The Last Branches of the Family Tree of Professor Jakelin Troy - Part 5
The 1928 Funeral
On the 10th of October 1928 a funeral took place at T.J. Andrews’ Funeral Chapel in Newtown Sydney.
Nurse Olive Angermunde (nee Thomas), Professor Jakelin Troy’s great grandmother was there, as was most likely a heavily pregnant Sylvia Beed (nee Speer) and her husband Henry Beed, Professor Troy’s beloved grandmother and grandfather. Sylvia was pregnant with Professor Troy’s mother Shirley Beed, who was born before the year was out.
What brought these three women of supposed Aboriginal descent (according to Professor Troy) to this particular funeral?
In fact, the deceased was Mary Jane Mackey, the mother of Olive, and therefore the great great grandmother of Professor Jakelin Troy. Mary Jane also had a large family of other descendants in attendance at the funeral as well, as attested by the relatively large number of funeral notices posted from different families when she died.
Figure 1 - Funeral Notices for Mary Jane Mackey. The last is by her daughter, Nurse Olive Angermunde. Source - The Sydney Morning Herald Wed 10 Oct 1928, p13, Family Notices
[The last notice was by her daughter Olive]
MACKEY – The Friends of Nurse OLIVE ANGERMUNDE, of Royal Hospital, Paddington, are invited to attend the Funeral of her beloved MOTHER, Mary Jane Mackey: to leave T. J. Andrews’ Funeral Chapel, 23 Enmore-road, Newtown, THIS DAY, at 1.30, for Independent Cemetery, Rookwood.
So who really was Mary Jane Mackey, and what influence did she have on the ancestral story of Professor Jakelin Troy?
Olive Angermunde was part of the direct family line that Professor Troy claims in her family documentary here at 02:40 for her Aboriginal Ngarigu descent, via her mother Shirley, grandmother Sylvia and onto great grandmother Olive. At this point in her family tree, Professor Troy’s public disclosures go ‘vague’ - she has to our knowledge never disclosed how the Aboriginal Ngarigu descent came to Olive. It could only have been via Olive’s father, the pioneer John Thomas or via her mother Mary Jane Mackey [Thomas, nee Belcher] as indicated in the following family tree.
Figure 2 - Alleged ancestral line that Professor Troy says is through which she inherited Ngarigu Aboriginality - see here
To begin to answer this question we will first have to fast-forward nearly 30 years to when a 72-year-old Olive recounts her life in a report written by Margaret Hudson for the Cooma-Monaro Express newspaper of 30 August 1956.
Olive recounts that her father, the pioneer John Thomas had built a house at Lobs [Lobbs] Hole, deep in the Snowy high country where Olive was born in 1884, seventy-two years before recounting her story to Hudson. A transcript of Hudson’s report appears on a Thomas family history webpage, with the actual transcript here as John Thomas - Story 2.
The fascinating part of Olive’s story, recounted in 1956 to Hudson, is what we learn about Olive’s mother when Olive’s younger sister, Tasmania (Tas), was born. Hudson records that,
‘Then in 1884, 50 miles from a doctor and attended by an untrained woman, his [John Thomas’s] wife gave birth to their eldest daughter, Olive … A second daughter, Tasmania, was born two years later and was still very young when their mother died, leaving the two children to the care of a series of housekeepers’.
So, if Olive in 1956 was recounting to Hudson that her mother died when she was very young, then who on earth was the woman who Olive called ‘mother’ at the funeral in 1928, when Olive was 44 years old?
We have determined that the woman in the 1928 funeral notice, Mary Jane Mackey, was in fact really Olive’s mother, Mary Jane Thomas (nee Belcher). She did not die when Olive was young. Instead, she had left her husband John Thomas in 1886, after about 8 years of marriage, and it appears that she also abandoned the children as well. She quickly took up with a James Mackey and had children by him and ultimately married him in 1904 when her divorce to John Thomas came through.
Olive, in her 1956 memoir, was merely propagating a family cover-story that her mother had died in the 1880s when Olive was very young. In fact, Olive knew of the family secret that her mother had deserted the family, and obviously Olive had kept in touch with her mother to some degree as she knew when her mother really did die in 1928.
