Category: German ancestors of the Hazell Family

The gentleman in the photo below is my great grandfather Charles Hazell who was a first generation Australian of an English father and an Irish mother.  The lady is also a first generation Australian but both of her parents came from  central Europe in locations are part of the modern state of Germany.

I first found out that I had German ancestors when someone (I wish I knew who) gave my father (Bert Hazell) a copy of a book entitled “In the Shadow of Mount Dangar” by Geoffrey Meyer. Of course I quickly scanned the book to find any references to my Hazell ancestors and what I found was that my great grandmother was an Aussie-born child of two “German” immigrants.

Prior to this discovery, I didn’t realize that my family could trace its history beyond the British Isles, and that, in order to fully understand ourselves, I needed to broaden my  knowledge of the geography and historical events that go back many centuries in Europe and, as I later discovered, even to Scandinavia. Continue reading “German Ancestors – Backgound”

The first of my “German” ancestors to arrive in Australia was my 2^nd great grand uncle Eugene, and his wife aunty Caroline (her family name was Umscheid) who emigrated to Australia from the village of Dorfprozelten on the River Main.  They set sail from Hamburg on the ship ‘Reiherstieg’, leaving on 3^rd April 1852 and arriving in Sydney on the 5^th August that year.  Their one-year old daughter Mary was with them.

In those days there were immigration centres in various parts of NSW and one of these was located in East Maitland and it appears that the Nebauers either chose to come to the Hunter region or were sent her by the NSW Government due to the need for migrant labour. In Bavaria, Eugene had been a stone mason, but he also had skills as a vine dresser (basically someone who was skilled in the pruning and cultivation of grape vines).  When he arrived in East Maitland however, his first job of work was as a coal miner at Four Mile Creek near Woodville (between Maitland and Newcastle) – actually the mine must have been pretty close to where my niece Megan now lives. Continue reading “The Nebauer Family (pronounced similar to “neighbour”)”

The next of our German ancestors to set out for Australia were the Stoehr family made up of my 3rd great grandparents Wendalin and Anna Maria Stoehr, and their son Charles who was around 20 years old at that time of their voyage. Anna Maria’s maiden name was Merkel.

Before emigrating, the Stoehr family had been living in a small town called Schriesheim (pronounced Shrees-hime) which is in the Baden district in the south-west of what is now the German Federation of States.  It is close to the river Rhine, and so near the border with both Switzerland and France.   Due to its location, the town has at times been under the control of states other than Germany .

At the time that the family left home, Schriesheim had a population of around 2,800. Today it’s population is around 15,000 (according to Wikipedia). From a nearby hill one can see the nearby city of Mannheim not too far away.

In order to leave Germany the Stoehr family would have had to find their way to the far northern city-state of Hamburg, one of the largest ports in Europe at that time. On Sunday 8th October, 1854, they boarded the barque “Johann Caesar” for what would prove to be a very difficult journey due to terrible weather. But this was the least of their troubles. Unbeknownst to the captain (H. A. G. Moller), the ship’s doctor and everyone on board, one of the other passengers was sick with cholera. Tragically, Anna Maria contracted the disease and perished on the journey to Australia and was buried at sea. Continue reading “German Ancestors – Stoehr and Merkel Families”

It was around the late 1860s that the two German families (Nebauers and Stairs) moved from the East Maitland area and took up land at Giants Creek near Gungal and Sandy Hollow.  By then Eugene and Carolyn Nebauer had nine children, and Charles and Rosanna Stair had five.

Giants Creek rises near Bunnan (which is east of Merriwa) and flows south and then east to meet Halls Creek at Sandy Hollow.  Halls Creek itself then flows into the Goulburn River just a few miles south-east of there.  The area that our ancestors lived and farmed was on the lower reaches of Giants Creek, roughly that area between Gungal and Sandy Hollow. 

Giants Creek derives its name from a geological feature at the eastern end of the waterway known as “Giants Leap”: two small hills with a gap in between.  See photo above. Continue reading “German Ancestors – the Meeting of Families at Giants Creek”

During the 1870s, the number of settlers in the district where our Hazell, Stair and Nebauer ancestor families had settled in the 1870s was growing and there was an increasing need for schools to be opened for the education of the children. The education department at the time was petitioned for the opening of two small schools, one in the small town of Giants Creek (at the eastern end of the creek itself) and another at the western end at Gungal. Continue reading “German Ancestors – School days at Giant’s Creek”