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| start [2025/01/18 16:14] – [I'm a member of the family: why aren't I or my parents named?] judith | start [2025/08/15 17:04] (current) – [Thomas M-Ps] judith |
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| One thing to remember is that multiple secondary sources don’t necessarily increase reliability as often one source is copied from the other without further checking with original sources (such as births, deaths and marriage registers, letters written at the time, photographs etc).((My impression is that the more recent family information/stories were taken from TLM-P's jottings; these appear the basis for his son Robert's pamphlet which in turn appears the basis for Thomas B. M-Ps.)) For the older sections, much of the information derives from Burke’s various books about lines of descent of families from royalty, the aristocracy, and the gentry. Noble descent was a serious matter at a time when hereditary titles had huge social, economic and political benefits. Certainly TLM-P had a copy of John & John B. Burke's //A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland: M to Z//, London: Henry Colburn Publisher, 1846. (with its entry ‘Prior of Essex, and of Rathdowney, Queen’s County'), adding his children by hand.((Provenance: Judith Godden)) He also prided himself on his ('Murray-Prior of Maroon') entry in Burke's //Colonial Gentry// even though many considered 'colonial' and 'gentry' a contradiction and that book's accuracy was, in historian Christine Wright's words,'much maligned then and since'.((Bernard Burke, //A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry//,Melbourne: E.A. Petherick, 1891-1895; Christine Wright, //Wellington's Men in Australia: Peninsula war and the making of empire c.1820-40//, Houndsmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.48-49.)) Given all of Burke's books are fallible, please let us know if you find errors after checking with original records. A challenge to us all is to find out more, and see how much we can verify. The fun and interest lie in more than the bare details of people's lives, and this is where our sources are more unreliable – and some stories recorded by step-cousins Robert M-P and Thomas Bertram M-P, might be better called gossip. On the other hand, both were conservative men who took their family descent very seriously, and it is likely they wrote in good faith.\\ | One thing to remember is that multiple secondary sources don’t necessarily increase reliability as often one source is copied from the other without further checking with original sources (such as births, deaths and marriage registers, letters written at the time, photographs etc).((My impression is that the more recent family information/stories were taken from TLM-P's jottings; these appear the basis for his son Robert's pamphlet which in turn appears the basis for Thomas B. M-Ps.)) For the older sections, much of the information derives from Burke’s various books about lines of descent of families from royalty, the aristocracy, and the gentry. Noble descent was a serious matter at a time when hereditary titles had huge social, economic and political benefits. Certainly TLM-P had a copy of John & John B. Burke's //A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland: M to Z//, London: Henry Colburn Publisher, 1846. (with its entry ‘Prior of Essex, and of Rathdowney, Queen’s County'), adding his children by hand.((Provenance: Judith Godden)) He also prided himself on his ('Murray-Prior of Maroon') entry in Burke's //Colonial Gentry// even though many considered 'colonial' and 'gentry' a contradiction and that book's accuracy was, in historian Christine Wright's words,'much maligned then and since'.((Bernard Burke, //A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry//,Melbourne: E.A. Petherick, 1891-1895; Christine Wright, //Wellington's Men in Australia: Peninsula war and the making of empire c.1820-40//, Houndsmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.48-49.)) Given all of Burke's books are fallible, please let us know if you find errors after checking with original records. A challenge to us all is to find out more, and see how much we can verify. The fun and interest lie in more than the bare details of people's lives, and this is where our sources are more unreliable – and some stories recorded by step-cousins Robert M-P and Thomas Bertram M-P, might be better called gossip. On the other hand, both were conservative men who took their family descent very seriously, and it is likely they wrote in good faith.\\ |
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| Yes this history is inherently patriarchal. We are tracing a family name primarily passed on through the eldest son (along with inheritance of land through [[wp>primogeniture|primogeniture]] - which was the legal principle for land inheritance in NSW until 1862.((Rutherford, Jennifer, 'The After Silence of the Son/g', //The Australian Feminist Law Journal//, Vol. 33, December 201, pp.3-18.)) Even when the inheritance jumps to the female line (from the Priors to the more sober Murrays), it goes to the oldest son. There is also markedly less information about the women, especially the further back we go, but we do all we can to do them justice.\\ | Yes, this history **is** inherently patriarchal. We are tracing a family name primarily passed on through the eldest son (along with inheritance of land through [[wp>primogeniture|primogeniture]] - which was the legal principle for land inheritance in NSW from 1788 until 1862.((Rutherford, Jennifer, 'The After Silence of the Son/g', //The Australian Feminist Law Journal//, Vol. 33, December 201, pp.3-18.)) Even when the inheritance jumps to the female line (from the Priors to the more sober Murrays), it goes to the oldest son. There is also markedly less information about the women, especially the further back we go, but we do all we can to do them justice.\\ |
