Maher Family
ABORIGINAL PEOPLE ARE ADVISED THAT THIS PAGE CONTAINS IMAGES AND NAMES OF DECEASED PERSONS
John Meagher formerly Ngurabirding aka Marr, Maher
Was born about in Jerramungup, Western Australia.
Son of John Maher and Betty Yungurt
Brother of Kitty Notuman [half]
Husband of Nabella (Waiaman) Meagher — married 1899 in Katanning
Died at about age 52 in Katanning.
Resolving the identity of a man known as John Jack Maher helps tell the story of early European/Aboriginal integration inland from Albany. By following the threads we learn how Albany’s pioneer pastoralists merged with those from York in and around what later became the railway town of Katanning; most notably at a place called Eticup. Many shepherds and labourers employed by the pastoralists fathered children to Aboriginal women, angering their men, causing incidences of cross-cultural recrimination and violence. But what of those European men who engaged in this; mostly the convicts and Ticket-of-Leave men of the 1850’s and 1860’s? The story of their lives reveals backgrounds of deprivation and misery. What hope did they bring to their new opportunity and what chance of a fulfilling life did they and the result of their Indigenous unions really have?
John Maher (back – second left) with his half sister, Kitty Notuman (front – first left).
Ngurabirding
As we discovered in the previous post, Quartermaine Country, the identity of a man known to the Katanning Aborigines as Ngurabirding, apparently the son of conditionally pardoned convict John Maher of Ireland, and Bordenan, an Aboriginal girl ‘brought up with the whites’ may give clues as to the identity of Wajeran, also known as Mary Wantum, mother of the Noongar branch of the Quartermaine family.
But the search for Ngurabirding also sheds light on a great deal more, not least the settlement of Eticup, a prime farming location which became the focus of pastoral attention north of the Stirling Ranges from 1840. Eticup, or Ettakup or Yeetacup, means ‘song camping place’ and, as reflected in its name, had been a centre for Aboriginal ceremonies for a great many generations. (E.H-Hayward, No Free Kicks pg. 24). These traditional Aboriginal ceremonies attracted families belonging to the Wudjari (south east), Koreng (north west), Kaneang (south west), Menang (south) and Weelman (central and north) language groups. As European settlement at Eticup was closely linked to European settlement at other key watering sites in the surrounding area, and that many cross-cultural unions took place amidst them, the old locality of Eticup is therefore an historic component of the heartland to which many Southern Noongar families of today belong.
Above: The controversial photograph of John Jack Maher. The man here is either Johnny Maher the cricketer with his Aboriginal-descent wife Emily Maggs and daughter Maria Louisa, or he is Ngurabirding, also known as John Jack Maher, husband to Waiman and father to Rachel as shown in the Bates genealogies. If the former, the photograph will have been taken around 1910 (as Maria Louisa was born 1901) putting Maher in his mid-40s. If the latter, the photo was probably taken in the 1890s when Maher was about thirty.
This Maher Family information is from Ciaran Lynch’s “The View From Mount Clarence.”
Read the full story HERE