Shipping Intelligence. Hobson's Bay. Arrived—April 5, The Argus, Melbourne, 7 April 1860, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5680163:

British Trident (Eagle Line), ship, 1,399 tons, Francis Boyce, from Liverpool 10th January. Passengers—cabin: The Revs. Messrs. McGirr and O'Shea [...]

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School Examination, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 26 December 1860, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63596200:

On Wednesday and Thursday last, the midsummer examination of the pupils of the Catholic Denominational School in Bathurst took place. Dr. Grant, with the Rev. Messrs. Murphy and McGirr were present, as were also several other gentleman interested in the cause of Education. [...]

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St. Patricks Festival, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 20 March 1861, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62402750:

The Anniversary Dinner in honor of the patron Saint of Ireland took place on Monday last, at Mr. McDonnells' Shepherds' Inn, William-street. [...] About eight o'clock the chair was taken by the Rev. Dean Grant who was supported on his right hand by Mr. J. Fitzpatrick and on his left by Dr. Connell. The Rev. Mr. McGirr occupied the Vice-Chair and the table was surrounded by a respectable assemblage of gentlemen of various creeds and nations. [...]

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Service at the Opening of the New Roman Catholic Cathedral, Dedicated to S.S. Michael and John, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 13 April 1861, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62401397:

It has been announced for some weeks past that a solemn dedication of the new Edifice lately erected for the Roman Catholic Communion, would take place on Thursday the 11th instant, but in consequence of the bad state of the roads between Sydney and Bathurst, His grace the Archbishop did not arrive in time on Thursday to perform the ceremony. Mass was however celebrated by the Rev. Mr. Phelan High Priest, assisted by the Rev. Dean Grant assistant Priest, Rev. B. Murphey deacon. Rev. James McGirr, sub-deacon and Rev P. O'Farell, master of ceremonies. [...]

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Lecture at the Sacred Heart, Freemans' Journal, Sydney, 24 July 1861, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article115760283:

A lecture was delivered on Monday night by Dr. Forrest, on "Progress," being a continuation of his former very interesting lecture on the same subject. [...] Besides Dr. Forrest and the Rev. Chairman, we noticed in the room Fathers McGirr, M. Walsh, J. Dwyer, Leonard [...]

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Marriages, Empire, Sydney, 12 September 1861, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60484991:

Hennery—Dust—On the 24th August, by special license, at St. Mary's Cathedral, by the Rev. Father McGirr, Mr. John Hennery, to Elizabeth Dust, daughter of James Dust, Esq., bandmaster of the 46th Regiment.

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Marriages, Empire, Sydney, 21 October 1861, p 4, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60485369:

Mannix—Dunphy—On the 1st October, at St. Mary's Cathedral, by the Rev. Father McGirr, John Mannix, second son of Lot Mannix, of Burton-street, to Anne, eldest daughter of Edward Dunphy, of Kent-street, Sydney.

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Marriages, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1861, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13064432:

McDonald—Gimbert—November 30th, at St. Thomas' Church, Petersham, by the Rev. James McGirr, Edward, eldest son of the late Edward McDonald, of Sydney, to Sarah, eldest daughter of Mr. James Gimbert, of Canterbury, New South Wales.

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Marriages, Sydney Mail, 25 January 1862, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article166692486:

McGrath—Kelly—January 15th, at St. Thomas' Church, Petersham, by special license, by the Rev. J. McGirr, Mr. John McGrath, of Ipswich, Queensland, to Anne, daughter of Mr. Daniel Kelly, Parramatta Road, near Sydney.

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Marriages, Sydney Mail, 25 April 1863, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article166658488:

Goff—Dickens—April 15th, by special license, at St. Thomas' Church, Petersham, by the Rev. Father McGirr, Mr. James Goff, eldest son of John Goff, Five Dock, near Sydney, to Mary Jane Dickens, late of Sussex-street, Sydney.

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Relief of Distress in Agricultural Districts, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1864, p 16, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13088167:

A meeting of the St. Mary's Committee of the Agricultural Distress Fund was held at St Mary's yesterday [...] Father McGirr, Petersham, £4 10 [...]

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Marriage, Freemans' Journal, Sydney, 23 July 1864, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128805128:

On Tuesday, the 19th instant, by special license, at St. Mary's Cathedral, by the Rev. James McGirr, Christopher Henry Lenehan, of the firm of Lenehan, Brothers, and youngest son of the late D. Lenehan, Esq., of Buttevane, county Cork, Ireland, to Maria Louisa, youngest daughter of Michael Gannon, Esq., of Cook's River, near Sydney.[...]

