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The Abernathy family, which gives its name to Abernathy Close, was a prominent part of the early Mudgee community through the first part of the twentieth century.
James Abernathy came to Mudgee in 1890, at the age of 60, after a career as an overseer and a schoolmaster around Canberra.
A Dubliner born in 1830, Abernathy married Eliza Dougherty in Ireland before immigrating to Australia and working his way up from farmhand at Woden Station to overseer at Yarralumla.
In 1863, James Abernathy left the land and taught at St John the Baptist Anglican School at Canberra, before becoming the teacher at the Canberra Provisional School, the area’s first public school.
His wife was one of Canberra’s first postmistresses, and was the first woman in the area to own a sewing machine, which she taught the locals to operate.
She also bore ten children, Mary, Thomas, Kate, William, Ruth, James, Harold, Edward, Eliza and John.
Abernathy was a schoolmaster for 17 years, assisted by his four daughters.
He came to Mudgee in 1890, settling at Montrose, dying in 1920 at ‘Woodlands’, a property on the northern outskirts of Mudgee owned by his eldest son, William.
William Abernathy was a grazier and a government surveyor, and worked across the central west with wagon teams carrying his equipment and assistants.
He enlisted with the 2nd Infantry Regiment in 1879, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and was active in the Mudgee Agricultural Society and the Bligh Amateur Race Club.
A son, Percy, followed him into surveying and married the daughter of the Mudgee Inspector of Schools, while another son, Cecil, was a doctor in Annandale.
A daughter, Bertie, married local man Murray Gibson Lewis, had her wedding dress described in detail in the Sydney Morning Herald, and settled not far from Woodlands.
The theodolite used by the Abernathys in surveying was given to the Colonial Inn Museum collection in 1985 by a Mr Endacott, a family friend and long-term employee of the Abernathys.
Sources:
‘Canberra Past and Present’, from the Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1931.
‘Canberra School’, museum.hall.act.au Information on James Abernathy from The Stockman’s Hall of Fame Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 1936, for details of Bertie Abernathy’s wedding dress Research by the late Lillian Woolley for Mudgee Historical Society.
