Ellen Brown (c1803-1847)

Ellen Brown was born in approximately 1803 in Ireland. The names of his parents and siblings are currently unknown.

Marriage
Ellen married on the 29th February 1824 at East Schull, Cork to Bartholomew Hayes. The record for the marriage lists his name as ‘Batt Heas’. Witnesses to the marriage were a John Heas and John Brown, most likely relations of the couple. Both Bartholmew and Ellen were recorded as Roman Catholic.

Bartholomew’s surname is occassionally recorded as 'Heas' and ‘Hays’ on parish records.

Children
Bartholomew was a cooper (barrel maker) and he and Ellen settled in the Schull area.

Two known children are recorded for the couple, but there are likely there are others whose baptisms have not been located, or were not recorded. Son Daniel was baptised on 11th September 1825 at East Schull with a ‘Corns’ Driscoll and Bridget Heas recorded as his sponsor. Mary was baptised on 26th March 1836, some 10 years later, in the Roman Catholic Church at Goleen, West Schull, with a ‘Jer’ and Joan Donovan as her sponsors.

Potato Famine
It appears that Ellen and family were still in the Schull area of Cork when the Potato Famine gripped the region in the 1840s. Letters written by a Rev. F. F. Trench in March of 1847, describe what the situation was like in Schull:-

'''In travelling through the parishes of East and West Schull, containing the villages of Ballydehob and Schull, and a population of about 16,000 still living, I did not see a child playing in the streets or on the roads; no children are to be seen outside the doors but a few sick and dying children. I made this same remark in Bantry, and along the road for twenty miles leading to it. I did not see a child in the streets, and this I remarked to several persons, clergy and magistrates, whose experience was the same as my own. ''

'''In the districts which are now being depopulated by starvation, coffins are only used for the more wealthy. In every village the manufacture was remarkable at the doors of the carpenters' houses, and in the country parts I often met coffins carried on the backs of women, and boards for making coffins. At Glengariff, strange to say, the Roman Catholic Chapel is turned into a place for making coffins. Seeing two men at work there, I went in, in company with Rev. Mr. Morgan, the curate of the parish. I said to one of the carpenters, "What are you making, boys?" "Coffins and wheelbarrows, Sir;" and I saw the planks marked out for the sawyer to the length of coffins. At Bantry, I saw lying at the corner of one of the streets, two coffins for the use of the poor; they call them "trap coffins;" the bottom is supported by hinges at one side, and a hook and eye at the other. In these coffins the poor are carried to the grave, or rather to a large pit, which I saw at a little distance from the road, and the bodies are dropped into it. On my return to the spot where I first saw these two coffins, I found them occupied with corpses, and placed on a car about to be drawn by a horse to the grave. Another coffin of the same kind had been sent in another direction for another body; but I was told in this district the majority were taken to the grave without any coffin, and buried in their rags: in some instances even the rags are taken from the corpse to cover some still living body; but in the neighbourhood and parish of Schull, coffins are not thought of by the very poor, and funerals are unknown amongst them. At Ballydehob, Mr. and Miss Noble both informed me that on the morning of the day I arrived, they had seen five dead bodies carried through the village in a cart with a little straw under and over them.''

'That bodies are left in the fields for weeks unburied is a matter perfectly certain, and also that they have been left unburied in houses so long that they have been eaten by rats, and indeed so long that they could not be buried, and it became necessary to burn the houses over the bodies.

Death
An official record of Ellen’s death has not been found, but it is assumed that she died during the Potato Famine. Her husband is believe to have died also. This is assumed by the transport of their daughter, Mary, to South Australia, as an Irish Potato Famine orphan in 1847.

Children

 * colspan="3" bgcolor="#FFfce0" style="color: #000000;" |Children of Bartholomew & Ellen Hayes