My Family Tree

NSW Birth 1145/1844 V18441145 62 GRIFFITH, MARY Parents: HUGH & UNKNOWN
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Find A Grave Memorial# 124770066
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Mary Cain was born amidst the apparent frontier chaos of the 1840s. She has been described as a ‘larger-than-life-figure’ who grew to create a unique legacy for the Aboriginal people of Coonabarabran.
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Robertson Mail (NSW : Friday 6 September 1929)
CHRISTENED IN THE SADDLE.
When she was 14 years of age, Mrs. Mary Jane Cain, of BurraBee Dee Mission Station, Coonabarabran, who died recently at the age of 85 years, was taken in to Mudgee to be christened. The priest had left the town, but was overtaken on the road between Mudgee and Coonabarabran, and there, with the girl sitting in her saddle, the rite was performed. Among Mrs. Cain's vivid recollections, was that of the rush to the Ophir goldfields. At the time, she often said, the big squatters were supplanting black labor with Chinese, but with the gold discovery the Celes- tials decamped, leaving the flocks they were shepherding to the mercy of the dingoes. Serious losses soon followed, and, in desperation, the squatters went cap in hand to the blacks, and induced them to come to the rescue. Thereafter sheep-owners steered clear of Chinese labor.
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Western Age (Dubbo, NSW : Thursday 22 August 1929)
Wonderful Woman The Late Mrs. Mary Cain First Half-Caste Born on Castlereagh CHRISTENED ON HORSE-BACK ? When the late Mrs. Mary Jane Cain died recently at Burra-Bee-Dee Mission Station there was snapped a link between Coonabarabran as it is to-day and times when full-blooded aboriginals were ... 931 words
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The North Western Courier (Narrabri, NSW : Monday 11 August 1947)
Aboriginal names and meanings submitted by the late Mrs. Mary Jane Cain, of Coonabarabran : - I have selected a few well-known names of a fairly large list, which was published in the official souvenir of March, 1934, in Back to Coonabarabran Week. Mrs. Cain was born at Toorawandi on February 26th., 1844. Her father, Eugene Griffin, was an Irishman who had fought in the Peninsula War; her mother Jane was a full-blooded aboriginal woman. Mrs. Cain was brought up by a Mr. Cox, of Mudgee. The parents of Mrs. Cain, in the fifties worked on Bomera Station, which at the time belonged to. Mr. Hale and Mr. Durham. The mother shepherded the sheep whilst the father did general work, farmed, grew and harvested -wheat, tobacco, etc.; and attended to the cattle.
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Extract from Cultural Excursion to Burra Bee Dee.
While at Burra Bee Dee, we visited the cemetery where most of our past elders and family are buried to pay our respects. As we walked around the cemetery we discovered the grave of Mary-Jane Cain - the founder of Burra Bee Dee, and her daughter, Queenie Robinson.
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Mary Jane Cain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Mary Jane Griffin
February 18, 1844
Toorawandi Station, NSW. [Spelling might be Toorawindi]
Died 29 July 1929 (aged 85)
Burra Bee Dee, NSW
Nationality Australian
Other names Queenie Cain
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Mary Jane Cain (1844–1929) was an Aboriginal Australian woman who lived in the Coonabarabran region of New South Wales. She was born in 1844 and was instrumental in the establishment of the Burra Bee Dee Aboriginal Reserve in 1912 and came to be known as the Queen of Burrabeedee or "Queenie Cain".
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Biography
Mary Jane was the daughter of Jinnie Griffin a full blooded aboriginal woman and Irishman Eugene Griffin. She was born in 1844 on Toorawandi Station. After a brief marriage to James Budsworth, Mary Jane married head stockman George William Cain in 1865.

Much of what is known about the life of Mary Jane Cain was recorded in oral history interviews conducted by Margaret Somerville with four of her descendents—Marie Dundas, May Mead, Janet Robinson and Maureen Sulter. Somerville described Mary as "the woman who straddles two eras of history—the time before white settlement of this land and the time after. She moves between two worlds of such profound difference, and she gives her people the strength to move forward. 'We gotta make it good for ourselves to go forward, the people say. How can I move across this space between Nganyinytja and me?'. After the death of her mother, Jinnie Griffin, in 1882, Mary became the leader of her community and was known to everyone as "Queenie" Cain.

Mary Jane Cain petitioned the government and as a result Burra Bee Dee Aboriginal Reserve (no. 47521) was gazetted on 21 February 1912, it included a small parcel of land at Forky Mountain that had already been granted to Mary and her family by Queen Victoria.

