John Francis Mullens
1878-1940
Mary Ann Mullens nee Wright
1878-1952
This is believed to be my paternal grandparents. I say "believed to be" because I'm not certain. I'll explain.
Fact: Mary Ann Mullens nee Wright (1878-1952) is my father's mother. No verifiable proof exists, however, that she is the woman in this photo.
Fact: John Francis Mullens (1878-1940) was married to Mary Ann. This is definitely a photo of him. It is unknown, however, if he is the biological father of my father, Raymond Harry Wright (1907-1977).
I grew-up knowing a lot about my mother's family, as my maternal grandparents lived next door. I saw them daily up to the time of their deaths in 1960, when I was 10. Dad's parents, however, were rarely spoken of, presumably because John had been dead for nearly ten years when I was born and I was just 2 when Mary died. I grew-up knowing little of them. This continued until relatively recently, when I engaged a genealogist to look into my paternal ancestry.
What was Believed Prior to Engaging the Genealogist
Mary Ann Mullens nee Wright was Dad's mother. She was known in the family as Nanny Mullens. She was married to John Francis Mullens. She had previously been married to Thomas Wright. She had two sons by Thomas Wright: William Percival (1905-1937) and my father Raymond Harry (1907-1977). She also had two sons by John Mullens: Alan (1914-1988) and Reginald John (1920-1976). William was correctly acknowledged in the family as Dad's brother, whereas Alan and Reginald were referred to as Dad's half-brothers. Some time in the 1960s, my parents became estranged from Alan and Reginald and their families. We saw little of them thereafter. I can't recall my parents ever speaking ill of them. They simply seemed to disappear from our lives. I don't know why.
What the Genealogist Discovered
Mary Ann Mullens nee Wright (Mary)
Mary's family originally came to Australia from Leicestershire in England. The village of Thurmaston is cited and it is thought that the nearby village of Kegworth may have been another location, because later in life Mary gave the name of "Kegworth" to the house where she lived.
Mary's grandparents, Samuel Wright (1820-1899) and Elizabeth Wright nee Smith (1819-1894) departed Plymouth on 31 October 1841 aboard "Himalaya". They arrived at Port Phillip on 26 February 1842. They soon moved from Victoria to the Southern Highlands region of New South Wales. They belonged to a Christian sect called the Israelites, otherwise known as Beardies because they never cut their hair. They had 13 children. Their seventh child, Samuel (1846-1919), was Mary's father. He married Rebecca Mansfield (1859-1923) at Bong Bong on 1 January 1871. Rebecca was born in Balsham Cambridgeshire to John Mansfield and Margaret Casbolt. Samuel and Rebecca had ten children. Mary was their fourth child.
John Francis Mullens (John)
John's father, Robert Mullens (1837-1891) was born in Fermanagh, Ireland. He came to Australia as a child with his parents, Patrick Mullens and Frances McCabe, arriving in Sydney on 28 August 1841 aboard "Percy". They settled in the upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales. On 2 May 1877, Robert married Mary McGolrick (1855-1925), who was born in Fermanagh, Ireland. They married in Littleton, New Zealand, and returned to Australia soon after, settling in Brewarrina in 1878. They had nine children. John was their eldest child.
John & Mary: Their Story
Mary was born and raised in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, where her father was the inaugural caretaker of Fitzroy Falls. She was born into a strict, fundamentalist sect known as the Israelites (aka Beardies). At some time early in life, she is known to be living on a rural property at Jack's Creek near Willow Tree on the "fertile black soil Liverpool plains of the upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales", this being an exact quote by my father, describing where he was raised. She is known to have worked as a camp cook, travelling with the itinerant shearers throughout NSW during the sheep shearing season. It is presumed that the Willow Tree property was her home base when not travelling. In 1960, my father took my mother and I to Jack's Creek, describing it to us as the place of his childhood. I paddled in the creek. There were no buildings visible from the road.
It is not known how Mary came to be living on an isolated rural property in the north of NSW. Her family lived far away at the opposite end of the state, in southern NSW. However, given her later history, it might be presumed that perhaps she rebelled against her strict religious upbringing and sought to distance herself from the sect into which she had been born. It can't have been an easy life for a woman living alone, travelling the countryside in a horse-drawn wagon.
