Irish Carrs writing project: finish line in sight?

 What a nice neat and orderly blog it was in 2015! How different to 2022.

It doesn't reflect my current state of mind which is a mixture of frustration and consternation and urgency. I'm trying to finish writing my "project", which has simmered on the burner for so many years. I don't want to die and have boxes full of stuff that is meaningless to my kids and probably will be thrown into the landfill. 

To me the only true "product" worth making is a written story that can be picked up and read. Or gather dust on the shelf. It doesn't matter. What matters is to meet my end of the bargain as keeper of family stories - to tell those stories - and get the monkey off my back!

Covid and lockdowns have been a gift to the family historian. Plenty of time to focus on what must be done. And no excuses.

The Project is to write up research on the Carr line of ancestors, going back to Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. With a lot of help from fellow researchers, their amazinng stories have been uncovered. After the Great Famine, 9 out of at least 13 children in one family left Ireland and made Australia home. I tell their story and follow the paths out of Ireland to Australia, with emphasis on my direct line. It ends in 1900, just beacuse that time period is difficult but achievable. A future project is the story from 1900 but that is big and scary, and for later. 

This post is the first attempt to reach out to others who may be interested to get the story. With luck these messages may reach people who know something about the ancestors in my story. Maybe we can pool our knowledge?

Here are some words that someone might be searching for:

Thomas Carr, Cecilia Burke, Castlebar, County Mayo, John Stanley Carr, Frederick Carr, Elizabeth Moran, Royal Irish Constabulary, RIC, Great Famine, Eliza Louisa Blakeney, William Theophilus Blakeney, Jo Dowse, Thomas Carr, Charles Andrews Carr, Dublin, Cork, Belfast, John De Burgh, Marcella Blake, Frederick William Carr, Maria Theresa Carter, William Landsborough, Lavinia Elizabeth, Thomas Kemp Strong, Mabella Edith McTier, Magill, William Henry Carr, Maria Lillyman, Augustus Edward Stanley Carr, Minnie McGregor, Ernest Henry Carr, Fanny Beardmore, Alfred Blakeney, Jane Margaret May, Edward John Priestly, Mary Irby, Ada Johanna, David Scott, Sydney Josephson, Edwin King.

Advertising works

As a member of the Society of Australian Genealogists, you get to place one free "Enquiry" in the quarterly journal, Descent, each year. I did that for the first time, last March (2013). Here's the ad:

My copy of Descent arrived and I had just opened the plastic wrapping on my copy and checked that my enquiry was in it when the first reply came in - an email popped into the inbox on my screen!


In a matter of weeks, I had been contacted by the following people who were descendants of those listed in the ad:

• BM (Sydney, NSW) of the Blake family into which John de Burgh Carr married
• HC (Coffs Harbour, NSW). Her daughter-in-law is a descendant of Ernest Henry Carr
• RJ (Petwood, South Australia), researching John Stanley Carr.

A gentleman from Newbury, Vermont (Mr P-H) had seen the ad and wrote. He is a descendant of a Parker Carr whose family came from Ireland.

Around the same time as hearing from these people, I made contact with Gillian Johnson - a fourth cousin in Wales, UK I never knew I had. She is a descendant of Charles Andrews Carr and Margaret Carr (nee McDermott) and a keen genealogist who is researching the Carrs in Ireland and her own branch of the family that settled in Liverpool, England. She, in turn, put me in contact with LG, a granddaughter of Augustus Edward Stanley Carr, on the NSW South Coast.

So I have finally contacted the living descendants of some of the siblings of my great great grandfather. I always knew they must exist. They, like me are researching their family history. This has provided a wonderful burst of new discoveries which I am still trying to digest.

So what’s he actually done?

The journey started nearly twenty years ago (see post 23 May 2013). I have been researching and writing, on and off, since 1994:

• Go through the trunk belonging to my grandfather, Edwin William “Slip” Carr, sort and conserve
• Transcribe letters to Slip from family and friends when he was away at the First World War in the Middle East (1917-1919)
• Sort, transcribe and catalogue scrapbooks, letters, postcards and photographs from Slip’s sporting career (1916 to 1924). Slip represented Australia in Rugby Union and at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He equalled US sprinter Charlie Paddock’s 1920 OR for 100m in 1923 and set a WR for the 60m sprint twice that year.
• Research the vital records of the Carr line, up through my father, Eddie, my grandfather, Slip, and my great grandfather, TP Carr and their families
• Gather stories from my father, aunts and uncles and other family members about this line of people; receive precious gifts of photos, objects and documents from family
• Some research into my grandmother’s people – the Tysons. Her maiden name was May Queenie Tyson. A lot of work has been done by other genealogists on the Tyson family in Australia. Isabella Tyson, the matriarch, was a convict. One of her sons, James, became a fabulously wealthy pastoralist, known as “the Cattle King” - a wonderful “rags to riches” story. Click here for more about James Tyson in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
• Convert my father’s and grandfather’s 16mm home movies (some filmed in the 1930s) into digital format
• Discover my great, great grandfather, William Henry Carr, who was born in Ireland and who emigrated to Australia in the 1850s. The family of William’s wife, Maria Lillyman, has extensively researched the Lillyman family
• Discover that William Henry Carr had up to 15 brothers and sisters (wow), about eight of whom also migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the 19thC; research their descendants
• This year (2013), I came into contact with some of the descendants of the siblings of William Henry Carr, expanding my knowledge of the extended Australian family
• Another person contacted is GJ, a fourth cousin in Wales, UK who has generously shared her research and information about the Carrs back in Ireland. She also unlocked many of the secrets of a mysterious letter I found in Slip’s trunk. Written in the early 1920s by a distant Irish relative, it potentially expands significantly the Irish family tree.

[Photo: Slip Carr, Copenhagen, 1923]