The Byrnes Family

TITLE PAGE

Introduction

PART 1:

 BYRNES FAMILY

ANCESTORS’ CHARTS :

(Parents of Peter Byrnes):

Thomas Byrnes

Lily Dance

INDIVIDUAL SUMMARIES

 (Scroll down for full list):

• Archer - Emma

• Archer - Samuel

• Archer - Thomas

• Blandford - Martha

• Burns - Francis

• Byrnes - James

• Byrnes - Peter

• Byrnes - Thomas

• Dance - (Amelia) "Lily"

• Dance - George 

• Dance - William

• Greenaway - Mary

• Leider - Emilie

• Pobar - Felice

• Pobar - Franciscus

• Pobar - (Sarah) "Grace"

• Retschlag - Amalia

• Retschlag- Christian

• Sexton - William

• Wilson - Mary

The often turbulent years of the middle of the 19^th century in strife-torn Europe was the time when many of Peter Byrnes’ ancestors made their way to the other side of the world.  They were soldiers, labourers, farmers and would-be farmers to whom the perception of wide-open lands, or possibly gold to be found, was enticing. 

They came from many parts of Europe – England, Ireland, Germany and what today is Croatia.  One, Samuel Archer, who came from a line of soldiers, was born in France in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars – and brought his family to Australia after years in Mauritius, while others first settled in New Zealand before sailing west back across the Tasman.

Although all branches of the Byrnes family were here by the 1880s, none came courtesy of the English convict system.  The first to arrive, Felice Pobar, landed in Australia from Austria (now Croatia) in the early 1850s, at the time of the Victorian goldrush, well after the end of transportation to eastern Australia.  However, at least three Byrnes ancestors, Francis Burns and Mary Wilson from Ireland, and William Sexton from Suffolk, had earlier gone to New Zealand via Hobart on convict ships – two as soldiers guarding the convicts, the other as the wife of a soldier on board the same ship.

Once here, they became gold-diggers, shepherds and farm labourers, before establishing themselves in southeast Queensland as farmers and butchers (or both, as in the case of Christian Retschlag, William Dance and Felice Pobar).  Succeeding generations left the land to go into the printing trade and the railways. 

There is a very large question mark over whether or not today's descendants are really “Byrnes” descendants; it appears that although the original Byrnes to come to Australia was the  soldier Francis Burns, the child who grew up bearing his name (although with a change of spelling) was registered at birth under the name Sexton, his mother’s husband at the time.  Short of DNA testing of today's descendants of both the Sexton and Byrnes families, the question of the James Byrnes/Sexton's paternity will never be answered