Various Reardons pop up here and there on the paternal line,
and I have varying degrees of clarity around their origins and connectedness if any. I will add to this article as I find out more.

Reardons Around Wangaratta

My 5x g-grandmother Anne was a Reardon, and she was apparently born in Liverpool, England in 1824, the daughter of Patrick (a soldier ranked private) and Mary (surname unknown). She made her first appearance in Australia in 1846 marrying William Thorpe in Melbourne, and after some time residing with him in Geelong, she left with her children in around 1853 and went to Wangaratta to live. She had a brother there named Henry Reardon who worked as a carrier.

Anne had a daughter at Reed Street Wangaratta on 10 Jun 1855 named Mary Ann Donohoe. The stated witness was a ‘Mrs Sarah Reardon of Wangaratta’.

Mary Ann’s father, William Donohoe, was also a carrier at Wangaratta and may have been a workmate of Henry.

Henry Reardon suffered an untimely death aged 30, the result of stab wounds sustained at the hands of a man named Patrick Murphy, in a dispute over a game of cards at the Broadmeadows Hotel on 14 November 1855. Henry died four days later, and the police had taken a statement from him before he died.

The deposition of the deceased, taken on his death bed before Mr Hackett, police magistrate for the district of Bourke, was here read. The following is a copy: —
‘I am a carrier residing at Wangaratta, I saw the prisoner at the Broadmeadows Hotel on the 14th instant. Prisoner charged me with cheating him at cards. Prisoner left the room stating he would put a knife into the wretch. A few minutes afterwards I was speaking to the landlord. Prisoner said something which the deponent does not know, and then inflicted the wounds I am now suffering from with a knife. I then called out, ‘A knife, a knife !’ Prisoner was seized by the landlord, and then dropped the knife. I have known the prisoner for three or four months, and never had an angry word with him. The prisoner was not quite sober, but seemed sensible, I was not playing for money, but for nobblers. I do not think the prisoner bore any animosity to me.’
Henry Reardon, His mark. Witness : J. Barlow. Taken in the presence of the prisoner, on the oath of Henry Reardon.
(The Age, 18 Dec 1855, p.5)

Anne is shown as next of kin in the probate notice published the following year.

Interestingly, the newspaper report of the trial says that ‘After Murphy was secured he said, ‘I could not have done it, for I and he have been like brothers these nineteen years’. Nineteen is a specific number and if Murphy’s assertion is correct this might point to a migration date around 1836. On  Anne’s 1908 death certificate, her granddaughter Mary Keetly declared that Anne was 77 years in Victoria and New South Wales, indicating arrival in 1831 at the age of 8.

Henry’s death certificate was made out by the Coroner in Melbourne and there was no substantial information about him on there, other than the fact that he was 30 years of age, which would mean he was just a little younger than Ann.

Reardons at Collector & Cootamundra

Patrick Reardon and Bridget Egan were married in Campbelltown NSW in 1841. Patrick was a convict transported aboard the Norfolk from Ireland in 1832. Bridget Egan, also a native of Ireland a, arrived aboard the Alfred in 1839 as an unmarried female immigrant.

They settled and farmed in the Goulburn region of New South Wales, firstly at Berrima and then at Collector, north of Lake George. Two of their six children married offspring of James Worthington and Mary Byrne. William Reardon (1843-1933) married Frances Mary Worthington in 1873 at Collector and Maria Reardon (1847-1927) married James Joseph Worthington.

I have not been able to establish any connection between these Reardons and Anne and Henry Reardon, above, and it may be just a coincidence that Anne Reardon’s daughter would later, in 1880, marry a man whose aunt and uncle had both married Reardons.

The following section of a parish map from the NSW Department of Lands shows an area called Yeo Yeo, east of Stockinbingal and north of Cootamundra. William and Frances Reardon were next door neighbours of Frances’ father James Worthington, who died at Yeo Yeo in 1889.

One of William Reardon’s many obituaries gives a good overview of his life:

Born in Sydney (such as it was then) in 1842, his parents moved to Collector, and acquired land there known as “Rose Glen”, which is still in the Reardon name. His father died when he was but a boy of eight years, leaving his mother with three sons and one daughter, he the second eldest. His grandmother had brought beautiful horses and cattle from Ireland, so the whole Reardon family had the opportunity of a good ground work in the knowledge of horses and cattle, so essential to land operations. At the age of 28 he married Miss Frances Mary Worthington, the ceremony taking place at Goulburn on the 18th January, 1871. We may mention that Mrs Reardon was a sister to Mr E.J. Worthington, of Boona Mount, in this district. In 1873 the late Mr. Reardon moved to Cootamundra district, purchasing the property known as “The Oaks”. For 20 years he lived there. Finding himself with a family of seven sons and four daughters, all craving for life on the soil, he launched out in a big way and bought Milby Station, in Condobolin district, from the late Yeomans and Hales.
(Lachlander and Condobolin and Western Districts Recorder, 23 Aug 1933, p.2)

The property was sold in 1905:

The Oaks pastoral and agricultural property, comprising 7860 acres, has been sold to Mr Alexander McCulloch, of South Australia. It was formerly the snug home of Mr William Reardon, JP, now of Miiby, in the Condobolin district. It adjoins the famous Geraldra run, and it comes within a few miles of Cootamundra, and the railway runs through it from there to Temora and Wyalong. In it is situated the silver lode on which Florance and party’s well-known mine is located.
(Tumut Advocate and Farmers and Settlers’ Adviser, 14 Nov 1905, p.3)

A subsequent map shows that McCulloch purchased the whole area, so it’s likely that James Worthington, Thomas Worthington and Clara Reardon leased from William.

The Clara Reardon in the map is labelled in the map as ‘spinster and miner’ (could she have been William and Frances’ oldest child who was born in 1872 and married Daniel Lane in 1904?). She would have been less than 20 years of age in the late 1880s – a bit young to be a miner, and a bit young to be labelled a spinster!