Mary Jane Mackey in the 1928 death notice was one in the same Mary Jane Belcher who had married Olive’s father John Thomas in 1878.
Figure 3 - First marriage notice of Mary Jane Belcher to John Thomas. Source - Manaro Mercury, and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, Saturday 9 November 1878, p3
First Marriage
Marriage. BELCHER—THOMAS.—At St John's Church, Seymour, on the 5th November, by the Rev. Thomas Druitt, MARY JANE, eldest daughter of John G. BELCHER, of West Denison, to JOHN THOMAS, of Kiandra. 1100
Second Marriage
James Mackey married Mary Jane Thomas - registered at Braidwood 1904. [Source: NSWBDM#6147/1904]
Olive’s version of her mother’s early death as it appeared in Hudson’s 1956 report is mirrored by a Thomas family history website that also contains a photograph of an elderly John Thomas, Mary Jane Mackey’s [nee Belcher] first husband and Olive’s father (see Figure 4). He is depicted as a classic, pioneering colonial man. There is no appearance of any Aboriginal descent in this family portrait.
Figure 4 - Olive’s father John Thomas, Professor Jakelin Troy’s great great grandfather. Source
This Thomas family history website also gives the ‘offical’ version of the death of John Thomas’s wife and Olive’s mother, Mary Jane Thomas - ‘she died circa 1889 at age 27’.
This is the Thomas family secret, that Mary Jane died young and was thus out of the Thomas family picture after 1889.
Figure 5 - A family history report claiming that Mary Jane Thomas (nee Belcher) died around 1889 aged 27. This was Olive’s mother and if it was true, why then did Olive advertise a funeral notice in 1928 for her ‘mother’, Mary Jane Mackey?
All families have their secrets, whether it is 1889, 1928 or indeed 2022. Professor Troy’s family seems to be no different.
So why did Olive recount that her mother died whilst she was a young girl in the 1880s when the truth of the matter was that her mother had actually died in 1928? This was a family secret that Olive’s daughter Sylvia Beed (nee Speer), Professor Troy’s grandmother, must also have known as well. Was it also a secret that was even passed on down to Sylvia’s daughter Shirley and possibly then to Jakelin herself? Only Professor Troy will know the answer to this.
In normal circumstances, a private family’s details and secrets are just that - private and it is up to the family to decide whether to publish or not.
However, in this case we are claiming a ‘public interest’ for our disclosure of the Thomas family details and secrets.
There is strong evidence that Professor Jakelin Troy, whether knowingly or mistakenly, is making claims regarding her Aboriginal Ngarigu descent that may not be true. We have recieved a stream of emails from Aboriginal people urging us to use our SAT Analysis methodology to get to the bottom of Professor Troy’s alleged ancestry and determine one way or the other whether she is of Ngarigu descent.
Many of our Aboriginal informants feel it is very important to ensure that the integrity of the 3-part Aboriginality test is upheld. It is critical that all people who use Aboriginality to make a claim on our institutions, the government and the taxpayer for the purpose of obtaining a benefit must actually be of Aboriginal descent.
What follows is our long, detailed evidence that exposes the Thomas family secret and in consequence, supports our contention that we believe that Professor Troy may be in error to believe she is of Aboriginal Ngarigu descent. We can find no evidence to support her claims.
The Thomas Family Secret
What our research has shown is that, after 8 years of marriage and when her children were still small, Mary Jane Thomas did not die. Instead, she appears to have abandoned her marriage to John Thomas, leaving her children Olive, Tas and her sons with carers. She then ran off with an Aboriginal man, James Mackey with whom she had more children and who she ultimately married in 1904, after her divorce from her first husband, John Thomas, was finalised.
As mere speculation on our part, maybe this is why Professor Troy thinks and claims she is of Aboriginal descent? Because her great great grandmother married a second time, to an Aboriginal man.
Professor Troy certainly has distant cousins in the Mackey family tree that have Aboriginal descent via Mary Jane’s marriage to Aboriginal man James Mackey but, as far as we have been able to determine, there is no direct Aboriginal descent via Mary Jane herself to her first Thomas family of which Professor Troy descends. No Aboriginal descent is possible through to her daughter Olive and the subsequent descendants, Sylvia, Shirley and Jakelin.
