Links between occupants

PICTURED: Several miners are buried in the Lahy family cemetery. The goldfields were adjacent to the graveyard and the remnants of the mullock heaps and ramparts can still be seen today. (From the Holterman Collection.)

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21 of the 52 known occupants are either directly related to Michael Lahy or related by marriage on in some way connected by family ties.

• Michael Brophy: Married Michael Lahy’s daughter Catherine.

• Dennis Driscoll: Michael Lahy’s grandson, his mother being Amelia Lahy.

• Mary C. Finucane: Michael Lahy’s granddaughter, her mother being Jane Lahy.

• Catherine Fitzsimmons: Michael Lahy’s daughter

• Mary Anne Grady: Michael Lahy’s granddaughter, her mother being Catherine Fitzsimmons (nee Lahy).

• Ellen Maude Veronica Hughes and Mary Anne Usula Hughes: Michael Lahy’s son William marries Mary Hughes in Wellington in 1865. Mary may have been related to Ellen’s father Thomas Hughes.

• John and Eliza Prendergast: John’s mother is a Mary Lahy who never came to Australia from Ireland. However John Prendergast and his son were both closely involved with the Lahy family, suggesting Michael and Mary Lahy were related, perhaps brother and sister.

• Mary Ellen Redmond: Her mother was Ann Driscoll. Michael Lahy’s daughter Amelia married George Driscoll in 1872 and his daughter Jane married Dennis Driscoll in 1868. Mary Ellen died in 1871 at Gulgong.

• Frederick Turvey: There is considerable intermarriage with the Turvey family after Michael Lahy’s death, but not before.

• Catherine Whale, David Whale and George Henry Whale: Their mother was Anastasia Hughes. Michael Lahy’s son William married Mary Hughes in Wellington in 1865. Mary was Anastasia’s older sister.

The connection with the remaining 31 known occupants will need to be discovered. It could be that the family graveyard became a public cemetery, a necessity for quick disposal of bodies in a time when morgue facilities were not available in farming districts such as Goolma.

The location of the cemetery – which stands now at an isolated spot on the property but when established was beside the main thoroughfare leading to the easiest river crossing in the area – indicates it may have been seen by local residents as the public cemetery for the district.

An analysis of the occupants by order of interment reveals that Michael Lahy and his daughter Alice were the first occupants. In the 5 years after these were interred Henry Thomas who died aged 40 at nearby property Wyaldra, and John Winters who died aged 61 at Uamby. No parents were available for these men. They may have been workers, perhaps former assigned convicts which sources say Lahy received after he took up Uamby.

An analysis of the places of death will reveal the distance bodies were transported for burial at Uamby, which in itself might indicate some relationship with the family or the district.

Desk research in local and state archives and media records is being conducted to identify links between these people and add to our knowledge of the occupants.

Locating the occupants

A physical search of the surface of the soil for evidence of other headstones is proposed. (Such an initial search has revealed at least two headstones in the early stages of the project.)

A means of scanning the subsoil of the site to locate actual burial sites by sonar or deep x-ray technology is being investigated.