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| One feature of note is how many of the men married twice, with their first wife dying relatively young. We don't know if they all died due to childbirth, but we do know that childbirth before the mid-1900s was extremely dangerous, e.g. in England and Wales in the mid-1850s, for every 200 births, 1 mother died.((Irvine Loudon, 'Maternal Mortality 1880–1950. Some Regional and International Comparisons' //Social History of Medicine//, 1:2, August 1988, pp.183–228, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/1.2.183))\\ | One feature of note is how many of the men married twice, with their first wife dying relatively young. We don't know if they all died due to childbirth, but we do know that childbirth before the mid-1900s was extremely dangerous, e.g. in England and Wales in the mid-1850s, for every 200 births, 1 mother died.((Irvine Loudon, 'Maternal Mortality 1880–1950. Some Regional and International Comparisons' //Social History of Medicine//, 1:2, August 1988, pp.183–228, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/1.2.183))\\ |
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| ==== I'm a member of the family: why aren't I named? ==== | ==== I'm a member of the family: why aren't I named? ==== |
| It's because you are alive, so that's the good news! We haven't given details of living people due to the possibility of identity thief. We have written a considerable amount about these latest generations which is available to the immediate family. | It's because you are alive, so that's the good news! We haven't given details of living people due to the possibility of identity thief. Or perhaps you are concerned about other omissions - if so, please get in touch using the [[feedback_page|Feedback]] page. |
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| ==== Thomas M-Ps ==== | ==== Thomas M-Ps ==== |
| A glance at the sidebar of this family history reveals one of the most remarkable aspects of this line of the Murray-Priors: the tradition of naming the eldest son Thomas. It started with the Prior family, with the first known Thomas Prior living in the early 1300s, as described in [[priors_in_england|]]. Some 300 years later, another Thomas Prior moved to Ireland and, with his son Thomas, established the family there - see [[priors_in_ireland_1636-c.1803]]. The most famous in the family, another [[thomas_prior_m-p_family_founder|Thomas (Tom) Prior ]], left a will which ensured his nephew changed his surname from Murray to Prior. He did, but did all he could to ensure the Murrays were not forgotten. After that, there was a John and an Andrew (Murray?) Prior, then Thomas (Murray?) Prior, born in 1773. \\ | A glance at the sidebar of this family history reveals one of the most remarkable aspects of this line of the Murray-Priors: the tradition of naming the eldest son Thomas. It started with the Prior family, with the first known Thomas Prior living in the early 1300s, as described in [[priors_in_england|]]. Some 300 years later, another Thomas Prior moved to Ireland and, with his son Thomas, established the family there - see [[priors_in_ireland_1636-c.1803]]. The most famous in the family, another [[thomas_prior_m-p_family_founder|Thomas (Tom) Prior ]], left a will which ensured his nephew changed his surname from Murray to Prior. He did, but did all he could to ensure the Murrays were not forgotten. After that, there was a John and an Andrew (Murray?) Prior, then Thomas (Murray?) Prior, born in 1773. \\ |
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| Since that Thomas was born in 1773, there has been an unbroken line of elder surviving sons called Thomas. Perhaps as remarkable, given the past's high infant mortality, is that all those Thomases survived to reach adulthood and have a son Thomas. It is a tradition that has resulted in nine generations of an unbroken line of Thomas Priors/Murray-Priors. \\ | Since that Thomas was born in 1773, there has been an unbroken line of elder surviving sons called Thomas. Perhaps as remarkable, given the past's high infant mortality, is that all those Thomases survived to reach adulthood and have a son Thomas. It is a tradition that has resulted in nine generations of an unbroken line of Thomas Priors/Murray-Priors. Not that it was uncontested by some of the boys' mothers! TLM-P's grandson was baptised Thomas Bertram, but his mother tried 'to call him Bertie, but the sense of the family is against her, & everyone else calls him Tom.'((Nora M-P to Rosa Praed, 3 December 1883, Praed papers, John Oxley Library.)) He grew up answering to Tom and duly called his eldest son Thomas.\\ |
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