Thus, it would appear to be wrong for Professor Troy to claim any Aboriginality because her great great grandmother mother married for a second time to an Aboriginal man and had children by him. These children go on to form their own family tree of Aboriginal descent, the Mackey’s, of which Professor Troy has no part.
So what brought about this state of affairs? For that we will have to follow the ‘real’ life of Professor Troy’s great great grandfather, John Thomas, the first husband of Mary Jane.
The Life of John Thomas
The pioneering life of Professor Troy’s ancestor John Thomas is described in the obituary that was published for him on the front page of The Wyalong Advocate on 23 July 1926. He was born at Camden in 1845 and at age 13 he used to accompany his father on long treks with bullock teams from Circular Quay, Sydney, and later from Two-fold Bay, to the various goldfields with provisions, including to Kiandra on Ngarigu Country. It was more than likely that via these supply-lines, men such as Professor Troy’s great great grandfather brought the deadly diseases that decimated the Ngarigu people. In fact, John Thomas’s own daughter Olive nearly died from German measles at her home at Lobs Hole, possibly brought in on one of her own father’s treks. John Thomas opened up the roads into Ngarigu Country, cleared the land, killed the local wildlife and mined its local gold and copper and thus put the Ngarigu people and their society under intense and deadly colonial pressure.
The great irony in this story is that despite what Professor Troy now says about preserving The Snowy high plains and Ngarigu Country, it was the pioneers, such as her own ancestor John Thomas, who were largely responsible for the ‘colonisation’, settling and ‘destruction’ of the Aboriginal society that existed around the Lobs Hole area of Ngarigu Country.
John Thomas married Mary Jane Belcher in 1878 in Cooma, the ‘capital’ of the Snowy Mountains and well within the traditional lands of the Ngarigu people. Their third child, Olive Delilah Thomas was born in 1884 in Lobbs Hole, Kiandra in their sixth year of marriage. However the next year, John Thomas committed the crime of sheep-stealing, was committed to trial and, in 1886, was found guilty and sent to prison in Berrima for 5 years.
His wife Mary Jane was left with no husband or income, except what she could make from of their stock, and with small children - Olive was only two years old.
Figure 6 - John Thomas’s Berrima prison photo, 12 May 1886. Source - NSW Archives
Sentenced to Gaol COOMA, SATURDAY.
The Quarter Sessions were continued yesterday before Judge McFarland. John Thomas, who was charged with sheep stealing, was defended by Mr. O'Mara (instructed by Messrs. Dawson and Montague). The jury retired at 1.15 p.m., and were locked up. all night. They agreed this morning upon a verdict. The prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour in Berrima gaol. Previous Convictions: Cooma; 11 October 1869, Horse Stealing; 3 years (Reference)
Figure 7 - THOMAS John, Gaol Inmates/Prisoners Photos Index 1870-1930, Item No: [3/6016] | Digital ID: IE65628 | Series: NRS2021 | Page No: 85 | Photo No: 302. Source - NSW Archives
These must have been hard and stressful times for Mary Jane Thomas. With her husband John Thomas in prison what was she to do?
The records in fact show that Mary Jane had an 'illegitimate' son in 1890 while John Thomas was in gaol. The son, Dennis W was given the Thomas surname but only she is named as a parent, the father is left blank. The son was in fact James Mackey's [Mackay]. Going by the registration number 10728/1890, the child would have been born in the second half of 1890. John Thomas put an advertisement in the paper in October 1890 that he would not be responsible for her debts (see Figure 9) and in his divorce evidence he says, "She had a child; the father of whom she admitted was Mackey" (see below). The child was most likely born before the newspaper advertisement so it was most likely that 1888-1889 was the beginning of the relationship between Mary Jane and Mackey. The relationship definitely started while John Thomas was still in gaol.
Despite having a new partner her life was still difficult. The NSW Criminal Records reveal that in 1891 she and Mackey were also both charged with sheep stealing:
‘Sheep Stealing - At the Cooma Police Court last week James Mackay and Mary Jane Thomas were committed to Queanbeyan Quarter Sessions, to be held on the 10th inst., for Sheep-stealing. Three separate charges are set down against Mackay--viz , stealing one sheep, the property of Richard Venables; three sheep, the property of Richard Main ; and 17 sheep, the property of John Cullen. Mary Jane Thomas is implicated in the theft of Main's sheep.