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Irish death record, https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/deaths_returns/deaths_1882/06409/4840739.pdf: "Superintendent Registrar's District Mount Bellew, Registrar's District Mount Bellew. 1882. Deaths Registered in the District of Mount Bellew in the Union of Mount Bellew in the County of Galway. No. 346. On 11 December 1881 at Moylough, death of James McGirr, male, bachelor, age 63 years, Roman Catholic Curate; cause of death: Gout of stomach, 6 days; informant: James Kilgannon, present at death, of Moylough; 3 January 1882; Hugh Mullarkey, Assistant Registrar."

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Death of the Rev. James McGirr, C.C., Moylough, Freeman's Journal, Sydney, 29 April 1882, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article111317810:

We deeply regret to announce the death of the above-named clergyman, which sad event occurred on Sunday morning last after a brief illness, borne with true Christian fortitude, and fortified by the Sacraments of the holy Catholic Church. The deceased clergyman, who was in his 59th year, was only one short month ago in apparently excellent health, when he assisted at the obsequies of the late illustrious Archbishop of Tuam, but alas, after a short illness of five days, he succumbed to a fatal attack of gout in the stomach. He had been the beloved C.C. of Moylough for the past nine years, and his zeal in the discharge of his duties, his pious and unassuming manner and his great anxiety for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his flock, will not soon be forgotten. His charity was especially conspicuous as was also his earnest zeal in praying for the dead. His missionary career in India and in Sydney, Australia, was characterised by unceasing devotion to the interests of religion. His last moments were marked by resignation and humility ; his. death was most edifying, and was a striking instance of the Scriptural phrase "as a man lives so he dies."

The funeral took place on Tuesday, 13th inst. At ten o'clock the remains were removed from his late residence, accompanied by a large and respectable cortege, and placed in a catafalque in the centre of the chapel. The esteem in which he was held by his brother clergymen was evidenced by the large number of them who came, headed by their Archbishop, Dr. McEvilly, to pay their last respect to his memory.

His Grace the Archbishop presided at the solemn office and High Mass, and afterwards chanted the exequial prayers at the grave. Celebrant of the High Mass, Rev. Joseph Canton, C.C., Tuam ; deacon and sub-deacon, Rev. Michael Diskin, C.C., do; Rev. James Killeen, C.C., Menlough ; Master of Ceremonies, Very Rev. Patrick Kilkenny, President St Jarlath's College.

[...]

After High Mass his Grace the Archbishop blessed and incensed the coffin and then proceeded to the grave, situate inside the chapel, which he blessed also, after which all that was mortal of Father McGirr was lowered into its final resting place amid the sighs and tears of the congregation he loved so well.—R.I.P.—Mayo Examiner.

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Looking Backwards. Our Catholic Life Of Long Ago. Notes from Our Files of 1882, Freeman's Journal, Sydney, 27 Mar 1930, p 16, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article121655564:

A well-known priest, Rev. Father McGirr, of Sydney, Bathurst, Petersham; Five Dock, Concord, died in April. He was for seven years a professor at St. John's College, Calcutta, and came to Sydney for the good of his health. He regained it but again became ill, and his medical advisers told him that he must return to Europe.

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Fr T.J. Linane, From Abel to Zundolovich, Vol. 1, 1979, p 51: "McGirr, James/ Ir. / Calcutta, Syd., Ir. d. 1882."

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A Prayer-Calendar of Deceased Priests & Deacons in Australia 1788-2009, compiled by W.T. Southerwood, Sixth Edition, 2009: There is no entry for this priest.

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Colin Fowler, Disentangling the McGirrs of Colonial New South Wales, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 40 2019, 23–38:

[...] Three priests bearing the name ‘J. McGirr’ ministered in colonial NSW between 1855 and 1874; one was John, two were James. Contemporary newspapers conflated the details of their lives, and secondary sources compounded the confusion.

[...]

The relationships between three of the colonial McGirrs is clearly stated in two obituaries in Sydney’s Freeman’s Journal: that of a ‘fine old Irishwoman’ in October 1887 and of Michael McGirr in February 1890. The ‘old Irishwoman’ was the centenarian Mrs. Margaret McGirr of the Westport district of County Mayo. As well as celebrating how ‘in hard famine days of forty-seven ‘tis well remembered how she was wont to feed the starving and dying poor, and to coffin, with her own hands, the friendless dead’, the obituary, reprinted from the Mayo Examiner, recorded family details:

She had six sons and three daughters — the second eldest son, the late Rev. James M’Girr, CC Moylough, for some time in India and Australia, and whom she had for long the happiness to see minister at the altar. Her fourth son, Mr. Michael M’Girr, still lives, and is in Australia, proprietor of the Sydney Freeman’s Journal, and while he is an honour to the new land of his adoption, he is still true unto the old land of his birth.

