The Enright Family of Gympie
One familiar, old Gympie name is that of the Enright Family.
Six members of the family are buried in the Gympie Cemetery starting with Herbert and Agnes Enright. Herbert Richard Enright was born on 2 February 1871 to parents John Enright and Sarah Bennett who married at Yass in New South Wales on 5 November 1861. Information indicates that, in 1868, John was a Publican who had been born in Limerick Ireland. His wife, Sarah, was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England.
Herbert was the fifth child for the couple and the third to be born in Queensland, however, times were hard and infant mortality was high and he was to lose two of his brothers very early on in life. Eldest brother James was born in Yass in 1862, followed soon after by eldest sister Eleanor J in Sydney. Their next child, John Stevenson was born in 1866 but died the following year, so Herbert never got to meet this older brother. Allan Joseph came next, in 1868 followed by Herbert in 1871, and William in 1872 who also had a very short life, dying in 1873, then sister Jessie Mary in 1875.
Herbert is recorded on the 1905 Electoral Roll as a resident of Smythe Street, Gympie, as a miner, and in 1910 he lived on Brisbane Road. His wife, Agnes Esther Smith, was born a little before her husband, around 1870. The couple had two daughters, Annie and Eleanor and a son, Herbert. Their son Herbert Douglas (who went by the name of Doug) was the eldest, born in 1896. Next came daughter, Annie Irene, who was born 16 September 1899 and then Eleanor/Ellinor Gertrude, born 16 May 1903. Tragedy struck the young family when the eldest daughter, Annie, died on 13 February, 1919. She was just 19 years old. In what was to be a bad couple of years for the family, in 1920, Herbert Richard was listed as living at the ‘Diamantina Hospital’.
Referred to as Doug, Herbert Junior was a well-known and respected schoolteacher in Gympie. His wife, Theresa ‘Martha’, trained as a nurse in Gympie in 1914, and, in 1928 opened the Lister Private Hospital. She was known as ‘Matron Enright’. The Lister Private Hospital was a private birthing centre in Gympie and Martha later went on to work in the public hospital system. The 1934 Electoral Roll indicates that Doug and Martha were residents in Barter St. Gympie. Doug Enright, also owned a holiday home on the Esplanade at Tin Can Bay. He and his wife were often in residence at their home. Doug, a tall, striking gentleman with a shock of silver-grey hair, was a favourite teacher of many students. Doug’s surviving sister also went on to become a teacher.
On the Electoral Roll in 1934 ‘Ellinor’ Gertrude is recorded as a school teacher of Currie Street, Rosslyn. Herbert Senior died on 23 August 1935 at the age of 64 and was buried next to his daughter Annie in Gympie Cemetery. Agnes his wife lived until the ripe old age of 81 and after she died on 26 January 1951, she was also laid to rest with her husband and daughter. Doug died just eight years later in 1957, a full 31 years ahead of his wife Martha, who died in 1988.
This story was written by Denise Juler and it appeared previously in the Gympie Today in 2021
Sources: Trove, Ancestry, Find My Past, GFHS Record Collection
Move ahead to 2023 and the site the Lister Hospital once occupied is now a modern Aged Care Facility run by Calvary Aged Care and is known as City View.
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