Eliza Burns

Eliza was sent to Australia aboard the 'Eliza Caroline' under the Earl Grey Scheme for Irish famine orphans.  According to the ship list she was 19, from Donegal and RC.  She could neither read nor write.   No further information about her parents or the workhouse where she came from was given.    I have DNA matches with people named Burns and Boyle in Donegal. I have not been able to contact them directly as they are part of a Donegal DNA study and the only contact is the group admin, so I have no idea how we may be related. 

The ship left Portsmouth on 31st December 1849 and arrived in Port Phillip at the end of March, 1850.  She was assigned to work as a housemaid for a Geelong hotel owner and his wife.  By the end of the year she had married William Matthews, a 40 year old English carpenter from Leicester who arrived in Geelong via Van Diemans Land.  (Not known if it was his idea to emigrate to VDL or a court's.) The marriage was celebrated at St Mary's RC Church in Geelong  The witnesses to her marriage were the sub matron from the Eliza Caroline, and an Irish immigrant who arrived in Geelong at the same time as she did. She had a daughter in 1852 who was baptised at St Mary's and named Caroline.  They moved to Colac and had a son there in October 1854 who was named William after his father.  On his birth certificate her place of birth was listed as Lanark - it was probably given so others would not know she was one of the Irish orphan girls.  Her husband died in January 1855.  I can't find a remarriage or death certificte for her so sadly I have no idea what became of her.