Catherine Coffey

Catherine Brosnaham Coffey (1805 – 31 August 1894) was an Irish-born Australian pioneer in the Port Phillip District who was the first Catholic school teacher in Melbourne and the first sacristan of the first Catholic church in Victoria, St Francis.[1] She taught catechism classes to children in colonial Melbourne prior to the arrival of the colony's first Catholic priest in 1839. Coffey’s contribution to Catholic education was celebrated in a St Patrick’s Day pageant at the Melbourne Town Hall in 1930 and she was singled out by Archbishop Justin Simonds in 1939 in a requiem for pioneers as “an outstanding Catholic personality”.

Catherine Coffey
Born1805
County Kerry, Ireland
Died31 August 1894 (1894-09-01) (aged 88)
Creswick, Victoria
Other namesCatherine Coffee
Occupation(s)Catechist
School teacher

Early life and work

In 1838, Coffey travelled from Ireland to the Port Phillip District (now in Victoria), via Tasmania, with her husband Jeremiah and their infant child.[2] They were early pioneers to the area, the first settlement on the banks of the Yarra River having taken place in 1835. The first Catholic priest, Patrick Geoghegan, a Franciscan friar, didn’t arrive in the colony until 1839, and Coffey taught Roman Catholic catechesis to children during the period when no Catholic priest was available.[3][4] Roman Catholic canon law gives the responsibility of teaching children the catechism to pastors, bishops, clerics and members of religious societies.[5] Coffey was the first lay person and the first woman reported to have taught the Catholic catechism to children in Victoria, and is referred to as the first teacher at a Catholic school in Melbourne.[1][2][6][7] When Geoghegan arrived in 1839, he praised Coffey for her initiative and for her “care and zeal” in establishing and conducting the first school in Melbourne.[2] Coffey’s contribution to Catholic education was celebrated in a St Patrick’s Day pageant at the Melbourne Town Hall in 1930.[8] She was singled out by Archbishop Justin Simonds as “an outstanding Catholic personality” in a requiem for pioneers in 1939.[9] Geoghegan used a small travelling wooden box that belonged to Coffey, covered with a linen cloth, as the altar for the first mass held in the Port Phillip District.[10] This box is held by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne at the Goold Catholic Museum.[3]

Family life and death

After leaving the Port Phillip District the Coffey family spent about 10 years on a property on the Great Dividing Range, before settling in Spring Hill, Creswick on some of the earliest land purchased in Victoria. They later moved to Ballarat.[11] Catherine and Jeremiah Coffey had many children, six of whom pre-deceased them; they were survived only by their youngest child.[11] An obituary published on 3 September 1894 noted: "Mrs Coffey was the mother of a fine family whose members were well known and highly respected in the district".[11] Both Catherine and Jeremiah are buried in the Catholic section of the Creswick New Cemetery in regional Victoria.[12]

References
  1. "Some Presentations to Corpus Christi College". Advocate. 9 April 1936. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  2. "More About a. Pioneer Priest". Advocate. 30 March 1922. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  3. "Diocesan Archivist Rachel Naughton celebrates 25 years of service". Melbourne Catholic. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
  4. "Melbourne's first Catholic Schools". MACS - Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
  5. "Code of Canon Law - Book III - The teaching function of the Church (Cann. 756-780)". www.vatican.va. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  6. "Mass celebration marks bicentenary of Catholic education in Australia". MACS - Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
  7. Fogarty, Ronald (1959). Catholic Education in Australia 1806 - 1950. Melbourne University Press. p. 39. OCLC 1075111711.
  8. "St. Patrick's Night Pageant". Advocate. 9 March 1939. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  9. "Solemn Requiem for Catholic Pioneers". Advocate. 9 November 1939. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  10. "Daughter of First Catholic School Teacher". Advocate. 21 May 1931. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
  11. "Ballarat Star". Ballarat Star. 3 September 1894. p. 2. Retrieved 13 June 2022 – via Trove.
  12. "Jeremiah Coffey 1805 - 1885 BillionGraves Record". BillionGraves. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
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