(c) 2016 Nancy Vada Gibb. Please do not copy any part or all of this article without permission.
This occasional blog will focus on certain places which Dave and I visit during our six month tour of Australia with a caravan. They are places associated with my mother’s family the d’Archys, It is not intended to be a family history but inevitably some history is going to intrude!
NOTE: A separate blog has now been set up. Go to https://darchyblog.wordpress.com
Any descendants of Thomas and Susan Darchy are very welcome to comment, correct and add to the entries. There is a space to comment at the bottom of the blog page.
The d’Archy branch of my family has long fascinated me. The known history starts with one Thomas Darchy, born in Augsburg Bavaria in 1820 in mysterious circumstances. Was his father a Scottish/English/irish lord; was his mother an heiress with connections to the French Royal family? Whisked away by a guardian at birth and nurtured in Switzerland under the aegis of an ‘Advisor to the King of Prussia’, Thomas first stood on Australian soil in 1840, a wealthy young man. The Mysterious Advent of Thomas Darchy
In 1844 he married Susan Byrne, who also had a colourful set of forebears. Her grandfather Hugh Vesty Byrne was one of the ‘Wicklow Martyrs’ shipped to Australia as a political convict and freed on arrival; her mother was Nanno Byrne, born at sea as the ‘Tellicherry’ approached Australian waters in 1806, who kept a boarding house/hotel at Braidwood and/or Yass where she ruled with an iron first and fended off bushrangers.
The children of Thomas 1820-1877 and Susan 1826-1892 were:
- Clara Maria 1845-1916 married Thomas McFarland 1869.
- Thomas 1847-1863
- William 1849-1915 married Minna Dinham 1874
- Michael 1850-1934 Married Frances Moore 1878
- FitzEdward 1852-1908 Married Ada Jane Wreford 1888
- Francis (Frank) 1854-1925 Married Margaret Pendergast Stoddart 1879
- Susan 1857-1922
- Louis George 1860-1910 Married Anna Nina Doherty 1895
- George Thomas 1863-1949 married Anna Maria Hynes 1899
- Rose Ann 1866-1930 Married Richard William Holmes 1909
Nancy's Families 
Hi Nancy, just scanning your blog after your comment on mine. Interested to see that you too have Byrne ancestors, but from Wicklow, rather than Kerry, where mine hail from. My maternal great grandmother was also Susan (“Susie”) Byrne, born Susan Hickson in Killarney in 1861, married George Byrne in Australia in 1885. It has been remarkably difficult to get any information about the Byrnes of Killarney, since they weren’t as “colourful” as your Byrnes. Sadly there are none left in Australia in the line that came down to me, because in the first generation here there were 5 girls and one boy. The boy married but never had any children, so the Byrne name passed out of the line. My maternal grandmother was Gertrude Byrne, but of course she changed her name when she married. The Darchy ancestor that your Susan Byrne married certainly sounds like an interesting character!
Thanks, David. Yes, I have rather too many Byrnes too!