The Six Wives of Captain Kearney: The Last Wife

This is the last stop on Captain Richard Adderley Kearney’s trail of wives. We’ve met five women already, each convinced she was his lawful spouse, each paying a price for that belief. Some were deceived, others abandoned, a few hauled into court. Now, we meet the woman who, I believe, was his final wife: Margaret Clark Gardner. Her story is quieter than the others in that there are no courtroom fireworks, but she may have endured the greatest cost of all.

In telling her story, I want to acknowledge Su Spencer (née Wiedeman), who published a detailed article in Australian Family Tree Connections (November 2010). Her research offered valuable insights into Margaret’s life. I know she was in contact with someone from my own family during her research, because one of her notes includes a family tree with my name on it - along with my brother, my father, and many of my cousins. I’ll explain Su’s connection to me towards the end of this post, although I suspect some of you can guess.

Tracing Richard in the early 1890's

When we last encountered Richard, he had impregnated Helene Georg and left her to raise their son alone. He was soon back in the papers, but this time not for scandal but for his maritime work. He was piloting ships between Melbourne, Newcastle, and Adelaide, often in challenging conditions, to high praise. These reports make it unusually easy to follow his movements, and by early 1891 he was firmly based in Adelaide.

Sydney Morning Herald, September 20, 1890

Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, February 14, 1891

Another Bride: Enter Margaret Clarke Gardner

On 5 October 1891, Richard Adderley Kearney, “Bachelor” and Master Mariner, married Margaret Clark Gardner at the home of the presiding minister, Edward Day. The witnesses were Wilhelmina Margaret Wylie (née Robson) and Morris Gardner, Margaret’s brother, who worked as an ironmonger. As usual, Richard named his father as Edward Kearney; Margaret’s father was William Poag Gardner.

Just three days later, on 8 October 1891, their daughter Lucy Adderley Kearney was born. That places the conception in January 1891, suggesting their relationship began even earlier - perhaps in late 1890, only months after Helene gave birth to Richard’s other son, Henry Edward.

Marriage certificate of Richard Adderley Kearney and Margaret Clarke Gardner, October 5, 1891, South Australia BDM

Margaret was born into a goldfields family. Her father, William Poag Gardner, a gold miner, and her mother, Annie Greer, were both born in Northern Ireland but married in Melbourne in December 1855 - in the same church where, nearly 160 years later, I would be married.

St Peter's Eastern Hill, Marriage Register, December 22, 1855

Their first child, Mary Anne, was born in December 1856 in Nerring, a short-lived gold rush town. Soon after, the family relocated to Ararat, a larger, more established centre, where the rest of the children were born. This move likely followed the shift from small diggings to a more stable township economy.

Mary Anne Gardiner birth certificate, Nerring, Victoria, December 1, 1856

The 1880's - A Decade of Loss

Margaret was the third of eight children. Between 1872 (when her youngest sister, Lucy Greer Gardner, was born) and 1884, the family moved to Adelaide, probably when William switched from mining to work as a railway supervisor. It was there, in 1884, that Annie died - leaving William with eight children ranging from 28 down to just 12. Margaret may well have been running the household for her younger siblings Robina, George, and Lucy.

Tragedy struck again in 1886 when William’s nephew, firefighter John Arthur Hughes Gardner, died in a fire on Rundle Street. William and his children were John's only family in Australia. 

Probate file for John Anthony Hughes Gardner

Then, in 1889, Margaret’s youngest sister, Lucy Greer Gardner, died at just 16. Two years later, Margaret would name her own daughter Lucy, likely in her memory.

 The Express and Telegraph, March 11, 1889

Enter Captain Kearney

It was into this decade of loss that Richard entered the scene. By 31, Margaret was well past the average marriage age of the day. Her older brother Isaac had married in 1886, her younger sister Isabel in 1888. She may have been ready to leave home, and perhaps, ready to take a risk. Falling pregnant to a 43-year-old mariner outside marriage was certainly that and, I suspect, a decision her family did not welcome.

Su Spencer’s article says:

"13 years later [after the bigamy trial] my great-grandmother was also separated from her Adelaide based family after marrying her captain just days before their first child was born." 

