Some Reading family history
History Notes
There are several happenings coming up for historical society members as we venture into busy October. There is a street stall, then the markets and then the annual general meeting and then of course we have to put our clocks forward one hour next Sunday.
Last week I mentioned the accident to the Finn family in 1861 on the Manilla road which occurred just over Barraba Creek. It seems that DNA has solved the relationship of the Finn family with the early Reading family but there is still the puzzle as to the name Reading being used.
The Reading family lived at Glen Riddle in the 1870s so I decided to chase up their history in our records to find out if and why the name Reading appears in families at Woods Reef.
Henry Thomas Reading is thought to have been born at Windsor in England about 1808. In 1825 Henry was arrested for theft and condemned to death.
Fortunately, his sentence was commuted to transportation for life - apparently this was not his first brush with the law but he was put aboard the Midas for the voyage to Sydney.
After his arrival he was assigned to the Cox family and appears to have stayed with them for some time working at properties up the Hunter River to Muswellbrook where he met Pheobe Irwin who had arrived in Australia with her brother as an assisted migrant in 1842.
Henry Reading and Phoebe Irwin were married at Singleton on 23rd August, 1844. The first two children were born at Muswellbrook and then in 1848 Henry was granted his Conditional Pardon. This allowed him to travel north to work for the Cox family on their property "Burindi" in 1853.
At the end of 1855, the family moved again, this time to become squatters on land at the junction of lronbark Creek and the Manilla River. This area was only a few kilometres downstream from Barraba Creek Station and with only three surviving children it seems that they may have adopted two year old Finn. Henry and Phoebe lived at Glen Riddle for the rest of their lives and were buried there in 1877. The Reading children grew up and Henry married Emma Neal, Elizabeth married William Faddy and Mary Ann married William Douglas at 18 years of age in 1873. I wonder where John Robert Finn spent the years before he married.