The Caseys and the Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery
The Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery is important to our story because 6 (and possibly 7) of our relatives are buried there.
Leslie and I visited the cemetery in October 2022 – that was when we were going through some intense rain, and that, coupled with the fact that the cemetery was overgrown, made it bit of a “challenging” visit. But we spent quite a while there, checking out graves and taking some photos.
This is the entrance to the cemetery, such as it is. There’s no fence, so the gates serve little purpose.
Entrance to the Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery
Although it says “Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery” on the dilapidated sign, a plaque at the entrance says that cemetery was gifted to the Catholic community by Donald Roderick Macleod, who was actually a Presbyterian. Despite his donation, when Mr McLeod died in 1862, he was buried at Bairnsdale.
The story is that the Reverend Gilliard Smith, who was rector of the Gundaroo Anglican Church of St. Luke, was refusing to bury non-Anglicans at the burial ground at Upper Gundaroo that was attached to the church. So Mr McLeod addressed that with his donation.
The earliest burials at the cemetery were in 1857 for Mary Hughes and Mugwill and Bridget Donnelly of Bywong, and the last burial took place during the 1950’s, after which the cemetery was closed in 1956. Burials included non-Catholics.
The Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery is on the Sutton Road opposite the beginning of Back Creek Road. Sutton Road is the main street through the town of Gundaroo. To get to the cemetery, just follow the Sutton Road out of town heading towards Canberra. The cemetery will be on your left-hand side 2.3km from the Gundaroo post office, and is just to the left as you approach Back Creek Road on your right.
The Gundaroo Historical Society has created a map of the cemetery that you can find here, along with a matching transcription of the headstones here. I’ve tidied these up below to make them easier to read.
Map of the Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery
The graves that belong to family members are towards the northeast corner of the cemetery (16, 17, 18 and 19 on the diagram), and they include the following.
11 December 1876 – Grave number 17
James Casey, Elizabeth (Eliza) Casey (nee Flanagan) and James Bernard Casey
Elizabeth (Eliza) Casey (nee Flanagan) was the wife of James Casey who was the son of Irene’s paternal grandfather and the brother of Irene’s father, Thomas Casey. So James and Eliza were Irene’s uncle and aunt.
Eliza’s gravestone is to the left in the picture, and the inscription reads:
Erected by James Casey to the memory of his beloved wife Eliza who died at Gundaroo December 11 1876 aged 33 years.
I need to go back and take a better look at what’s written under that, because the Gundaroo Historical Society’s transcript reads like this:
Farewell dear husband to thou must re [?]
Our babes in God's most holy…
Oh touch their infant lives to…
And guide them in the narrow way;
So may we meet .... forgiven re...red
To [?] wanderer lost .... a family in heaven.
Clearly, they also had a little difficulty reading the headstone, as there are a few bits missing.
It seems a little odd that James would have erected this headstone for his wife, and then added a quote that seems to be her farewelling him, but maybe this was a quote that he thought was appropriate.
As an aside, James’ wife Eliza was a Flanagan, although in some cases her maiden name was spelt “Flannagan” with two n’s. My Uncle Jack’s wife Cecilia was also a Flanagan, and his daughter Mary believes that Eliza may have been related to her Mum. That would mean that Mary and her siblings could be doubly related to the Flanagans – once as blood relatives through their mother, and a second time through their Father’s lineage, although of course that would just be a relationship by marriage and not blood. Nothing dodgy going on here.
11 January 1883 and 24 November 1883 – Grave number 16
James Casey, Elizabeth (Eliza) Casey (nee Flanagan) and James Bernard Casey
This grave, which is to the right on the photo above, is for two people.
The first is James Casey, and as noted above, he’s the son of John Casey, Irene’s paternal grandfather, and the brother of Irene’s father Thomas, ie her uncle. The inscription reads:
Sacred to the memory of James Casey. Who died at Gundaroo 11 January 1883 aged 43 years. May he rest in peace. Amen.
James’ son James Bernard Casey is also buried here with his father, with his death shown as 24 November 1883, just 10 months after his father had died. The inscription reads:
Also of his beloved son James Bernard Casey. Who died at Gundaroo. Nov 24th 1883. Aged 2 years & 2 months. Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Oddly, it says that James Bernard Casey was aged 2 years and 2 months, but the thing is that James’ wife, Eliza had died 6 years earlier, so she couldn’t have been the mother.
I looked into this and found that some Ancestry records show the date of James Bernard’s death as being in 1863, which would make more sense date wise, although it would mean that Eliza was 17 when she gave birth. That said, I also found the coroner’s record shown below, on which you can clearly see that the date was 1883, and that young James Bernard is believed to have accidentally drowned.
Top line shows the coroner’s comment and the date
All I can think of is that James senior had James junior with another woman after Eliza died. And that both Eliza and James senior were dead when the young James died at 2 years and 2 months of age.
Normally I’d keep hunting, but since this branch of the family history is off to the side of our main path, I’ll leave that for another time.
22 May 1882 – Grave number 18
John Casey’s grave
This is the grave of John Casey, Irene’s paternal grandfather. The inscription on the headstone reads:
Sacred to the memory of John Casey, a native or Ireland, who departed this life 22 May 1882. Aged 88 years. May Jesus receive my soul.
While I did find some evidence that John’s wife Caroline may also be buried here, there’s nothing to confirm that on the headstone.
22 September 1901 and 27 August 1917 – Grave number 19
Grave of Caroline and Thomas Casey
This is the grave of Irene’s parents, Caroline and Thomas Casey. The photo is one I took in October 2022, and you can see that the shared headstone is broken, and the grave is overgrown. I’m going to investigate whether we can have it all tidied up, and if that happens, I’ll update the photo.
The inscription for Caroline reads:
In memory of Caroline beloved wife of Thomas Casey died 22nd Sep 1901, aged 51 years. May her soul rest in peace.
Underneath that is this inscription for her husband Thomas:
Also her beloved husband Thomas died 27th Aug 1917 aged 82. At rest.
Just to put that all into perspective
The mini family tree below provides a summary of who’s buried at the Gundaroo Catholic Pioneer Cemetery, and how they fit in.
Mini family tree showing who’s buried at Gundaroo and how they’re related
Of course, Irene and Bill (the green highlighted boxes) are at the centre of our story. They’re buried in North Ryde in Sydney.
And the blue boxes show who’s buried at the cemetery and what relation they are to Irene. Note that the pale yellow box is for Caroline Casey (nee Purcell), John’s wife. While I found a record of her burial at the cemetery, there’s no mention of her name on John’s headstone, so I’m not 100% convinced that she’s there.
And I have a dotted line from Eliza to James Bernard for the reasons stated above.
I’ve included the map of the cemetery again here, and if you click here, the full transcription of all graves from the Gundaroo Historical Society will open up in a new window.
Written by Rob Landsberry, last updated on 15 March 2023