by Helen Dennis, July 2024 ~
I have numerous documents confirming key events in the seemingly ordinary life of my great-great-grandfather Edwin Tyrrell Sayers. He was born in 1843 in Melbourne. His mother, Anna Tyrrell, died at the tender age of 28, just a few months after Edwin was born. In 1861, at the age of 17, Edwin got a job as a clerk at the Post Office in Sydney. Three years later he married Minnie (Mary Ann Bray McDonnell) and, over the next twenty-three years, Edwin and Minnie lived in the suburbs of Sydney and had twelve children.
But it appears that Edwin led another, secret, life – as John Edward Ryan.
John Edward Ryan and his ‘wife’ Clara had six children; all born near to where Edwin and Minnie lived. On her children’s birth records, Clara recorded their father – and her husband – as John Edward Ryan, a railway employee.
So, what is the link between Edwin Sayers and John Ryan?
A few years ago I had my DNA tested. When the results came back, I had hundreds of distant cousins I didn’t recognise. The thought of trying to work out who they all were was so overwhelming that I didn’t give any of them more than a cursory glance. Months later, as I trawled through other people’s Ancestry family trees looking for clues about Edwin’s life, I stumbled upon an interesting discussion.
Two of my distant cousins had matching DNA but they didn’t appear to have any common ancestors. This led them to believe that John Edward Ryan and Edwin Tyrrell Sayers were the same person. I was intrigued, but I didn’t understand their reasoning. So I went away and did a course on DNA analysis.
I learnt lots of things. Importantly, I learnt that ‘DNA doesn’t lie’. There had to be an ancestral connection between the Ryans and the Sayers. I also learnt that DNA is just one of the many tools I’d need to use to establish that connection – it needs to be used in conjunction with traditional genealogical research such as documentary evidence, family trees, oral histories, and logic.
John Edward Ryan left no paper trail. He has no birth record and there is no record of his marriage to Clara, save Clara’s assertion that the marriage took place. When Clara re-married in 1883, she stated that she was a widow. However, descendants have not been able to find a death record for her supposed first ‘husband’ John Edward Ryan.
But whoever he was, I (and several other confirmed Sayers descendants) share DNA with descendants of the only two of ‘John Edward Ryan’s’ children to bear offspring: William and Harriet. Using the skills I learnt in my DNA course, I was able to establish that, on the balance of probability, Edwin Tyrrell Sayers was William and Harriet’s father; and was also, therefore, John Edward Ryan.
Edwin proved to be the only viable Sayers candidate. The Sayers’ DNA could not have come from Edwin’s father, as Ryan descendants match Edwin’s mother’s side of the family – which they wouldn’t do if Edwin’s father had been the philanderer. Further, Edwin didn’t have any full brothers, so there is no possibility that his sibling could’ve fathered Clara’s children.
In addition, it was relatively easy to place Edwin at the scene of the crime. Birth records of Minnie and Clara’s fifteen surviving children reveal that Edwin had been living in Randwick in Sydney, with his wife Minnie, when Clara’s first child was born there in 1870. He then moved to the Newtown area where all of Clara’s, and the next three of his wife Minnie’s children, were born. Clara did not have any children after Edwin and Minnie relocated west of Sydney – to Canterbury – in 1879. Edwin’s wife Minnie had six more children, the last of which was born at Kogarah Bay in 1887.
It appears that when Edwin and Minnie relocated to the outskirts of Sydney, Clara and John Ryan’s relationship ended. Clara remarried in 1883 – declaring she was widowed – and moved to Scone. Ryan family lore states that John Edward Ryan simply disappeared, leaving no trace of his whereabouts.
Unfortunately, we will never know how complicit Clara was in the subterfuge. Was she aware that her ‘husband’ John was already married? Did she record the name ‘John Ryan’ on her children’s birth certificates to disguise her and Edwin’s affair? Or did Edwin deceive Clara? Did he present himself as John Edward Ryan, a single railway employee?
Clara died in Scone in 1898 and was buried with her young son – also named John Ryan – and a generation of intriguing secrets.
Unravelled 