Story begins when the widow wed farm-hand

I WOULD be most grateful if any of your readers could help me trace my Irish forbears.

Dennis McDonald was a farmer from Co Tipperary who married a Mary Brownlee.

A son, Thomas Peter, was born around 1795.

After the death of Thomas Peter’s father, his mother married the farm-hand. This caused Thomas Peter to leave Ireland at age 20. He was a Catholic.

As a qualified carpenter, he made his way from Killarney to South Africa in or about 1813 with only his carpentry tools and a half-crown in his pocket.

From Cape Town, he travelled to Riversdale where he did carpentry on a farm. He married the farmer’s daughter, Elizabeth Catharina van Wyk.

Thomas Peter did various carpentry assignments, including the woodwork for a house and church at the Carmel Mission Station in the (then) Free State for French missionary Jean LP Lemue, in 1847. Thomas Peter had a son, also Thomas Peter, who fathered Roelof Daniel McDonald, my grandfather.

We would welcome any information on Dennis and Mary McDonald (Brownlee) as only their names and county where they farmed are known to us.

Rina Margaretha Mans

8 Periwinkle Avenue

Vermont

7201South Africa.

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