Catherine Anne Louisa Kerr

Marriage announced in "The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser " of Saturday 16 August 1856:

"Married. At St. Thomas' Church, Port Macquarie, by special license, on Tuesday, the 5th instant, by the Rev. Thomas O'Reilley, Mr. Finlay Kerr, of Enniskillen, Ireland, to Catherine Anne Louisa, eldest daughter of the late Henry Hardinge Parker, Esq., of Rosewood, and granddaughter of the Rev. John Cross, senior Chaplain of that district."

Obituary published in "The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser" of Friday 1 March 1912:

"ONE OF THE OLD PIONEERS. In Ithe death of the late Mrs. Kerr, of Nana Glen, Orara River, another link with the early days of the country has been broken. Born in. Port Macquario in thw year 1831, over 80 years ago, her earliest recollections were of the clank ot the convicts' chains as they were marched out to their daily work. Her grandfather, the late Rev. John Cross, was chaplain to the forces stationed there, and she well remembered the pomp and show when the officers and troops attended service in the old church. Mrs. Kerr's father (Mr. Parker) was given a grant of land on the Upper Hastings, and a number of convicts were placed under his charge. Here the late Mrs. Kerr and her mother had several narrow escapes of being killed by the blacks. On the death of her father they moved to the Manning River, where at Taree Mr. Parker opened a school, at which many of the leading men of that district during the last half century received their education. This school was closed on the opening of the first public school in the fifties. Mrs. Parker and her family, now young men and women, returned to their estate on the Hastings River, and in 1856 the subject of this sketch was married in her grandfather's church in Port Macquarie to the late Mr. Finlay Kerr, the late Canon O'Reilly performing the ceremony. Her aged grandmother was too infirm to do more than witness it. Mr. and Mrs. Kerr had their share of the ups and downs of pioneer life,-; In 1876 they lost every thing they possessed in the disastrous floods of that year. ;In 1880 they moved to the Bellinger, where Mr. Kerr selected land. He shortly afterwards entered into auctioneering, and took part in public affairs, being regarded as one of the ablest and best men the district ever had. His death, the result of an accident, was widely deplored at the time. Mrs. Kerr leaves a large number of descendants, on the North Coast."