Cyrus WILLIAMS’s maternal line is complicated. Not because of lack of records or information – in fact almost the opposite. It is an exemplar of the many research challenges faced by genealogists and family historians. For example, first names were repeated generation after generation. Doyles also married their own cousins. Neither attribute was unusual for the times – families often carry names through generations, and when the social circle is primarily made of large extended families, over several generations, it’s not surprising familiarity and contact resulted in marriages. Although Cyrus’s mother – Ann Fitz DOYLE - died when he was less than three years old her family continued to be important throughout his life– and there was constant contact and interaction across the wider extended Doyle diaspora.
In Cyrus’s Journals he refers once only to his stepmother, and then not even by name. There is not one reference, even oblique, to any of the 10 half siblings of his father’s second marriage. Members of the Doyle family, on the other hand, are referred to throughout the Journals, and relationships were sustained until Cyrus’s death at the age of 80 in 1942.
The Doyle family arrived in Sydney in 1803 as convicts – James Doyle and his younger brother Andrew having been sentenced in Dublin in 1801 to transportation. Both brothers became wealthy and their many descendants developed vast tracts of northern NSW from the family base on the Hawkesbury and Hunter Rivers.
You can read about Andrew here.
In Cyrus’s Journals he refers once only to his stepmother, and then not even by name. There is not one reference, even oblique, to any of the 10 half siblings of his father’s second marriage. Members of the Doyle family, on the other hand, are referred to throughout the Journals, and relationships were sustained until Cyrus’s death at the age of 80 in 1942.
The Doyle family arrived in Sydney in 1803 as convicts – James Doyle and his younger brother Andrew having been sentenced in Dublin in 1801 to transportation. Both brothers became wealthy and their many descendants developed vast tracts of northern NSW from the family base on the Hawkesbury and Hunter Rivers.
You can read about Andrew here.