Mary Jane Cain died at Burra Bee Dee, Coonabarabran, NSW on 29 July 1929 aged 85.
Language

Mary Jane Cain spoke a local indigenous language, possibly Gamilaraay, and a manuscript compiled by Mary is held at the State Library of New South Wales containing wordlists of place names and the natural environment.
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The bridge over the Castlereagh River is named the 'Mary Jane Cain Bridge'
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Mary Jane Cain, the daughter of Jinnie and Eugene Griffin, was born at Toorawindi in 1844. She grew to become a shepherd and eventually took on the role of ‘Queen of the Aborigines’. Her mother Jinnie had been a consort of King Cuttabush (refer to Section 2.1) and it has been assumed that she carried some authority from this relationship. She clearly held a high level of personal authority to whom ‘even Mr Neilson and them [government authorities]’ listened to. A very capable woman Mary arranged a landholding at Forky Mountain for herself and her family. This place became a refuge and Aboriginal people came there from all over the northwest392. She died in Coonabarabran in 1929393, an article in the Coonabarabran Times describing the high regard in which she was held throughout the region:
"Mrs Cain was known and loved by all from a very great distance around this district and outside it, and a word against her, had anyone been foolish enough to utter it, would have evoked the undying hostility of the oldest and most respected families of the North Western slopes and Central West. Many of today’s most powerful scions of the House of Merino were nursed or fondled by her in their young days and entertain feelings of fierce and belligerent affection it would be good not to challenge."

Source: Thematic History of the former Coonabarabran Shire 2006 <http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/NationalParks/parkHeritage.aspx?id=N0035>
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HISTORY

The first European record of the Aboriginal people of the district comes from the journals of John Oxley who passed through in August 1818. Oxley, apparently depressed by the difficulty of his passage through ‘these desolate wilds’, refers a number of times to ‘the fires of the natives’ who ‘attend on our motions pretty closely’ and ‘the natives who continue in our vicinity unheeded and unheeding’.

As squatters began to move into the country from the 1830s, starting a struggle for resources, tensions began to be recorded. Connor recounts a series of incidents in 1837 that led to a punitive expedition by the NSW Mounted Police. Many of the first European settlers in the region were assigned convicts who worked as shepherds and labourers for the squatters. Convicts were sent with flocks of sheep beyond the limits of the colony such as those surrounding the Warrumbungle Mountains. Convicts and ex-convicts were in many cases the first Europeans with whom Aboriginal people had substantial contact.

Colonial governments encouraged assignment of convicts as it was a far cheaper method of keeping them than maintaining them in penitentiaries or on road gangs. In 1837 it cost £17 per year to keep a convict on a chain gang. A convict on assignment cost £4.48 Landholders reaped the benefit of the cheap labour force provided by assigned convicts to build up their fortunes.

In her account of the Aboriginal people of Coonabarabran Somerville quoted from Police Sergeant Ewing’s diary recordings of the tales he had learned as a child from Jinnie Griffin. These recordings include an account of a battle between the local Aboriginal people and a raiding party from the area now known as Cassilis. The raiding party was chased by the men of the local group to caves above the present day Coonabarabran and slaughtered. This story contains many elements of what is considered to be the traditional pattern of warfare between Aboriginal groups, the aim of which was ‘to continually assert the superiority of one’s groups over neighbouring groups’.

Ewing recorded other reminiscences of Aboriginal people, including accounts of raiding parties that were later used by author Ion Idress in developing works of historical fiction such as The Red Chief of the Gunnedah Tribe. Ewing’s papers include the following description of the Coonabarabran group:

They are numerous that Coonabarabran tribe and have their camps large ones miles apart – but there are small parties camped in numerous places – some within a day’s walk of here up in the mountains there Warrumbungles there are many many caves – great ones that our whole tribe could fill – up there in the daylight you could see a man coming up the mountain a half day before he could get up to you. … we came down to the scrubby land and day after day watched parties of women and children leave camp to go fishing – musselling in creeks and rivers and hunting small game.

Kamilaroi (Gamilaraay) women were being abducted by stockmen and this probably led Kamilaroi men to kill Frederick Harrington in June at Charles Purcell’s station in the Warrumbungles. On 21 September Lieutenant George Cobban of the 50th Regiment, commanding the Hunter River division of the Mounted Police, was ordered to look for Harrington’s killers.

During the same period Aboriginal people began to work on the properties being developed by the settlers. Mary Cain, who was born at Toorawindi in 1844, recalled that, during the gold rushes of the 1850s, European workers left the pastoral stations to head to the goldfields. She noted that James Orr and Robert Campbell of Borah station tried labour from India. This was unsuccessful and Orr later employed Chinese workers. These were more successful but Aboriginal people ‘made the best servants … and were kindly treated’.

