Mildred Clara (known as Clara or Clare) Worthington was born at Camp Hill, Forbes, NSW on 2 January 1884. She was the third child of John Joseph WORTHINGTON & Mary Ann DONOHOE.

She was a child when the family lost the farm at Moonbi in the 1890s, when they moved into the nearby township of Forbes and father John Joseph Worthington, after having filed for bankruptcy in 1892, undertook contracted labouring and farming work. There was not enough work to feed eight children (probably 10 including two surviving children of Mary Ann’s first marriage), and in about 1900 John Joseph “went north” to look for work and never returned. In 1903 a notification from the Nyngan police to look for him appeared in the NSW Police Gazette and it described Mary Ann and the children as destitute.

At some point, Mary Ann moved the family to Cobar, where her mother, Annie Donohoe resided. In 1906 at the age of 22, Clara gave birth to a boy with no father listed in the registration, but whom she named Harry Oswald Budd Worthington. The likely father was a man four years older than Clara named Harry Oswald Budd (b. 1880 Cobar, NSW; parents James BUDD & Caroline Noble PENNINGTON; d. 1919 Sydney NSW; buried Waverley, NSW). The baby Harry died in 1907 aged only 15 months of a cardiac arrest resulting from a week-long bout of bronchial pneumonia. He is buried at Cobar. In May the following year, Clara’s grandmother died aged 85 of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Late the following year, on 28 December 1909, Clara gave birth to her second boy, Eugene ‘Roy’ Worthington (my grandfather), again with no father listed. Clara was by this time a resident of Sydney, at 467 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, and Roy was born at the Royal Hospital for Women, Paddington. Harry Budd was likely Roy’s father as well, as years later for his marriage certificate Roy would declare his parents’ names to be Harry Worthington and Clare Budd (a rearrangement of his real parents’ names). Roy was raised by a family in Sydney by the name of Walsh or Welsh. Harry Oswald BUDD died in Sydney at the age of 35 in 1919, one of many to succumb to the influenza epidemic. In the time between Roy’s birth and his death, Harry Oswald Budd married Elsie Olive White (1910, Cobar, NSW) and they had three children.

UPDATE June 2019: Ancestry DNA has indeed indicated that Harry Oswald Budd was Roy’s father

Clara’s third child, Reginald, was born in 1912 also at Paddington. He may have been adopted by a family named Lawson as, on his marriage certificate, he called himself ‘Reginald Worthington, known as Lawson‘ and became known as Reginald Lawson.
Article: Trying to Find … Reginald Lawson

Clara had two further children with no father identified at registration. Jack WORTHINGTON (b. 18 Dec 1913 Paddington, NSW) and Leah WORTHINGTON (b. 2 Sep 1915 Paddington, NSW).

The father of Clara’s two youngest children was Thomas Ernest GOODWIN. Thomas was born on 13 September 1878 at Marulan near Goulburn, NSW to Thomas Goodwin and Margaret (nee Murphy). On 23 Jan 1917 Thomas enlisted for WWI service and while undergoing training at the military camp at the Salvation Army Institute at Liverpool he made his will listing ‘my sister-in-law, Clara Goodwin of 447 Cleveland Street, Darlinghurst’. He joined the 1st Battalion, and on 3 Oct 1917 he was killed in action in Belgium.

After his death, Clara was noted in the paperwork as “reputed wife”, and was awarded a war pension to provide for Jack and Kathleen Goodwin. She didn’t receive it immediately, as the war office could not contact her at the above address.

It is certain that Jack WORTHINGTON and John Arthur GOODWIN were the same person. John Arthur Goodwin enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at Paddington during WWII, he listed Clara as his next of kin, and his record shows he had the same birthdate as Jack Worthington. He was a member of the 2/30 Infantry Battalion. He married Dorothy Mary BYRNE in 1941 at Burwood, NSW and died on 25 Feb 1978 at the Western Suburbs Hospital, Sydney, NSW at the age of 65.

Kathleen Leah GOODWIN died at the Rachel Forster Hospital, Redfern NSW on 30 Oct 1989 aged 74 years. This is consistent with the 1915 birth date of Leah WORTHINGTON. She was cremated at Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, Matraville, NSW on 8 November 1989. The death certificate shows that Kathleen never married and had no next of kin, and the informant appears to have been a hospital worker. Kathleen was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousin in 1922, where she was named as Kathleen McBlane in a newspaper report.

In 1920 Clara married Robert Hamilton McBLANE (b. 1883 Ilfacombe, Qld.; parents Robert Hamilton McBLANE & Margaret BURKE; occupation – schoolteacher; d. 1937 St Peters, NSW; buried Rookwood Cemetery, NSW). There were no children from this marriage.

Clara died at the age of 66 (though her certificate states age 62) on 16 Jan 1950 at Coogee, NSW and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery with her husband Robert.