New research drawing on extensive Irish and Australian manuscripts reveals that Fr John Joseph Therry (1790-1864)— long celebrated as the saintly founder of Australian Catholicism — accumulated an 85,000 acres’ property portfolio and regularly engaged in unethical commercial dealings in the penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.
John Joseph Therry: Irish landlord, merchant and priest in the Australian colonies by Australian-Irish researcher Damian John Gleeson, offers the most comprehensive assessment to date of Therry’s significant commercial affairs.
ISBN: 978 1 7644707 0 4
A revisionist biography based on extensive archival research in Australia and Ireland.
265 pages • Fully referenced and indexed
PUBLISHER: COLONIAL PRESS
PO Box 343, Goulburn NSW Australia 2580
Orders and enquiries: colonialpressorders@gmail.com
AUTHOR
Dr Damian John Gleeson is an Australian historian of Irish heritage who holds doctoral qualifications in history from the University of New South Wales (2006) and the University of New England (2024). He publishes regularly in Ireland and Australia.
Author’s selected publications: • Irish Bigamy: New Insights into Colonial New South Wales (2025) •An Enduring Flame: St Patrick’s Mortlake, 1885–2020 (2021) • The Rock of St George (2017).
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