The obituary of her son Michael confirmed him as a sibling of Reverend James and added the information that the brothers were cousins to the younger Reverend James: ‘The deceased had one brother a priest (the late Rev. James McGirr), and two cousins, the late Rev. James McGirr, of Bathurst, and Father Peter McGirr, now of Cong, Ireland’.

It is to be noted that the Reverend John McGirr was not mentioned in either obituary. This evidence convincingly contradicts sources that claim him as a brother of James. A 1947 reminiscence in the Melbourne Catholic newspaper, the Advocate, described Rev. John McGirr as a grand-uncle of the Honourable James McGirr, premier of NSW. The same relationship is elsewhere claimed for the two other reverends, which makes John a cousin to them. These are the family relationships assumed in this article. Their estimated dates of birth were: John 1818; James 1822; James Joseph 1829; Michael 1833.

The McGirr clan was originally from County Armagh, but following the 1795 ‘Battle of the Diamond’, a deadly attack by the Protestant population on Catholic neighbours, there was a mass migration of Catholics to the Province of Connaught, where members of the McGirr family settled in Culleen and afterwards in Louisburgh, a new ‘planned town’ built by the Earl of Altamont on his West Mayo estate in 1795.

Having established the relationships between the colonial McGirrs, it will be of interest to review their careers in order of arrival in New South Wales: John 1856, Michael 1857, James 1860, James Joseph 1864.

[...]

The ‘Rev Mr McGirr Junr’, who joined his cousin John in Bengal in 1846, was back in Ireland in 1852. He had completed his ecclesiastical studies and been ordained during his time in India. The archives of the Tuam Archdiocese provide the following list of James McGirr’s appointments: he served on Achill Island from 1852–53 and then moved to Clare Island until 1859. There is then a gap and his next appointment was in Milltown Co Galway from 1866 to 1872. Thereafter he was appointed to Moylough/ Mountbellew County Galway, where he died on 11 Dec 1881, aged 63. The gap, from 1860 to 1866, was filled by his presence and ministry in NSW.

James’ ministry on the Mayo islands was not without controversy. In January 1853, the Dublin Freeman’s Journal published a letter from ‘James M’Girr, C. C., Achill’ under the heading: ‘Downfall of Jumperism in Achill – Extraordinary Scene in a Catholic Graveyard’. The letter unfolded the unseemly struggle between the Catholic priest and a Protestant minister over the body of a supposedly repentant ‘Jumper’ – a convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. The conflict culminated at the Catholic cemetery where the ‘pseudo minister’, protected by four police officers ‘with screwed bayonets’, was attempting to read the Protestant burial service ‘where no Jumper, since the time that Jumperism first began, or heretic since the days of Luther had been buried’. McGirr praised the attending magistrate for his intervention in calling aside the Rev. Mr. Barker, telling him to close his book and sending him home ‘with his pack of ranting illiterate Jumpers’. In a lengthy response, the Reverend Joseph Barker gave a different version, complaining that he had been assailed by ‘a number of ruffians, who shoved me about and made several attempts to snatch the book out of my hand’. He claimed a ‘perfect right’ to be conducting the burial service in the Catholic cemetery because ‘every grave-yard in the parish is de jure the freehold property of the rector’.

James added a post-script to his letter with an appeal for donations towards the repair of ‘our little chapel’ and for the ‘founding of a little library of religious works in the chapel, which might serve, in some manner, to counteract the evil tendency of Jumperism’. From his new mission on neighbouring Clare Island, James wrote to the Freeman’s Journal expressing gratitude for donations received—ten pounds from a Wexford benefactor and ‘a sum collected in halfpence’ by the ‘generous poor of Manchester’. He concluded ‘hoping that some of those wealthy and charitable persons upon whom an all wise and merciful Providence, in its own inscrutable designs, has bestowed prosperity, ease and affluence in this world will imitate the generous example of the poor of Manchester, by remitting us something for the chapel’.

