Please indulge me while I think aloud
.
A blacksmith is a skilled trade that needs learning through apprenticeship. For John Molloy to be working as a blacksmith in 1850 he either learned the trade through apprenticeship in Australia, or he was already a blacksmith when he arrived. Assuming he arrived when aged in his 20s, it seems most likely that he would already have a trade/occupation on arrival. Therefore I keep going back to the blacksmith John Molloy who arrived in 1841 on Brothers with a wife Ann and 3 children. [POST #14]
That John had a father named Henry, and our John named his 1st son John Henry and his 3rd son Henry so the Henry name was significant.
Continuing to think aloud heres a theory
John and wife Ann split up sometime in the 1840s. Either they both re-marry, or John marries (bigamously) in 1851. Not knowing that he had a wife, perhaps he was encouraged to marry by the mission in Wellington, rather than living in sin, & having children out of wedlock. When his wife Ann died, he was then free for a proper Catholic marriage in 1864, where he refers to himself correctly as a widower. John would have known that the 1851 bigamous marriage was void, so the second marriage was indeed necessary.
Here is a possible death:
MOLLOY ANN R
792/1862 SYDNEY
Father - PATRICK
Mother - MARY P
Or perhaps Ann also married and died under her married name.
