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NO. 22 IN BERRIMA 1841 CENSUS
Bryan (Brian) McMahon, Market Place
Bryan McMahon’s Census entry suggests immediately that he was operating an inn. There
were 17 people on the premises: nine males between 21 and 45, one boy aged between seven
and 14 and one man aged between 45 and 60; 4 women aged between 21 and 45, and two
girls, one aged between two and seven and the other between seven and 14.
Seven of the males and two of the females (the children) were single while the rest, four
women and four men were married. If we assume the two female children were the ones born
the colony there was also an older male also born in the colony. Three men and two women
arrived free while five men and two women described themselves as ‘Other Free Persons’.
Two of the men held a Ticket of Leave. Fourteen were Catholics, the remaining three Church
of England.
What does occasion comment is the occupations represented, Bryan is there, listed under
‘Landed Proprietors, Merchants, Bankers, and Professional Persons’ and there are three
‘Mechanics and Artificers’ amongst the gathering but there are also nine people listed as
‘Domestic Servants’. Are these ‘travellers’, perhaps accompanying their employers or are they
locals?
McMahon’s Berrima Inn is at the north-west
corner of the Market Place, (Lot 1 Section 2
Jellore St). It is still there and its role as an inn
is testified by the worn sandstone window sills,
providing a comfortable seat for those who
visited. It was the first inn to be built in Berrima
and opened in 1834.
One website gives a summary of Bryan’s life.1 He was born in 1790 (or 1791) in Limerick,
Ireland.
My ggg-grandfather was Bryan McMAHON......He joined up aged 14 and saw
service during the Napoleonic Wars in Messina and Malta before heading off to
Canada for the American War 1812-15. Unfortunately in April of 1815 Bryan
and six others were given incorrect information that the war was over and went
off (I assume on a bender) and were subsequently charged with desertion.
Bryan McMAHON was court-martialled and sent to the Colonies as a Lifer
aboard the Atlas in 1816. He was an overseer during the building of the Great
1
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~garter1/mcmahon%20patrick.htm. Accessed June 2014
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NO. 22 IN BERRIMA 1841 CENSUS
South Road/Appin Way. Eventually he received a Conditional Pardon and
settled in Berrima where he opened its first inn - this happened after the arrival
in 1827 of his old captain, Duncan McPHERSON, who gave evidence at his
court martial that Bryan McMAHON was an excellent soldier with an excellent
reputation2; we can only assume Duncan McPHERSON had a hand in
improving Bryan McMAHON's life.
To this we can add information from his Ticket of Leave in 1827 which states that Bryan was
born in Limerick in 1794, was a soldier with the 39 th Foot regiment and had been tried at St
John’s, Canada and sentenced to Life. He arrived in Sydney from London on the Atlas lll with
several other deserters and was described as 5’ 10” tall (1.78 m), with a ruddy complexion,
brown hair and grey eyes.3
At the bottom of his Ticket of Leave is written that this certificate is issued in lieu of a previous
one written in 1824 which was cancelled by the Sydney Bench as he had been found guilty of
theft but was now being renewed at the recommendation of Major McPherson.4 He was
granted his Freedom in February 1832.5
As for his personal life there is less and possibly confusing information. In July 1822, he
married Bridget Conway (alias Mary Farrell?) at Prospect. Bridget had arrived on the convict
ship the Frances and Eliza. Unfortunately Bridget died on 28 January 1826 and there were no
children recorded.6
There is then an application dated 5 August 1826, by the Brian (sic) McMahon who arrived on
the Atlas lll to marry Catherine Bird, a convict who had arrived on the Lady Rowena earlier in
May 1826. The application was refused on the grounds he already had a wife in the Colony –
yet she would seem to have died seven months earlier.
In 1829 Brian (sic) again applied to marry, this time Winifred Hayes who, like Bryan, came
from Limerick where she had been a farm servant. His application to marry Winifred in 1829
states he is 37 and that his wife will be Winifred Hayes, a convict who had arrived on City of
Edinburgh in 1828. She was 25(?) and was to serve a seven year sentence for stealing a pig.
Court Martial Record reads ‘In consideration of the very excellent character borne by the Prisoner in his
Regiment, the Court begs humbly to recommend him as a fit subject for Mercy’
3
UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books 1802-49
4 ToL 27/308 20 June 1827
5 NSW Copies of returns of Absolute and Conditional Pardons granted.Series 1165. State Records Reel 774,
copy of 4/4492. No. 97
6 NSW State Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages – deaths V182615 128
2
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NO. 22 IN BERRIMA 1841 CENSUS
When she met Bryan she was in the charge of a Mr R Williams of Liverpool. There is, however,
no public record of their marriage7. She received her Certificate of Freedom in 1835.
