Limerick to Wickham Terrace

The Atkinsons

An organist christened in Limerick Cathedral who emigrated in 1862 and, two years later, installed the first organ in All Saints' Wickham Terrace — and then played it.

Ida Kathleen Atkinson married George Pitt D'Arcy at Trinity Church, Fortitude Valley, on 10 October 1888. Her father is the most engaging in-law in the archive, and the only one whose work you can still go and look at.

9 July 1832

Paul Cole Atkinson, christened at St Mary's Cathedral, Limerick

Christened	9 July 1832	Limerick, County Limerick — St Mary's Cathedral
Parents	Richard Atkinson and Anne — a generation the archive did not have before
Organist	1853	Bandon, County Cork
Emigrated	2 September 1862	to Brisbane, with his family
Died	14 May 1906	in his bed at Graham Street, South Brisbane
Buried	15 May 1906	Toowong Cemetery, Portion 1, Section 49, Plot 15/16

The christening is indexed in Ireland, Births and Baptisms, 1620–1881, and it is the record that names Richard and Anne.

Wednesday 3 August 1864

The organ

Two years after stepping off the ship, he put an organ into a Brisbane church. The Organ Historical Trust of Australia records it:

The first organ at All Saints' was installed in the old church and used for the first time on Wednesday 3 August 1864. It was built by Thomas Jennings of London, and installed by Mr Paul Atkinson, who appears to have been the organist of the church at this time.

All Saints' Wickham Terrace is the oldest church in the Brisbane CBD. An instrument shipped from London, assembled by a man who had been an organist at Bandon in County Cork eleven years earlier, and played by him in a colonial town of a few thousand people.

This is the one thing in the archive that is neither a date nor a document but a skill — something a man knew how to do, carried nine thousand miles, and used. It is also, incidentally, an independent confirmation that the family reached Brisbane by 1864.

The Limerick problem

His wife Jane Creech was also of Limerick, born about 1830. Between them the Atkinsons and Creeches are the archive's Irish anchor.

This page used to say the line was "anchored at exactly one generation deep". That was wrong, and checking the tree properly on 10 September 2026 settled it: it carries five generations above Paul Cole Atkinson, all of them in Limerick — Richard Atkinson (1801–1865) and Ann Kent (1805–1880); his parents Richard Atkinson (1765–1826) and Rose Cole (1771–1836); her parents William Kent (b. 1767) and Mary Bowen (1770–1832); and above them Robert Kent (1740–1775) with Ann Peevers (1745–1808), and Richard Atkinson (b. 1725) with Mary Love.

And there is the man's own name explained. Paul Cole Atkinson was named for his grandmother, Rose Cole — the sort of thing a naming pattern gives you free once the generations are actually laid out.

family lore None of it is evidenced. Of those nine people, not one carries a record set — they rest on other people's trees or on nothing. The christening of 9 July 1832 remains the only Atkinson document this archive has read. Why that matters more than it looks →

Limerick is a hard county for this period. The Church of Ireland registers of many parishes were destroyed in the Four Courts fire of 1922, and what survives is patchy. St Mary's Cathedral is one of the parishes with surviving records, which is why Paul Cole Atkinson can be found at all. What to try next →