While there may not have been a scandalous courtroom spectacle in Margaret’s case, there was clearly disapproval. The parallel to Mary Reeves Rainsford’s temporary estrangement from her own family is hard to miss.

Unlike other women he left pregnant, Richard married Margaret. Why? Perhaps he cared for her. In fact, later evidence would suggest that he absolutely did. But in addition, her strong family ties meant she wasn’t easily discarded. Her father was a respected public servant. Margaret was not without backup.

The Port Pirie Years

And here's the real twist: for almost a decade, Richard stayed put and lived, what was for him, a normal domestic life. He worked as an intercontinental pilot, taught navigation classes from his house, and, as far as I can tell, didn’t vanish or acquire a new wife. Newspaper mentions are about his work, like piloting the Oronsay to Sydney in March 1893, not his scandals.

South Australian Register, March 13, 1893

The navigation classes may have been in attempt to supplement his pilotage wages, especially since he doesn't appear to have done much longer distance shipping work during this period. This again suggests a desire to stay near his final family.

 The Port Pirie Standard and Barrier Advertiser, June 29, 1893

He and Margaret had four children: Lucy (1891), Eileen (1893), Moira (1896), and William Morris (1897). Moira died in January 1897, aged just eleven months. The newspaper clipping announcing her death heartbreakingly mirrors that of Lucy Greer Gardner's death notice almost a decade earlier.

 South Australian Register, February 9, 1897

There is also the heartbreaking entry in the Port Pirie Cemetery records showing R. A. Kearney leasing a child's grave with the burial taking place on 30th January 1897 - undoubtedly for Moira.

Port Pirie. Cemetery Records 1877–1981

But by mid 1897, Richard's period of stability with his Gardner family was nearing an end.

The Mariner Lost at Sea

William Morris was born in August of 1897 and per Su Spencer, Richard "disappeared shortly after his son's birth". The family assumed he had been lost at sea, with one of his grandchildren speculating he "may have fallen overboard when drunk". Given Richard's multiple arrests including some for drunkenness, this isn't an outlandish assumption to make. By the time Su was a child this legend had taken on mythic status with her recalling stories of "my illustrious antecedent, a Master Mariner, tragically lost at sea...leaving his widow with three young children to raise alone". In my family, the lore was of "black sheep grandfather who was sent to Australia and became a Captain until he was lost at sea." Legends are robust.

Hospitalisation and illness

However, unbeknownst to Margaret and the children, Richard was ill by 1897. He had been admitted into hospital in Adelaide on May 16, 1897, and was discharged on June 4, 1897. His complaint was phthisis - or tuberculosis.

South Australia Hospital Admission Registers

What really happened to Richard?

I can't be exactly sure what happened next. If Su's family testimony is correct and Richard left his family shortly after William Morris' birth, then it was close on the tail of this hospital admission. Perhaps Richard knew he didn't have much time left and preferred to be remembered as "the master mariner, lost at sea" rather than a sick, aging man.

What I do know is that Richard died at the Thirlmere Consumptive Home slightly more than a year after his Adelaide hospital admission - on July 8, 1898. He had been seen by Dr O'Neil two days prior, and his cause of death was phthisis - three years duration. The informant was L Hall, the Acting Matron and no marriage or children were recorded. None of the witnesses to his burial were family - the names O. Culley and A. McBeth are strangers to me, and likely were to Richard.

But the death certificate had a lot of information on it, like Richard's parents' names, including his mother's name - Elizabeth Adderley - but strangely it was spelled "Adduley". I suspect that Richard gave this information to the Matron in advance of his death and she simply wrote what she heard phonetically. What it tells us is that there was no one around who knew Richard.

Consistent with this, the obituaries that were placed for Richard are all impersonal. One in the Daily Commercial News and Shipping List on June 14, 1898, referred to Richard's cause of death as his "old complaint" and showed knowledge of his previous hospitalisations and the duration of his stay at Thirlmere Consumptive Home. Whoever posted this knew intimate details of his illness and very deliberately placed it in an obscure shipping paper.

I believe Mary Reeves Rainsford must have seen the obituary and organised the headstone that now stands on the grave. She was later buried there, and the stone refers to Richard, and his wife Mary. My great grandfather Richard Thomas was also buried there. They clearly found out about Richard's death after and decided to claim him in death. 