There are many records of Bryan McMahon as the overseer of Road Gang 4/5 (REF
NEEDED)
Bryan and Winifred moved to Berrima in 1834, purchasing the first land put up for sale, Lots 1
and 2 of Section 2 alongside the Market Place (now Jellore St). The cost of Lot 1 is not known
but he paid the minimum amount of £1 for Lot 2. He requested that the two lots be combined
on one deed.8 On this land Bryan built and opened Berrima’s first inn which operated between
1834 and 1848, with only one-year, 1842, missing from the records. A communication from
George Bowen, Berrima’s Police Magistrate, to the Colonial Secretary in May 1842 states
Bryan McMahon had been refused a license, which has resulted in a shortage of
accommodation for people during the sittings of the Circuit Court.9 Bowen recommends a
licence be granted to a new applicant, John Rolfe.
But in the Australasian Chronicle of 20 August 1842 an advertisement appears with Bryan
McMahon reassuring his friends that he can still offer the ‘same comfortable and cheap
accommodations as usual to travellers and others’. So possibly the licencing panel changed
their mind. McMahon did renovations to the inn in 1846.10
Records show Bryan and Winifred had four children: Alice Jane in 183011, Bryan Patrick in
183412, Bridget Mary in 183413 and William in 1836. Their descendants are numerous.
Bryan and Winifred led an active life as part of the Berrima community and there are numerous
references to them in the newspapers of the time and their names appear on many lists of
donations.
Bryan’s died in 1850 aged 56, (which would place his birth date at 1794). The headstone in
Berrima cemetery reads:
7
Many Catholic marriages and births/deaths are not included in the NSW State Records but may be in the
Catholic archives.
8
State Records Authority of New South Wales; Copies of Deeds to Land Grants and Leases; Series: NRS
13836; Item: 7/492; Reel: 2704. McMahon also purchased 80 acres to the north of the village on the eastern side
of the new line of road - Government Gazette, Wednesday February 3 1836.
9 George Bowen and Alan R McDonald JPs to Col Sec May 9th 1842 42585.4 Archives
10 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 1846
11 Married to Michael Joseph Harte in Appin in 1846
12 Married to Elizabeth Kinman in Berrima in 1859
13 Married to William Henry Hall In Berrima in 1858
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NO. 22 IN BERRIMA 1841 CENSUS
IHS. / Sacred / to / the Memory of / BRYAN McMAHON
/ WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE / ON THE 10TH OF
APRIL A.D. 1850 / AGED 56 YEARS / Leaving a wife &
family to lament their loss / May he rest in Peace / He
was in life Respected and in death Regretted / By all his
Friends / When blooming man is snatched away / from
all He loves most dear / The widow weeps for him she
loves / And silent sheds a tear
After Bryan’s death Winifred took over the licence of the Berrima Inn but possibly did not renew
it. 14 In 1855 the premises were advertised as available for lease for seven years.15
Nine years after Bryan’s death Winifred re-married: her choice of second husband questioned
by her descendants.i He was George Cutter who had opened one of the first inns in the district,
the Kangaroo Inn at Nattai as early as 1822. But George seems to have had a short fuse. In
1839 he was sentenced to 15 years in Tasmania for stabbing William McGraith (McGrath) who
was then the licensee of the Kangaroo Inn. He served only seven years but when he returned
he fired a shot at Alexander Brand who was running the inn and had leased land from George’s
wife, Ann. A year after Ann’s death in 1858 George was married to Winifred.
Winifred died in 1867 and is recorded as buried in Berrima cemetery but there is no headstone.
Bryan and Winifred’s son, Bryan Patrick, sold the Berrima Inn in 1862 to Frances Breen who
was related to the Taylors who then owned the Crown Inn in Berrima. At the advanced age of
35 this same son was summoned for furiously riding around Berrima – presumably on a horse
– in 1869.16
PATRICK McMAHON It is likely that the Patrick McMahon buried in Berrima Cemetery and
who died in 1862 is Bryan’s brother. Patrick McMahon’s headstone is no longer in the
cemetery but records on ancestry.com confirm that, like Bryan, Patrick was born in Limerick
to parents Bryan McMahon and Alice McNamara. In 1830 Patrick married Ann Morgan in
Windsor and had one daughter, Susan Jane, born in 1831. Records show that Patrick was an
ex-soldier.
NB. Some confusion is added to the Census record by the name Bryan McMahon appearing
twice in the list. His entry at number 37 has only that there is a stone cottage, finished but
uninhabited house somewhere in the township. It is possible it was on the allotment adjacent
14
Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April 1850
Sydney Morning Herald, September 13 1855
16 Police Gazette 9 June 1869
15
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NO. 22 IN BERRIMA 1841 CENSUS
to the Berrima Inn or on the 80 acres of land he held to the north of the village. It was advertised
for let in the Australasian Chronicle 20 August 1842
TO LET, in Berrima, a neat and a newly built COTTAGE, consisting of four spacious and
well-finished rooms, with a detached kitchen and storehouse. The above cottage will be let
unfurnished, and is particularly well adapted for the accommodation of a private family, or
a member of the legal profession, whose services are in almost daily requisition in this
promising assize town. For particulars apply at the office of this paper, or to Mr. Bryan
McMahon, Berrima.
Author: Chris Thompson, June 2016. Contact: [email protected]
This entry is part of a study of the 1841 Berrima Census – see www.harpersmansion.com.au/history