The Meehan-Coonan Connection.

Through my Sheridan-Bourke family history there always ran the story that the Coonan family of Yea were somehow connected to our family through the Bourke line, and in the 1990s I wrote a generic letter to the Coonans I found in the phone book from the Yea area to attempt to finally place them in our family tree.
One of these letters was passed on to one of the loveliest ladies I have ever had the pleasure of "meeting"...Mary Waters, nee Coonan...and in our exchange of letters she was a wonderful help in filling in the gaps in the Bourke-Meehan-Coonan story.
The relationship was simple enough....when Paddy Bourke's parents, John Bourke and Judith Meehan Bourke, sailed to Victoria on the 'Duchess of Northumberland' in 1841, Judith's brother Patrick Meehan was also on the ship.He married an Irish girl named Mary Mockler in Melbourne in 1853, and their ony surviving daughter, Mary Honora Meehan, married Michael Coonan.
That is the relationship in a nutshell, but researching the Meehan-Coonan story has been an amazing experience. Their family story involves tragedies of epic proportions...suicide by strychnine, a young mother dying in a 'Lunatic Asylum', orphaned children and even suspected murder of a wife by her husband. Such sad stories emerged, but also stories of strength and family ties as people coped with the tragedies as best they could.
I will begin with the story of Paddy Meehan and his poor young bride Mary Mockler, and then deal with the Coonan family and their incredible history.