Ebenezer Orr leased a number of properties around Yaminbah Creek. He readily employed Aboriginal people and particularly favoured women whom he dressed in red flannel. He lived with at least two of these shepherdesses in a house he built on Yaminba Creek.

Mary Cain was born amidst the apparent frontier chaos of the 1840s. She has been described as a ‘larger-than-life-figure’ who grew to create a unique legacy for the Aboriginal people of Coonabarabran. She was born to Jinnie and Eugene Griffin and grew up to be a shepherd. Jinnie was described by Sergeant Ewing as ‘the consort of King Cutttabush of the Coonabarabran blacks, a small scattered wandering band that is still represented at Burrabeedee Mission Station’. Burra Bee Dee Mission was founded in 1908

Mary married George Cain, a shearer, and by 1892 was living with George and their five children at Forky Mountain north of Coonabarabran. She had agitated for recognition of ownership of the 400 acres of land that she and George had taken up and were developing as a farm. Forked Mountain Station was gazetted on 6 February 1892.

Mary Jane Cain wrote to Queen Victoria on numerous occasions requesting that the land was to be granted to her. Queen Victoria granted that Burra Bee Dee or part thereof be handed to Mary Jane Cain and Queen Victoria requested that Mary Jane was to manage the property and was required to provide a place for the Dark people to live on

The story of Burrabeedee is quite a different one from the usual story of Aboriginal people being forced into reserves and missions and governed by officialdom beyond their control. In Mary Jane’s case, she claimed the land on behalf of her family, and people came from all around the district when they heard ‘she had made a reserve for the dark people’.

Mary Cain not only founded Burrabeedee but also was an influential and respected citizen of Coonabarabran from whom other civic leaders sought advice. Burrabeedee has stood as an early example of Aboriginal people taking responsibility for their own wellbeing within a colonial economy.

After World War I revocation of Aboriginal farms commenced and there was a ‘sudden acceleration of taking Aboriginal children from their families’.
Burrabeedee was subsumed into the government controlled welfare system and the buildings eventually sold off .

A number of Aboriginal men from the district had served in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I. These included Tommy Fuller of Baradine who was wounded at Passchendaele in 1917 and Bill Chatfield who served in the Light Horse.

During the 1950s the official policy of governments changed from protection to assimilation. Changes in administration encouraged the residents of Burrabeedee to move into Coonabarabran.

In 1954 the school at Burrabeedee closed down and over succeeding years the settlement was gradually dismantled by the government. Some houses and the school were sold off and moved on to various properties around Coonabarabran.

An ‘Aborigines Reserve’ was set aside in Portion of the Town of Coonabarabran between North, Namoi and White Streets. The church from Burrabeedee was relocated to the new Aboriginal housing project in Coonabarabran known as Gunnedah Hill.

Not all Aboriginal people lived at Burrabeedee. Many families lived and worked in the townships of the shire, including Baradine and Coonabarabran. Somerville recounted the recollections of some of these people who experienced life on the fringes of the community. Others lived within the township of Coonabarabran.
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BOOK
The Sun Dancin': People and Place in Coonabarabran
Marie Dundas
Aboriginal Studies Press, Jan 1, 1994 - Biography & Autobiography - 211 pages
History of Forky Mountain Reserve Burrabeedee Mission from the 1880s until people left under the influence of the assimilation policy of the 1950s; history of place told through histories of four women; Janet Robinson, May Mead , Marie Dundas, Maureen Sulter, three of whom are great -granddaughters of Mary Jane Cain, Queen of Burrabeedee; archaeological record of the area and womens knowledge and reaction to archaeological studies; contact history; place names and remnant language knowledge; biography of Mary Jane Cain based on oral history, memories and records; memories of Forky Mountain Reserve; missionaries; life on mission; movement to towns after mission closed; Burrabeedee today and discussion by women on what should happen to the site, particularly the cemetery.
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Mary Jane Cain says in her manuscript "A man named Joseph Stafford who was partners with her father (Eugene Griffin) during this time also settled at Bomera - he married also a Miss Budsworth. Stafford then went to the Tooran diggings (Turon).
Stafford later came back and was a shepherd at Bomara.
Joseph Stafford was a convict who arrived in 1832 on the "City of Edinburgh" from Cork.
Offence - stealing money - sentenced to 7 years.
Joseph Stafford died 3/2/1871 at Bomera and is buried at Bomera. He was 62 years old.