Mary Ann McQuillan : Short Biography

Mary Ann McQuillan was baptised on 25 January 1838 in the parish of Aghaderg in Country Down.https://registers.nli.ie/  Her parents are recorded as Chas. and Ellen McQuillan who, as gleaned from the births her eleven siblings located so far, are Charles McQuillan and Ellen Doran, the birth details for whom are as yet undiscovered, or are lost to the ravages of time. Charles and Ellen (also called Eleanor and Hellen on occasion) had another child, James, baptised in Aghaderg parish on 9 October 1839. The actual church where the baptism took place remains an area of ongoing research as it would seem that at this time there were two Roman Catholic places of worship in the parish of Aghaderg. Mary Ann and James' parents are recorded in a much later baptism record for another child in Scotland, as having been married on 12 November 1835 in Annaghlone, Country Down but this primary source detail is yet to be sighted by the writer.

Between the births of son James and the next child Ellen, in October 1841, the young McQuillan family moved to Millerston/Hogganfield area near Glasgow in Scotland. Mary Ann does not appear living with the family at the time of the 1841 Census for the area with only the parents and son James recorded at this place. It is possible that Mary Ann remained in Ireland with family as she is difficult to locate living with family in Scotland at the time of this census. The next Mary Ann appears in the record is at the time of her marriage to one Christoher Tiernan/Tierney. Their marriage is recorded as having taken place at the Roman Catholic Church in Ball Green, Strathaven, Avondale in Scotland. Mary Ann is listed as being a domestic servant and her parents clearly recorded as Charles and Ellen McQuillan. Her husband, Christopher Tiernan, also Irish-born, was working as a limestone miner, which coincidentally is the same occupation as Mary Ann's father, Charles. The places where the two men worked were 25 or so miles apart, Garnkirk in Cadder and Bellfield in Lesmahagow, so there is the possibility that they both worked in the same place at some point allowing Mary Ann and Christopher to meet each other prior to their 19 Jul 1862 marriage.

Christopher and Mary Ann had two children born to them while they lived in Bellfield, Lesmahagow - the first was Ellen Tiernan, who was born 21 October 1863 and the second was Catherine Tiernan, born 8 January 1865. But it was while they had these two infant girls, that the family must have heard about the opportunity to emigrate to New Zealand, and on 22 June 1865 when Catherine was but 5 months old, the family left Scotland for Auckland, New Zealand via the ship "Resolute". The family never returned to Scotland or Ireland and lived out the lives on New Zealand's North Island. 

Mary Ann died on 28 October 1921 in Tararu, Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula. She was 83 years old and had given birth to 12 children. None of her four sons left any children of their own, so the Tierney/Tiernan name did not thrive in the new country. The girls produced many children and grandchildren so Mary Ann's genes and, therefore, those of her parents Charles McQuillan and Ellen Doran remain in their descendants in New Zealand to this very day.