Link to index for Limerick Families West Limerick Families Abroad" and "Poverty to Promise" http://www.alphalink.com.au/~datatree/index.htm Links to Co Cork, Co Limerick and Co Clare families. www.alphalink.com.au/~datatree/Burke/Burke-p/index.htm Irish Roots Issue No. 39 2001 3rd quarter The Lure of Limerick In 1853 as the parents of Mary Barrett of Shanagolden, County Limerick had both died, she took advantage of sponsorship offered by local landlord, Lord Monteagle to travel to Victoria, Australia on the Monteagle. She soon was employed by Mrs Hollis of South Bourke Street, Melbourne for £25 a year plus rations. Like many other Irish settlers, out of her wages Mary remitted £6 to Ireland to assist with the fares of her siblings Bridget, Ellen, Catherine, Michael and John. Other relatives, Catherine and Mary Corbett, also made the long journey. Lord Monteagle advanced the remaining sum needed for their deposits while Lady Monteagle used her influence to ensure that the family travelled together at a time when, due to the gold rushes, assisted immigration for single males into Victoria was not generally permitted. After arriving in Geelong on the Chandenagore on 21 June 1854, Mary's family went to Collingwood to join their sister. Mary Barrett's story came to light in documents associated with the 'Monteagle emigrants'. These were Australian-Irish who had previously lived within the influence of a local parliamentary member for Limerick (and later, Cambridge), Thomas Spring Rice and his family around his estate at Mount Trenchard overlooking the Shannon Estuary. (This is the same man who during his term as Secretary of State for the Colonies applied for leave to bring in a bill to establish criminal courts on Norfolk Island in the 1830s.) The history of this migration between 1838 and 1858, was told in a 1994 book, Poverty to Promise, written by Limerick researcher, Dr Christopher O'Mahony and Australian social historian, Valerie Thompson. Following the success of this volume which identified about 736 of the settlers, Valerie Thompson now has joined forces with Kate Press of Melbourne to broaden the study to include West Limerick people who left the area up to the end of the nineteenth century including those seeking homes in places other than the two largest Australian colonies. The new quarto sized book, West Limerick Families Abroad, is most comprehensive, offering ready identification of over 1,000 family names, showing not only their Irish origins but also their issue in the new countries of residence.Quite apart from the 214 pages allocated to West Limerick families' biographies, several appendices supplement the text contributing prolific references for anyone researching this particular county. A chronology of Irish history is augmented by a time-line for appropriate records before a more detailed listing of local sources ranging from census, histories, journals and directories, to gravestone inscriptions and graveyard records. Valuable schedules including the Limerick newspapers with their dates of publication as well as parish structures -covering the Roman Catholic, civil, and Church of Ireland equivalents and dates - appear in alphabetical groupings under both civil and Roman Catholic headings. Further amplification is offered by the reproduction of the section dealing with the Monteagle property in the 1844 Enquiry into the Occupation of Land in Ireland in addition to the inclusion of numerous Limerick entries that appeared in The Search for Missing FriendsIrish immigrant advertisements placed in the Boston Pilot, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. Following a section on faction fighters and a couple of entries on convicts, the List of Contributors provides contact details for genealogists eager to link families. This well illustrated volume, of which only 1,000 copies were printed, is an essential reference book for libraries and society collections. West Limerick Families Abroad, by Kate Press and Valerie Thompson, Melbourne, 2001 is available from Data Tree Press, Suite 393, 45 Glenferrie Road, Malvern, Victoria, 3114 for A$28.95 plus postage and packing (within Australia) of A$9.00.