The Thirlmere Consumptive Home - established 1886 

What about Margaret?

Margaret almost certainly never knew the truth. For her, he went to sea and never returned. In a photograph from 1898, she is in full mourning, holding baby Morris. 

Margaret Clarke Kearney, Lucy, Eileen and William Morris

But to her credit, Margaret showed immense resilience. She worked as a dressmaker to support the family, as shown in Port Pirie school enrolment records for Lucy and Eileen. The children appear to have done well in school and were often mentioned in the Port Pirie newspaper, performing in school plays or recital. Eileen in particular was a talented violinist. Lucy had been a member of her church choir, which was noted in her wedding announcement.

Port Pirie School enrolments - 1899

Port Pirie Recorder and Northwestern Mail, September 18, 1916 

Recorder Port Pirie, 1920

In later life, Eileen and Margaret lived together on Greenhill Rd, Knoxville. They shared the experience of being young widows, Eileen having lost her husband at 46, only eight years older than her mother had been when Richard vanished. William Morris and Lucy both lived nearby on Goode Road. 

The long shadow of Richard

All of Richard’s children with Margaret had children of their own. Many grew up on the “lost at sea” story. One, Morris “Gar” Kearney, won a prize in 1940 for a tall ship sketch, almost certainly inspired by the legend. Titled A Fair Wind, it feels like an unknowing tribute to the grandfather he never met, wishing him the smooth passage that reality denied.

    

Su Wiedeman, Eileen’s granddaughter, became intrigued enough to research the truth. She was one of the first to piece together Richard’s tangled marriages and to connect the Gardner and Rainsford branches. My uncle spoke to her during her research; her brother and I are DNA matches on MyHeritage, Kearney descendants separated by hundreds of kilometres and decades of lies. 

For decades, Richard’s version of events stood unchallenged. He had been the sole keeper of his story, choosing what to reveal and what to hide But time has a way of eroding even the most carefully built walls.

The great irony is that modern science and research tools can now knit together the fragments he scattered. DNA tests, archives, and the paper trails he left behind have closed the gaps he relied on. The connections Richard spent his life avoiding are now undeniable.

The Cost

At the end of this story, I feel desperately sad for Margaret because she built a life that she thought she could trust with Richard. 

This wasn't the shifty bigamist Richard from 1878 who married my 2x great grandmother and dragged her through a shameful trial. This wasn't the one-night stand Richard who slept with Helene Georg and then disappeared. This was a man that Margaret had grown to rely on for seven years. He hadn't been frequently travelling to foreign ports, but staying close to home, probably involved with his children in a way he had never been with his previous families. And then she lost it all. 

In that way, perhaps Margaret paid the greatest cost of any wife. The others had known the Richard who vanished on a whim, who lied, who charmed and betrayed in equal measure. But for nearly a decade, Margaret’s Richard stayed. He worked locally, taught navigation classes, came home at night, and I imagine, played some part in the daily life of his children. She had reason to believe in him. And then she lost that Richard, the steady one, without warning. Not to another woman, but to the kind of disappearance from which there is no return. She got the best version of Richard, but she paid for it. And in death, her place in his story was erased, replaced by the name of another wife: my ancestor, Mary Reeves Rainsford. It is our line that lies interred with him, despite his choosing another family to spend his final decade with.

Perhaps one day, his headstone will bear witness to them all: Elizabeth Gilpin, Jane Maclean, Mary Reeves Rainsford, Helen Elizabeth Williams, Helene Georg, and Margaret Clarke Gardner, women who believed themselves his wives and paid the price.

Until then, I will remember them, not just here in words, but, if I can, etched in stone where time and myth can’t erase them. Richard controlled the telling of his story in life; in death, I intend to finish it, and to write his wives back in.

Postscript: The Bigamy Trial

In a wild coincidence, another woman named Margaret Gardner, born Margaret Lindsay, pled guilty to bigamy the very same day as Richard. This overlap has led to confusion in several online trees, but the Margaret Gardner convicted in 1878 was a completely different woman from Richard’s wife.

Sydney Morning Herald, August 13, 1878

Sydney Morning Herald, June 20, 1878

 

s