The first we hear of John is when he is arrested for bigamy on 9 November 1906. He was sentenced to nine months hard labour in Goulburn Gaol. The above photo is his police mugshot, taken at the time of his arrest (hand coloured by Kerry Wright). His first marriage was to Alice Mary Butt with whom he had daughter Ida Bertha Mary. His second (bigamous) marriage was to Elizabeth Maitland, which I'm guessing was annulled/negated as a matter of course.
While this was happening in John's life, Mary had already given birth to William and would soon have her second child, my father Raymond. It is the belief of the genealogist that John was the father of all four of Mary's sons and that the Thomas Wright named as her first husband on my parent's 1932 marriage certificate is a complete fiction. The genealogist could find no record that a Thomas Wright ever existed.
It is not known how John and Mary came to know each other, other than the fact that they both lived in northern NSW and it is presumed they met as a consequence of Mary's travels throughout that area, working as an itinerant camp cook. The genealogist believes that John and Mary were "close", on and off, throughout their young lives and that whenever they did "touch base", another son was the result. It is thought they only came to live together as a family when they moved to Sydney in the 1920s.
Mary and John were not married until 1938, long after Mary's four sons had been born, and just two years before John died in 1940. The genealogist could find no record that Mary had ever been married prior to then. Consequently, all four of Mary's sons were illegitimate - William in 1905, Raymond in 1907, Alan in 1914, Reginald in 1920.
There was also no record found of John and his first (legitimate) wife Alice ever legally divorcing and as Alice did not die until 1957, that would mean the marriage of John and Mary in 1938 was also bigamous.
It could be asked why this situation prevailed for so long between John and Mary. A valid question. The only explanation I can come up with is that perhaps Alice (and the Roman Catholic Church) wouldn't grant John a divorce.
My father, Raymond, told me that the family relocated to Narrabeen on Sydney's Northern Beaches in the 1920s. Given the new information provided by the genealogist, I can well imagine John and Mary arriving at their new suburban home and being readily accepted by their new neighbours as a wholesome married couple with four young sons. It is my belief that my father and the other three boys accepted the untruth told them by John and Mary, that Mary was married to Thomas Wright when she gave birth to William and Raymond, and married to John Mullens when she gave birth to Alan and Reginald. I have no way of knowing what explanation was presented as to what had become of the fictional Thomas.
John and Mary would have certainly kept secret the fact that they were unmarried. If revealed, they would have been ostracized for what was seen as "living in sin", a major disgrace and social taboo at the time. And they would not have been forthcoming in letting their new friends and neighbours know that their four children were born out of wedlock, for the same reason. Such matters were kept deeply secret and never revealed back then. In an era long before the advent of internet access to information held by the Office of the Registrar General and police criminal record checks, their secret was safe.
It is my belief that John created a new life for himself with Mary and the boys at the time of their relocation to Narrabeen in the 1920s, and had separated from his first wife Alice by then. I accept this because the genealogist discovered that Alice was living in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in 1919. This is known because it was revealed that the daughter of John and Alice, Ida Bertha Mary Mullens (b.1903), was sent to the Parramatta Training School in 1917, after she was found loitering outside the Soldiers' Club and for being uncontrollable. The genealogist's report states that Ida was ". . . conditionally discharged on 16 November 1919 into the care of her mother at their home in Surry Hills." Importantly, Ida was discharged into the care of her mother, not her parents.
John and Mary and the four boys made their new home at 207 Ocean Street, Narrabeen, where Mary ran a guest house which provided seaside holidays exclusively for young women from the city. The house directly backed onto the beach. She named her guesthouse "Kegworth" in tribute to her English ancestry.
The photo above is John's police mugshot taken at the time of his arrest for bigamy. And the other photo is thought to be that of my father's mother, Mary Ann Mullens nee Wright. I say "thought to be" because I can't say for sure. The baby she is holding is thought to be my father's daughter, Kathleen Blanche Wright (1927-1935), by his first wife Mary Brenda Hunt (1909-1927), who died in childbirth. Kathleen (Kathy) died in a traffic accident when she was 8. The photo was found along with photos of other family members in a small wallet that Dad had taken with him to World War II. It seems reasonable to me that Dad would want to include such a lovely photo of his mother and deceased baby daughter in such a collection.
Postscript: In life, John was known as Jack, William was known as Bill, Raymond was known as Ray and Reginald was known as Reg.
Author:
Kerry Wright
20 September 2026
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