the clothing mills for little return. Like many she resorted to theft, but was apprehended for the theft of a linen shift and a linen apron (value one penny each) on 21 January, 1803. The 19-year-old was chained and loaded together with other female convicts on 4/12/ 1803 and transported to Sydney on the Experiment 1, a journey from England lasting 173 days. She is thought to have been among the first convict women to be housed in the Parramatta Female Factory. She may have been assigned as a servant to John Parkes who was working in the docks area, or he may have chosen her by the then popular custom of a line-up at the factory where the man drops a scarf or handkerchief in front of a woman to indicate his interest. If the woman picked up the token, the marriage was virtually immediate.
One of Edward and Sarah's sons, Thomas, is described as a miner, so it is more than likely he was one of many thousands who went inland after the gold starting in the 1850s and moving around a large part of the Riverina area. He married Catherine Connolly, daughter of convict Daniel Connolly transported from Tipperary in 1838. We assume he was head-over-heels in love with Catherine as she had a one-year-old daughter in tow. Ellen had been born in Tumut to Catherine and Thomas Edward Gelling, an immigrant from the Isle of Man. For whatever reason he forsook the child leaving the 18-year-old mother to the support of her family. Thomas Gelling was one of the first to be paid the government bonus for finding payable gold in the Temora district.

Catherine had a relationship with Thomas Edward Gelling before 1864. (Thomas Edward Gelling was born circa 1842 in Isle of Man, England UK, christened in Sep 1842 in Marown, Isle of Man, England UK and died on 7 Mar 1919 in Temora, NSW Australia.)

Catherine next married Thomas Joseph Stores, son of Edward S. Stores and Sarah Parkes, on 9 Sep 1864 in Tumut, NSW Australia.⁶⁹² (Thomas Joseph Stores was born in 1836 in Canterbury, Sydney, NSW Australia ⁶⁹² and died on 27 Sep 1913 in Culcairn, near Wagga Wagga, NSW Australia.). The cause of his death was gastric carcinoma, anaemia and debility.