The surname Whelan (and the variant Phelan) is an anglicised derivation of the Gaelic name O'Faolain. Unfortunately for family history researchers, Whelan is not a rare name, being the seventy-ninth most common in Ireland. If the Phelans are added, it moves to forty-fourth place, encompassing about 12,000 persons in Ireland.

According to McLysaght's Irish Families, most of the Whelan families came from around the south-east counties of Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford and Carlow, their O'Faolain ancestors "having been Princes of the Decies before the Norman Invasion".

The oldest ancestor I have identified so far is Adam Whelan, apparently born in the early 1830s in County Tipperary.  On his children's birth certificates, Adam's own place of birth is shown as simply "Tipperary Ireland" or  "County Tipperary". This leaves no clues to the town or parish involved.  Searches of the parish records of Tipperary and Waterford have yielded no record of his birth or marriage. On his death certificate, Adam's parents are shown as "not known".

According to family tradition, in about 1853 Adam married Mary McInerney in Tipperary, whereupon Mary travelled to Melbourne and worked as a domestic servant for two years before Adam joined her.

The only evidence of Adam's arrival in Melbourne is the passenger list for the clipper Schomberg which sailed from Liverpool on 6 October 1855 on its maiden voyage . Eighty-two days later, on Boxing Day, the westerly current grounded the vessel near Cape Otway in western Victoria, where it soon broke up. The passengers were transferred to other vessels and ferried to Melbourne. Mary McInerney's arrival details are not yet known.

The couple's first child was conceived a few weeks after Adam's arrival in Melbourne, lending weight to the story that they had previously been acquainted in Ireland.

Adam and Mary lived in the West Melbourne area for the rest of their lives. Adam's occupation, as shown on most of the certificates of his children's births and deaths, and that of his own death certificate, is that of "laborer". One of his children's death certificates lists Adam as a "railway employee", others as a "bricklayer" or a "builder", and another (mistakenly) as a "farmer". 

Although Adam's death certificate, and his children's birth certificates, all show his name simply as "Adam", the death certificates for several of his children show their father as "Adam Francis"; this may have been a confusion between Adam senior and his son Adam Francis.

Mary McInerney's origins are equally uncertain. Her 1909 death certificate lists her parents as 'unknown McInerney" though her father's occupation is shown as "farmer". Whoever supplied the information for the certificate felt that Mary had married at age 15, but did not know where the marriage took place. I have not carried out searches for Mary's birth or marriage record - this is a difficult task as the name "McInerney" is capable of an almost infinite variety of spelling variants, and the name "Mary" is hardly uncommon!

Adam and Mary's first child Michael Joseph was born in 1856, and the second child Patrick in 1858. Ten other children followed in the period 1859 to 1874 - six of them girls. All survived to adult-hood, though Bridget and Joseph both died in their twenties from tuberculosis, and the same disease took Adam junior in his mid thirties.

Adam and Mary Whelan died in their West Melbourne home in 1895 and 1909 respectively. They are buried together in the Melbourne General Cemetery, with their three unmarrried children (Bridget, Joseph, Thomas), in an unmarked plot - one of several pioneer family graves which I plan to have properly marked.

My branch of the family descends from Adam and Mary's second son, Patrick Whelan. In 1884 Patrick married Margaret Clancy at St Mary's Catholic Church in West Melbourne; both were in their mid-twenties. Margaret was a daughter of Michael Clancy and Margaret Scanlan, who migrated to Melbourne from Spiddle near the town of Galway, Ireland, in about 1857. Margaret was apparently the first white woman born in the area of Keilor Plains, then very much bushland and now suburban Melbourne's Avondale Heights, on the banks of the Maribyrnong River.

Patrick and Margaret Whelan had eleven children - four of them girls. Their eighth child, Patrick, died in his early twenties, while the ninth child, Thomas, died in 1993 at the age of ninety-three. His mother Margaret had lived till her early nineties, whilst his father Patrick had passed eighty years of age. Patrick and Margaret are buried in Footscray Cemetery. Their sixth child Michael was my grandfather, who died in 1978.

Take a look at the family photo album

Detailed listing of Adam Whelan's descendants

If you would like to get in touch about this family line,