The Sweeney Family of Culla Hill

The Sweeney Family of Culla Hill, Pioneers of Eltham, Victoria, Australia

Thomas Sweeney (1803-1867) has long been honoured as a pioneer settler of the area in the District of Port Phillip (later Victoria) which came to be called Eltham. Many years of research have revealed a lot about his character and his life. He must have possessed a great determination to survive and succeed, and crammed into his 64 years a range of experiences at which we can only marvel.

From the records the impression is of an enterprising, hardworking man with a keen sense of justice. He died a respected member of the community and left to his wife Margaret and their family 418 acres of land, including Culla Hill, a place of significance for all Sweeney descendants. While such an acreage might have been considered a modest holding in Australia at that time, for tenant farmers in Ireland in the early nineteenth century it would have been seen as a sizeable estate.

Thomas was born in Tipperary in 1803, the son of Patrick Sweeney and Mary Kilmartin. Evidence suggests that Patrick belonged to a group of Sweeney families in Tipperary North. They are recorded as living in the Templemore, Roscrea area with places such as Killea and Cournaganeen having notable family groups. Cournaganeen is on the border of the townland of Cullahill, a place of dramatic consequences for Thomas Sweeney.

In the continuing struggle against domination and the injustices of the land tenure system, the Irish peasantry formed guerrilla organizations. Most famous were the Whiteboys who first came into being around 1712 in Connaught. After a brief period of activity, the movement died away for some fifty years. The name came from members wearing white shirts and white linen bands around their heads. In the counties of Tipperary, Cork, Limerick and Waterford in the province of Munster, Whiteboyism or Ribbonism re-emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century and continued until the famine of the 1840s virtually destroyed the class of rural poor who supported it.

Thomas Sweeney and Michael Connors attacked the Guider/Guyder house at Cullahill, Parish of Bourney, Tipperary North in early March 1823 and were subsequently captured. It seems likely that Patrick Guider was part of a plan to create positive publicity for the newly formed Constabulary Police. Sweeney and Connors were tried at the 1823 Spring Assizes held in Clonmel. On Tuesday, March 25 they were convicted of a felonious assault on a house and sentenced to be hanged on the 26th of April. This was subsequently commuted to Life Transportation to New South Wales.

This is the start of the story, but there is so much more, all of which is to be found in Peter Cuffley’s book THE SWEENEY FAMILY OF ‘CULLA HILL’ ELTHAM.