Shared histories surface at last
23.01.2010
By: TONY KOCH
Two families have uncovered an extraordinary link
WHEN 85-year-old Monica Barton read the reminiscences of Aboriginal academic Stephen Hagan in The Australian about his Irish great-grandfather, her jaw dropped.
The Joseph Hagan he was describing had the same name as Barton's father, was the same age and hailed from the same town in the Queensland outback, Birdsville, where she had been raised.
What's more, Joseph Hagan had operated a pack horse mail-run like her dad's and shared his unfortunate history with the cattle station Alton Downs, which he lost in the teeth of a drought.
The similarities added up to more than coincidence for Mrs Barton, of Brisbane, so she decided to do some digging. She called in her son, John, 59, a former investigative journalist and television current affairs presenter, and he got in touch with Stephen Hagan, 50, in Toowoomba.
They uncovered an extraordinary story of shared heritage between the two sides of the family, previously unknown to each other. But one difference stood out: Stephen Hagan's people are proudly Aboriginal and dark-skinned; Mrs Barton's are descended from pearly Celtic stock.
The key to the mystery turned out to be a tribal Aboriginal woman named Trella, who was Joseph Hagan's young lover all those years ago. In 1895, Trella bore him a son, Albert: Professor Hagan's paternal grandfather.
``Joseph Hagan was present at the birth and consented to his surname being provided on the official birth registration as the father of the child,'' Professor Hagan told The Weekend Australian, when he met last week with the Bartons.
``When Albert grew to adulthood, he married an Aboriginal woman, Jessie Lewis, and he lived and worked in the far southwest in the pastoral industry. My father, Jim, was one of his sons, born outside Bourke in 1932, and the family then moved back to Cunnamulla and lived as fringe dwellers. I was born in Cunnamulla in 1959, so the Irishman Joseph Hagan was my great-grandfather.''
Mrs Barton, nee Hagan, is the youngest of 13 children, only four of whom are still alive. Her side of the family is descended from Joseph and his wife, Blanche Gaden, whom he courted and married after the relationship with Trella ended.
Neither side of the family had any idea about this shared chapter of their history until Mr Barton and Professor Hagan began comparing notes.
``When I read in the paper about the Hagans I realised the coincidences were amazing, and that's when I got in touch with John,'' Mrs Barton said.
She recalls milking 40 goats each morning before going to school in Birdsville, and distributing the milk locally, including to the police officer.
She married in 1940 and had six children with her late husband, Ben, who died in 1978. He had been a prisoner-or-war of the Japanese for three and a half years.
Mr Barton was a pioneer in current affairs reporting in Australia and was a media ownership partner of well-known businessman Des Power. He is now director of sport at Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union based in Kuala Lumpur and had the responsibility of running television coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, providing footage for 104 client countries.
Mr Hagan is a well-known Aboriginal social commentator, author and university lecturer in Toowoomba. He is a former Australian Aboriginal of the Year.
There is now a neat symmetry to the families coming together. Hagan's nephew, Joel is an outstanding athlete, and at age 13 is the youngest player to be signed by the Broncos NRL team. He is attending the prestigious Nudgee College in Brisbane this year. Mr Barton's 17-year-old son, Sam Hagan Barton, is also enrolled at the college.