Figure 8 - Extract from NSW Criminal Court records showing James Mackey and Mary Ann Thomas charged with sheep-stealing in 1891 when they were a couple.
John Thomas, who was still Mary Jane’s legal husband during this time and thus legally liable for her, knew she had abandoned the marriage and was living with Mackey and had had his child (See his 1904 divorce petition below). Consequently he placed the following newspaper advertisement in 1890, around the time of his release from prison.
Figure 9 - Advert placed by John Thomas. Source - The Manaro Mercury, 21 October 1890, p5
NOTICE
ALL persons are hereby cautioned against giving my wife any credit on my account, as I will not be responsible for the same.
JOHN THOMAS, Cooma, 18th October, 1890.
Further details about what was happening between John Thomas and his estranged wife at the time were made public later in 1904 when John filed for divorce on the account of adultery.
THE CARES OF A CARRIER [Newspaper record of John Thomas’s divorce proceedings]
The case in which John Thomas, a carrier, applied for a divorce from Mary Jane Thomas, formerly Belcher, on the ground of her adultery with James Mackey, who was joined as co-respondent, was again before his Honour.
When the matter was last before the Court the petitioner deposed that he lived with the respondent after the marriage for eight years, when he got into trouble over some sheep, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment. When he returned, to where he had left his wife she was not there, and he found that she had got rid of all his sheep and a good few of his cattle. Four months later he saw her at Cooma. She had a child; the father of whom she admitted was Mackey. She also told him that she was living with Mackey.
To-day Mr. James, who appeared for the petitioner, addressed his Honour on the question of delay. He contended that the delay was caused through the petitioner's inability to find means with which to prosecute the suit.
His Honour thought the delay had been satisfactorily accounted for, and, under all the circumstances, granted a decree in the petitioner's favour making it returnable in three months. The co-respondent was directed to pay the petitioner’s costs.
- Evening News (Sydney) 14 March 1904, p5
Divorce papers: John Thomas vs Mary Jane Thomas - adultery with James Mackey, NSW Archives NRS-13495-29-[13/12592]-4803,
Our research has not conclusively proven where the Thomas children, including Olive, were during this time of estrangement between their parents. In our opinion we believe that Mary Jane abandoned the children into the care of a series of housekeepers, one of whom John Thomas subsequently married after he divorced Mary Jane. This is also suggested in the 1956 memoir of Olive, where it is stated that,
‘… when their mother died, leaving the two children to the care of a series of housekeepers.’ (Source) [the phrase ‘when their mother died’ being a euphemism for ‘when she left them’.]
However, the important factor for our story on the Aboriginal ancestry (or not) of Professor Jakelin Troy is that Olive’s parents , John and Mary Jane Thomas were not Aboriginal. Thus, Professor Troy cannot claim any Aboriginality by this family line.
James Mackey, Mary Jane’s new partner and subsequently her husband in 1904, however was different, very different. For in fact he was acknowledged in a number of archival sources as being a ‘half-caste’. That is, he had Aboriginal ancestry.
James Mackey and his family
We know that Mary Jane Thomas’s new partner was of Aboriginal descent because there are several documents in the archives where he is referred to as a ‘half-caste’ (see below).
We have been able to trace his family line back to a ‘full-blood’ Aboriginal woman named Kitty. For the purposes of this genealogical work we will use the now redundant terms, ‘full-blood’, ‘half-caste’ and ‘quarter-caste’ to describe each of the generations in the Mackey family. We only do this to make it easier for the reader to understand the level of Aboriginal heritage that is flowing through each of the levels in the Mackey family tree.
Figure 10 - The Glass and Mackey [Mackay] family tree showing the how the Aboriginality of Kitty, a ‘full-blood’ Aboriginal woman, flows through to James Mackey who was Mary Jane Belcher’s (Thomas) second husband. Professor Jakelin Troy is a descendant of Mary Jane Belcher (Thomas) but she is NOT a descendent of James Mackey, nor of Kitty. Note that we have used the redundant terms ‘full-blood’, ‘half-caste’ and ‘quarter-caste’ here for the purposes of illustrating the degree of Aboriginality from a genealogical point of view only.
