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JOHN DUNDON AND JOHANNAH DILLON.                    
              It's a long way to Tipperary Gully at Sandhurst.
John and Johanna married in Australia possibly in NSW according to his death certificate, but  at this time there is no record of the shipping details relating to his immigration.  Information submitted on the birth certificate of his eldest son states his marriage details as taking place in Sydney NSW on 26 October 1854, but on both his own and his wife's death certificate his marriage is given as taking place in Melbourne Victoria. However no entry has been located in either state's records to verify this union.
Johanna Dillon, the daughter of William Dillon and Maria Carey, was born in Cashel County Tipperary in 1832 and migrated to Australia in 1854 when she was 22 years old. As stated above she apparently met and married John in Sydney or Melbourne, or perhaps they never married and just maintained a private relationship.
John was a plasterer by trade, although soon after his arrival in Australia he made his way to the goldfields of Bendigo and worked the diggings at Tipperary Gully in Sandhurst. It is unclear at this time if John married prior to going to Sandhurst, or whether he met and married Johanna at Sandhurst and failed to register the marriage. Their first child Patrick was born on the goldfields at Tipperary Gully on September 20th 1855 and the midwife at the birth was Mrs Hunt. They had the child baptised at St.Kilian's Catholic Church at Bendigo the following day. Unlike John the birth was registered one month later in Golden Square Bendigo. That ended his officialdom days because only two Baptism records can be found relating to the birth of his remaining three children issued from St.Patricks East Melbourne for John Joseph and his sister Mary.
There is a possibility that John and Johanna left the goldfields very shortly after the birth of Patrick, for as earlier indicated he was living in Melbourne when his mother arrived from Ireland in 1857.
The second child born was Margaret in 1857 and as stated earlier her place of birth is unknown, she married Thomas Wright in Sydney in 1880 and had six children, John, Mary, Elizabeth, Thomas, George and Ruby, the two youngest dying at one year of age.
My grandfather John Joseph Francis the third child was born, according to every document that I have which relates to him,  in Collingwood Victoria in 1858 but again this was unregistered. Like his father and his older brother Patrick, he followed the family traditional trade of plastering.
The second daughter for John and Johanna was Mary, and like her brother and sister her birth was unregistered. According to her Baptismal certificate she was born in Collingwood Victoria on June 6th 1860. She married Patrick Saville in Sydney and had two children Mary and Patrick, before she died in 1892, probably from complications at childbirth.
The next record to show John and Johannas' activities is Johannas' death certificate which reveals the fact that they moved  to Sydney in 1854.
Johanna died at home 152 Oxford Street on October 19th 1879 aged 47 years occupation housemaid, (perhaps the Racing Club Hotel). The death certificate states she was 25 years in NSW and was aged 22 when she married. Taking these figures on face value that gives her arrival date in NSW as 1854 -1855 and her marriage date as 1851 - 52 which is in accordance with details on Patricks' birth certificate. She died of natural causes after a nine month illness, as her death certificate shows an unnamed infant as deceased , she too may have died in childbirth.
There is no further record of any events until the 20th May 1878 when my grand father John Joseph married a German girl Elizabeth Louise Schweikert (registered as Chatrienne Schweikert) at the Primitive Methodist Church in Kent Street Sydney. She was the daughter of a wine grape grower from The Field of Mars North Ryde. She was about seven months pregnant at the time of marriage, and it is said that because of her Evangelistic faith and Johns' Catholic faith they had trouble getting a church to marry them. For modesty sake I hope this was true.
His older brother Patrick married Mary Gissane on July 4th 1878 at the French mission Hunters Hill (also called Villa Maria). The address given for their father at this time was 152 Oxford street Sydney and he was described in the Sydney Morning Herald on 16th July 1878 as  "a contractor of this city".
Neil Dundon was told that John was a hotelier in Sydney for many years, and on checking the Publican licences at the State Archives I found that John actually held two hotel licences in Sydney, the first being for the Albion Hotel in Albion Street Surrey Hills and the second  for The Racing Club Hotel in Oxford Street, Paddington, near Victoria Barracks. The time period was 1879 - 1881
John had a second marriage to a widow, Lucy Hobday on 9th April 1900. She was born in Kent England c 1852. Her parents were John Manuel and Ann Wilson. The marriage was witnessed by Theopilus and Edith Carslus. John gave his age as 50 years, just 5 years older than his first born..
John died in The Rookwood Asylum on 11th April 1903, his age given as  67 years, although his real age was 74. All ages on the certificate are in error by 7 years. The cause of death was cardiac failure and senile decay. What a shame they had not heard of Alzhymers or Dementia in those days, perhaps his passing may have been a little more dignified. He was buried two days later at the Catholic Cemetery Rookwood.
I have visited his gravesite that is unmarked but locatable from adjoining graves that are numbered. The grave is in a very tidy area of the cemetery near the family crypt section.
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