History Notes - more on the Sinclair/McKid families

History Notes

Last week we dealt with the early days of the Sinclair/McKid families.

Catherine Sinclair, who came to Australia with her sister, Jean, to help with her orphaned nephews and niece, married widowed John McKid at Goulbourn on 21st August, 1851, and came to live at Barraba with her new husband and eight children. Two years later John and Catherine added another daughter, Mary Catherine McKid to the family.

This large blended family ranged in age from 16 years down to a baby and I am sure that Catherine appreciated assistance from her sister Jean, especially when John Mckid died on 14th June, 1854, aged 46 years. He was buried with his former wife and brother in the old cemetery on the corner of Edward and Queen Street, Barraba.

The two older Sinclair boys were now well into their teens and began to take jobs such as droving cattle to the Hunter or in one case to Victoria. Daniel was the legal postmaster at Barraba in the late 1850's although his aunt often did the work as he was away droving. Catherine continued to run the store & hotel as well as look after her family and post office.

In December 1862, young James Sinclair married Jane Elizabeth McKid and it was not long before they added two daughters to the family. James and Jane were soon followed by several more marriages - Catherine McKid married for the second time. Her new husband was an Englishman business man, Edward Newton, who was some relation to Esther Hughes who had taken up a large slice of land to the north east of Barraba some 20 years earlier. Catherine's second daughter was born in this marriage.

There were now quite a lot of people in this McKid/Sinclair family and I wonder where they all lived - surely not in the old house, whose remains still stand, at the eastern end of Rodney Street.

Tragedy struck in February, 1875, when James Sinclair was killed in a horse accident out at lronbark. He left a widow and five children - the youngest only two years old. The family managed to get his widow to be post mistress for a few years to provide an income. She remarried to Robert Munson 13 years later.

As the years passed the orphaned children grew up and married. Christina became Mrs Charles Quelch in 1876. Peter Sinclair married Mary Innes McAdie and Daniel married Johanne Robson.

Three McKid children married -Jane married James Sinclair and then Robert Munson as mentioned above. Louisa married John Goodwin and lived down on the Horton River and John married Catherine Urquhart. Mary Catherine McKid (Minnie) married William Stephen Spencer and lived at lronbark. Lizzie Newton married Frank Cheesbrough in 1890.

I wonder if anyone else has an ancestry as complicated as the McKid/Sinclair family. Dr Williams also married into this family via aunt Jean's daughter and there were a number of William's children including Charles Gordon and Percy Williams, both well known in Barraba.