It was common practice in the old days to refer to people of Aboriginal descent as ‘half-caste’, no matter what exact proportion of Aboriginal heritage they had. We know that James Mackey is of Aboriginal descent partly due to his appearance from the photograph of him that has survived, but also more conclusively by the way the records refer to him as being a ‘half-caste’ [actually a ‘quarter-caste’ according to our family tree].
Figure 11 - James Mackay [Mackey], the ‘quarter-caste’ Aboriginal man who married Professor Jakelin Troy’s great great grandmother, Mary Ann Thomas (nee Belcher).-
Source - NSW Archives
References to James Mackey’s Aboriginality
In a sheep stealing case against a Thomas Woodcroft, our James Mackey is refered to several times in language that confirms his Aboriginality, viz:
“….half-caste Mackey is involved…. committal of the half-caste….The accountable reason for this was the statement made by the black fellow…..”
Full Opinion Piece here from The Manaro Mercury, 21 November 1891, p5
James Mackey himself was sent to Goulburn gaol in 1891 for ‘Stealing’ and given a ‘Sentence of 2 years HL’ [Hard Labour].
Figure 12 - Prison record of James Mackay[Mackey] the ‘quarter-caste’ Aboriginal man who married Professor Jakelin Troy’s great great grandmother, Mary Jane Thomas (nee Belcher). Source - NSW Archives
Further evidence that the Mackey family had Aboriginal descent is confirmed by some newspaper articles concerning James Mackey’s mother, Mary Ann Glass who was a ‘half-caste’ and the daughter of Aboriginal woman, Kitty.
CAPTAIN’S FLAT, Thursday.
At the police court yesterday, before Mr. Elliott, police magistrate, Mrs. Mary Ann Mackey, a half-caste, was charged with having meat in her possession reasonably supposed to be stolen, and was fined £15; or in default, two months in Queanbeyan gaol. The accused pleaded not guilty, but refused to give evidence or call witnesses for the defence.
-The Daily Telegraph, 15 May 1903, p7
and
Petition from Captain’s Flat
A largely signed petition has been sent from Captain's Flat to the Minister for Justice, asking for the release of Mrs. Mary Ann Mackey, who was sentenced to two months' jail at the police court there recently for having stolen meat in her possession. The grounds of the petition are Mrs. Mackey, being aged, her being a half-caste, and her ignorance of the law.
-The Queanbeyan Observer, 9 Jun 1903, p. 2
Summary
Our detailed genealogical research into the family tree of Sydney University’s Indigenous Ngarigu woman Professor Jakelin Troy can find no evidence of any Aboriginal descent in her direct family tree. The alleged ancestries of both her great great grandparents, John Thomas and Mary Jane Mackey (Thomas, nee Belcher) go directly back to England and England & the USA respectively.
Although we can locate distant cousins of Professor Troy in the Mackey family who are Aboriginal, these are by marriage only (Mary Jane Thomas’s marriage to the Aboriginal man, James Mackey). None of James Mackey’s Aboriginality we believe flows to Professor Troy’s family line.
Perhaps there is some hidden factor that we are unaware of, such as an undocumented adoption of an Aboriginal person into Professor Troy’s family in the past, which therefore flows through as Aboriginal descent to her. Or perhaps there is an Aboriginal ‘love-child’ way back in Professor Troy’s ancestry. We just don’t know.
But what we do know is that with modern researching techniques it is now relatively easy to construct one’s family tree so as to determine when one’s ancestors arrived in Australia as convicts or immigrants, or in fact were descended from the original Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia.
It is very disappointing that it appears that a professionally trained research scholar such as Professor Troy either has not carried out this work herself and published it, or is mistakenly just assuming she is of Aboriginal descent. For the sake of the integrity of the programs introduced to support and enhance the careers of Aboriginal people within our university sector, it would be very comforting to many Australians if Professor Troy could publish the evidence that confirms she is of Aboriginal descent.
