The McNally family came from Armagh in Ireland and were one of the prominent families in Bellingen and on the Mid North Coast of NSW.
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Hugh McNally and his wife Mary Ann nee Hall married in 1880 on the Nambucca.
There is a photo remaining of Mary Ann and Hugh around the time of their marriage. She was a slight, pretty woman and Hugh has bright clear eyes and a full beard.
Hugh has two claims to fame. He was the first licensee of the Star Hotel in Macksville.
The Star dates from 1885 and began life as Hall's boarding house. Hugh McNally was Hall's son-in-law.
The maps of early subdivisions show Hugh McNally as a substantial land owner. At this time it was known as Nambuccra or Nambucca Central.
Another early land owner was Angus McKay. The story goes that both Angus and Hugh wanted Nambucca Central named after them and the concession was made to call it Macksville after the two of them.
The earliest evidence of the name Macksville was in 1887 on an advertisement for a subdivision.
So Hugh is also remembered as one of the two men Macksville is named after.
Hugh and Mary Ann had eight children. The last of these pregnancies caused her death from septicaemia in 1893.
Mary Ann lingered for two weeks and five days after the birth and would have suffered a slow and agonising death.
Shirley Bolton is a long-time resident of Nambucca who is Hugh and Mary Ann McNally's great granddaughter. She is also a volunteer at the Headland Museum.
In a short interview Shirley recounts her memories of that time.
"Hugh and Mary Ann had eight children and the last was my grandmother. She was born on at the Star Hotel on December 4, 1893," Shirley said.
"Sadly her mother died afterwards and the story is that the townsfolk gathered in River Street and laid down trees and leaves, especially in front of the hotel, so that when the horses and sulkies passed the noise would not disturb the dying Mary Ann.
"When she died they put the coffin on a barge in front of the hotel and floated it along the river to Blackbutt Cemetery, where she was buried.
"When Hugh went to look for work in Queensland the eight children were looked after by their aunts and uncles.
"My own grandmother went to Bellingen and the children had no contact with their father for many years.
"It was only when my grandmother was elderly that she found out Hugh had died only a few years after leaving Macksville.
"He had written letters to his children through the aunts and uncles, but unfortunately they were not passed onto the children. They thought he had deserted them.
"My grandmother told me Hugh was a very generous man. He gave land to the Catholic Church for the site of the first Catholic Church in Macksville and he was active in supporting the needy in the community," Shirley said.
In 1895 Hugh McNally was bankrupted and Matthew Wallace bought his land.
He was buried at Proserpine in Queensland on the 18th February 1898.
So this is a sadder pioneer story with Mary Ann dying early and painfully and Hugh losing his fortune and dying away from his children in Queensland.
Most of the articles I have done have better outcomes, but I think we can well imagine that life was hazardous at the time and whilst prosperity brings about some fame, suffering and poverty does not.
- Rachel Burns is a museum volunteer at Nambucca Headland Museum and radio presenter on 2NVR in the Nambucca Valley.
More from Rachel Burns: The Grace Family: Swept to Nambucca by the Macleay floods