TF Meaghar and Smith O Brien

I am relying on memory again here but the two lads were deported instead of hung. They were in reality, as both were landed gentry, treated as gentleman prisoners. Even though they were in two separate areas and not allowed to fraternise they used to meet in the middle of a certain bridge for Sunday tea, each sitting on their own side of the centre line. This may have been the bridge, I will need to check "The Great Shame" when I get home (written by the Australian Thomas Kennelly of Schindler's Ark fame).

Anyway Smith O Brien because he refused to sign a bond promising not to attempt to escape, ended up in Port Arthur but had his own cottage and most certainly did not experience any of the hardships of the other prisoners. Thomas Francis Meaghar was able to move about within his designated area and met and married a Miss Catherine Bennett in 1851. The lads sent a boat from The States in 1852 and TF escaped from Tasmania to New York where he received a hero's welcome. He wife was at the time four months pregnant but their son died aged four months of influenza. He was buried in St John's Church in Richmond.

Shortly afterwards his wife left for Ireland and from there joined her husband in New York. She returned to Ireland to TF's family in Waterford due to ill health (or some say estrangement) and died there in 1854 at the tender age of 24 years. T.F. went on to become a General in the American Civil War, commanding the famous Irish Brigade (I am a Civil War buff!) He obviously could not return to Ireland so after the war he became Governor of Montana. He drowned falling off a river boat on the Missouri River in 1867 but his body was never recovered. Some say that he fell overboard, some say that he was pushed and others say that he was blind drunk and fell overboard (I told you that I am a buff!) Thus this tragic family were separated not only in life but also in death. One lies in a grave in Richmond, Tasmania; the other in Waterford Ireland and the Irish patriot in the bed of the Missouri. What a sad story.