Mary O'Boyle, ex Panama
Mary O'Boyle was 16 and from Crossmolina. She arrived in Sydney on board the Panama with her sister, Bridget O'Boyle, aged 18. Both could read, but not write, and their parents, Thomas and Bridget, were both dead. A month after arriving in Sydney, the sisters were sent to Wollongong, where they were both employed (see Famine Orphan Girl Database).
By 1857, Mary O'Boyle was living, and assumed to be working, in Terara, near Nowra. Terara was then a horse stud, established by Etienne Livingstone de Mestre. In 1857, Mary married Augustus Linkenbagh, from Weisbaden, Germany. Augustus had arrived in Australia in 1855, and was also working at Terara. After their marriage Augustus Linkenbagh set up a boot and shoemaking business in Terara. In 1870 Terara was devastated by a giant flood, and the family moved into Nowra, where they ran a general store on Kinghorn Street. The family later moved to the Yalwal goldfields, west of Nowra, where they opened the Pioneer Hotel. Mary and Augustus Linkenbagh had nine children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Augustus Linkenbagh died in Nowra in 1902, aged 70. Mary Linkenbagh died in 1906, aged 71, at the home of her daughter, Mrs C Davidge, in Yalwal. In her obituary she was described as one of the "old pioneers who link the present with the past". Her "chief characteristics were her domesticity and her neighbourliness - a devoted wife and mother, and a warm hearted friend" (Shoalhaven Telegraph, 29 August 1906). |
© Barbara Barclay (2015)