I've become fascinated with this story I found in Australian newspaper archives.
I have McKenna links to the area, and my mother mentioned relatives from Australia looking for heirs in Ireland for years, but she related it to my grandfather's branch of the family rather than my Grandmother's. I always thought she was misremembering or confused, but reading this, I think there might be a link.
I'd love to know how this concluded, it ever did.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/198750252TANGLED SKEIN OF WILL
Search For Heirs To £20,000 Estate SYDNEY,. Thursday.
A funeral, : 66 years ago, In the village of Ballyloughnane; Ogonnelloe, . County Clare, Ireland, will -play an Important part In a skein of evidence shortly to be unravelled by the Master. In Equity (Mr Hooton).
TO the lives of the children it . was a red-letter event, for the. pupils of the local school were allowed out to attend the funeral. One of them, Nora Lynch, of Tomgraney,- County Clare, now aged 70, remembers, at the age of seven or eight, going Into the house to see the corpse. Her story is told in an affidavit sent from Ireland to assist in establishing the kinship of a County Clare family to Richard Kenna, an Inn keeper, who died at Bathurst on June 20, 1879. Kenna'a £20.006 estate Is now awaiting distribution. » Kenna left a long, complicated will, which is described by legal men as a remarkable testamentary document
OLD RECORDS SEARCHED
In it he bequeathed a life Interest in his estate to his four children, directing that, should they die with-
out issue, the corpus should pass to the children of -his brother, Michael, and his sister, Margaret Cox Of- his four children, Richard Philip died childless; Mary Jane, a spinster; Eleanor, a spinster; and James, a bachelor. The death of James— the last of the children— in 1934, brought back into legal prominence Richard Henna's time-stained 46 years' old will. Then commenced the problem, of tracing, through old Irish records, the descendants of Michael and Margaret That evidence is now ready for the Sydney courts. From Ireland, copies of, death certificates, marriage lines, and birth certificates have been obtained, together with affidavits from the old Inhabitants of far-off Ballyloughnane, Scariff, Tomgraney, and other towns In County Clare. Septuagenarians and octogenarians have joined in telling the story of the Kenna family. Among the branches of the family tree are McKennas, Kennas and Kinnas. The Master in Equity commences his adjudication on claims early in November.