Published 27th June, 2020 in Our latest news
Elizabeth Teresa McMullen, the fourth child of Patrick and Alice (née Mooney) McMullen,[1] was born on 23 May 1860 on Bumbang Station, Lower Murray, where her father was working as a carpenter. Her birth was registered at Swan Hill. After some years of Patrick working on stations, the family moved to Berwick in 1864; during 1863-1864 Patrick obtained three blocks of land extending along Inglis Road from Buchanan’s Road to the Cardinia Creek.
Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was the first child in the family to attend the Berwick State School. The school rolls indicate that Elizabeth spent significantly more time at school than her brothers and sisters, suggesting perhaps that she was delicate. In June 1879 she caught typhoid fever and died on 13 June. She was one of the first people to be buried in the Berwick cemetery; her grave lies in an area west of the current cemetery, known as Funston's Paddock. Her father made her a wooden coffin, lined her grave with hand-made bricks and surrounded it with a picket fence. On the wooden ‘headstone’, probably of kauri, which he carved her grave, the inscription reads: “IHS To the memory of ELIZABETH MCMULLEN the beloved daughter of Patrick McMullen who departed this life June the 13th AD 1880 (sic) eged (sic) 18 years. Requiesat (sic) in Pace. Amen”. The witnesses at her burial were Robert Officer and Ralph Brunt.
Patrick J. McMullen[2] (bpt 1830 - 1909)
Alice O’Mooney (1832 - 1920)
Robert (bpt 1855 - 1921)
Peter (1856 - < October 1858)
Mary Jane (1858 - 1939)
Elizabeth Teresa (1860 - 1879)
Susana (1864 - 1945)
Patrick James (1865 - 1960)
Margaret (1867 - 1948)
Peter Joseph (1870 - 1952)
Rosanna (b. 1872 - 1960)
[1] Patrick (Pat), a carpenter by trade, was from Cookstown in County Tyrone and Alice Mooney from the neighbouring village of Moveagh. They arrived in Port Adelaide on 1 November 1855 aboard the Oriental with their infant son, Robert.
[2] Before moving to McMullen Road, Officer, where leasehold and then freehold land had been held since 1874, the McMullen family lived in a house built by Patrick near the corner of Inglis and Buchanan’s Road, Berwick. The house, Quorn Cottage at 26 Inglis Road, though modified, still exists. “‘Quorn Cottage', constructed c.1900 as his own home by builder turned farmer Patrick McMullen, at 26 Inglis Road, Berwick”; see https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/62924. It is understand that the house was build earlier that 1900 as the family left Berwick for the Officer property in the 1890s; further, Patrick would have been 70 years old in 1900.
