i won!!

                                 I won!  At long last, I am being recognized.


    Yes, this is bragging. 



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Thomas Hastings/Faithful Ebzery/Andrew Farrelly, Basis of my book, The Irish Constable.

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Thomas Hastings and Faithful Ebzery were born to farmers in the small village of Shanagolden, County Limerick. They married in April 1850 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, three days before boarding the ship, Emigrant which left from Plymouth bound non-stop for Moreton Bay. He was 32 and she, 26. He gave his profession on their marriage certificate as being “late of the Irish Revenue Police” and she, a domestic. He resumed the title “farm labourer” label on his entry into Australia. They were most likely part of the Monteagle migration, Shanagolden being part of the estates of Thomas Rice in Western Limerick. They most likely took advantage of the altruism of Lord Monteagle and his second wife who saw migration as a solution to the plight of the Irish during the Potato Famine. Migration appealed to the adventurous and the desperate. As a Revenue policeman, Thomas would have trained in Dublin before being posted outside of his Limerick locality. The Revenue police were loathed as they were
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The Elusive Catherine/Kate/Kathleen Degnan/Dagnall/Degnann/Degnall

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Catherine Degnan was my great grandmother and I bear the name under which she died, Kathleen Hastings I had come to Chesterfield in May 2008 in search of memories of her in the land of her birth. I had her address from the 1861 English census, Church Alley, Chesterfield. Her father, according to the census, was a coal miner, originally from Roscommon, Ireland. I had had great trouble tracing Catherine to even being a “Degnan” by surname. She had given her name on her marriage certificate as Degnall. She maintained the “Degnall” on several birth certificates. Once she became Degnann and only once reverted to Degnan; never Dagnall as she had been called in Lancashire I was later to discover. She resumed Degnan once and that possibly after she had reconnected with her Chesterfield family. I only noticed that after I had down as a Degnan. Her maiden name is still given as Degnall on her death certificate. I had never thought that there could be such confusion over one’s own name. Confusion
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