I'm still on the hunt for records that show what happened to Francis Cavanagh in Australia. It turns out that there actually were censuses for New South Wales, one for 1841 and one for 1891. Unsurprisingly, I didn't find him on the 1891 census, that I know of anyway. He could have been one of the many John Cavanaghs who were enumerated if he decided to be known by one of the other names he was christened with. In 1891 he would have been 74 which would have been something to go by if there were ages recorded on that record. No ages were recorded. The 1841 census only named the head of household. I found a promising entry for Francis Cavanah in the Singleton District of Patrick's Plains. But once I parsed out the information given under the heading of Civil Condition, it didn't match the information for the Francis Cavanagh I was looking for as my Francis hadn't received his Ticket of Freedom until 1846 and that would have been evident under that heading.
I also hunted for Francis Cavannah (and variations) in Trove, the digitized newspapers of Australia which are a great source of information. In my hunt I turned up records of a bar fight in which Francis Cavanagh lost his life. Was that my guy? The report on the fight was picked up by a lot of newspapers and it didn't stop there. The other man involved in the fight, George Ross, was eventually tried for manslaughter. He was not convicted but the accounts also mentioned the young man's heartbroken mother - so definitely not the man I was searching for. Besides the incident happened in 1874 by which time the Francis I was looking for would have been in his late 50s, so not the young man described by the report in the newspaper.
There were other mentions of Francis Cavanagh in the newspapers, one about a theft involving a suspect of that name along with a J. Cunningham and D. Carr. The men were involved in moving furniture at Hyde Park Barracks when suspected of stealing. The two other men were found guilty but Cavanagh was discharged. The report was from 1845 and would probably not have interfered with the Ticket of Freedom that Francis was awarded in 1846 if they were the same man. Another story had a Francis Cavanagh charged with stealing a silver watch. This incident happened in 1848 and this Francis was also found not guilty. Then in 1860, The New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime reported a theft from John Bennett by John Hannan and Francis Cavanagh. The report added a description of Hannan and information about his age, wife and family. Unfortunately, there were no such details about Cavanagh who had been apprehended and released on bail. Then there were the reports from East Maitland of a Francis Cavanagh charged with letting a vicious dog roam. Was he the same Francis Cavanagh charged with letting his cattle stray into the streets, or the one charged with being drunk and disorderly in 1864? Those reports were also from East Maitland.
There is nothing in the information that I have found that I can actually tie to the Francis Cavanagh that I am hunting for. I have my suspicions about the reports from the 1840s about the man who was found not guilty of two different thefts as well as the report from the 1860s. Those could be about the man I'm looking for but there is nothing to really make the connection. I think it's time to check Legacy Family Tree Webinars to see if there are relevant webinars about searching in Australia.
Sources:
Ancestry – New South Wales 1841 and
1891 censuses
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