James arrived in Australia during 1860 for the good of his health, as stated in the Freeman’s ‘notes from our files of 1882’, the year of his death in Ireland: ‘A well-known priest, Rev. Father McGirr, of Sydney, Bathurst, Petersham, Five Dock, Concord, died in April. He was for seven years a professor at St. John’s College, Calcutta, and came to Sydney for the good of his health. He regained it but again became ill, and his medical advisers told him that he must return to Europe.’43 He was initially assigned to Bathurst, where his brother Michael had been conducting the local Catholic school since 1857.

The Freeman’s Bathurst correspondent submitted a fulsome account of the town’s celebration of St Patrick’s day in 1861. McHale-inspired Irish patriotism was on full display as James responded to Dean Grant’s toast, ‘The Irish Patriots’, which ‘was drunk with enthusiastic cheers, the band playing Mourir pour la patrie’,

The Rev. J. McGirr, on rising to respond to the toast, said that the very word patriotism expressed that innate and natural tone of one’s country which was implanted by the hand of nature in every human breast. Every Nation could point to some eminent individuals in whose soul the holy flame burned more vividly, and with deeper intensity than in others … But it is needless to multiply instances of Irish patriotism, he would tire their patience (‘No, no’) by dwelling longer upon a theme which every Irishman was conversant with, and he would now conclude by hoping that the dawn of day was fast breaking, when, from the concentration of public opinion on the many grievances of Ireland, the consummation for which the patriots lived and died, would take place, viz., complete religious and civil liberty, such as God had blessed this happy land with. He would conclude by hoping that the day was drawing near, when the words of Moore would receive their realization, in the fact that Ireland could at length have it predicted of her that she was – ‘Great, glorious, and free ... First flower of the earth, and First gem of the sea.’ … The toast was drunk with cordiality. Air by the Band–‘Rory O’Moore’.

Michael M’Girr, in rising to propose the next toast, said that it was fortunate for him that the ‘lily needed no painting’. Without further preface, he begged to propose ‘the ladies’. The toast was drunk with all honours, the band playing ‘Here’s a health to all good lasses’.

Later in the year James was in Sydney taking up appointments at Burwood and then Petersham. With his health declining he planned his return to Ireland, leaving Sydney in September 1864. In February 1866, the Tuam Herald announced that ‘the Rev. James M’Girr, a subject of this diocese, and but recently returned to his native country, after many years of a zealous and toilsome missionary career in the far-distant land of Australia, has been appointed by His Grace to the curacy of Milltown in this neighbourhood’.

In 1872 his eloquent patriotism was again to the fore at a meeting of the people of Milltown in support of the candidacy of Captain Nolan, ‘the man for Galway’. He reminisced about his attendance at his first political meeting in 1844 at Castlebar, where Daniel O’Connell held one of his great rallies for Repeal. He then spoke of witnessing in 1854 the eviction of a poor tenant fallen into arrears: ‘I went myself and offered to go security for the payment of the amount due, but the agent was unmoved and he brought his “brigade” on the spot. The poor man’s house was levelled and his family, thirteen in number, were forced to quit their home on a bleak and frosty morning (groans)’. He concluded by calling on the townsmen to return to Parliament ‘the man who will do away with these things forever’.

Captain John Philip Nolan was duly elected, soundly defeating Captain William Le Poer Trench. Trench appealed the result on the grounds of intimidation during the campaign, chiefly on the part of clergy. The trial judge found 36 persons guilty of undue influence and intimidation, including the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishops of Clonfert and Galway, and 29 priests, the majority of the parish priests in the constituency. Captain Nolan was unseated and Captain Trench returned to the House of Commons.48 This case of clerical election interference made the John McGirr affair in faraway Gippsland look insignificant indeed.

In October 1873, James added his signature to a petition from the Archbishop of Tuam and his clergy calling for the repeal of the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain:

Resolved: ‘That, impressed with a deep sense of the social and moral evils of which the legislative Union has for more than seventy years been productive to our country, we deem it a duty to lend every legitimate aid towards their abatement, and for that purpose, towards the total or qualified repeal of the disastrous union from which they continue to flow.

Father James McGirr’s death on 18 December 1881 was announced in the Dublin Freeman’s Journal. The Sydney Freeman’s carried the article the following April:

The deceased clergyman, who was in his 59th year was only one short month ago in apparently excellent health ... but alas, after a short illness of five days, he succumbed to a fatal attack of gout in the stomach. He had been the beloved C.C. of Moylough for the past nine years and his zeal in the discharge of his duties, his pious and unassuming manner and his great anxiety for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his flock, will not soon be forgotten … His missionary career in India and in Sydney, Australia, was characterised by unceasing devotion to the interests of religion.