John McPhee Family - Blue Vapours

John McPhee Family
Samuel and Catherine Loney
Port Phillip & Wimmera Pioneers
Reprinted from Volume IV of
Pioneer Profiles, A Port Phillip Pioneers
Group Project, Compiled by Maree A.
Posthuma.
In 1839, a young couple, Samuel and
Catherine Loney, left their home in Tipperary,
Ireland to come to the Port Phillip District.
Samuel Loney had married Catherine
Landrigan on 1 August, 1839, in St Mary’s
Church, Cloqheen, in the Parish of Ballylooby.
Sometimes Catherine’s name was written
as Lonnergan. The young married couple
arrived on the “Westminister” to the Port
Phillip District on 16 December, 1839, in the
first year of the administration of Charles
La Trobe, and also the year of the arrival in
Melbourne of the first Catholic priest of the
district, Rev. B. Geoghegan. The Loneys were
devout Catholics. Samuel Loney is said to
have taught himself to read by following the
words in the Bible, esp-ecially the Gospels,
which he knew so well.
Samuel Loney purchased land in Melbourne,
between Lonsdale Street and Little Bourke
Street, along a laneway called Cohen Place
today: in the 1860’s it was called Ferguson’s
Parade and by 1870 it was called Brown’s
lane. It is East from Exhibition Street. Loney
mortgaged the property twice, in 1866 and
1869, repaying the mortgage each time. He
sold the land in 1871 for 205 Pounds. Today
on part of this property stands the Chinese
Museum. Loney owned three cottages on the
land.
Samuel Loney followed his occupation as a
tailor for nine years in the infant settlement
of Melbourne, and Catherine was a mantle
maker, or dressmaker, and then they ventured
northwards, where Samuel took a position
with Firebrace, owner at the time of the
Vectis Station. He worked for the Wilson
Brothers, when the Vectis Station and estates
came to that family. One of Loney’s earliest
appointments was to Dooen whence the
family traveled by bullock dray, and the place
where the Loneys lived in 1851 at Dooen was
known as Loney’s Corner at the Longeronong
Road intersection, up until this was recorded
in the 1940’s.
As a shepherd for the Wilsons, Samuel Loney
had to shift continually from one outpost to
another, to Hindmarsh, Albacutya, Dimboola,
St Arnaud, Avoca, Darragan, Norton Creek,
and Nurrabiel, and he always took his wife
and small children along with him. Alicia,
Elizabeth, Jane and Bridget had been born
in those Melbourne years. Many times he
had to walk between these distant work
places. To guard against highwaymen on
these lonely journeys, Sam and Catherine
hid gold coins in the dripping, which they
carried in jam tins dangling from their covered
wagon. Jane Loney had been born in 1842,
and Bridget Loney was born on 12 June, 1845,
and baptized by Father Richard Walsh in Saint
Francis Church in Melbourne on 23 June 1845.
On 23 June, 1995, a group of grand-children of
Bridget Loney’s, principally from the McPhee
and Murphy families, gathered to attend Mass
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