German Ancestors – Stoehr and Merkel Families

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.

The bereaved husband and son arrived in Sydney on 29th March 1855 and immediately they found their way to East Maitland emigration centre, the same journey that the Nebauer family had taken.

No doubt the Stoehrs would have been glad to find that there was another German-speaking family in their community and Eugene and Caroline Nebauer (see earlier post) would have been able to give them a great deal of help in acclimatizing to such a different geographic, climatic, social and cultural environment.

My 2nd great grandfather Charles Stoehr was born around 1834 in Schreisheim . From what I can gather he was an only child. Perhaps his parents were of the Reformed Church and had different attitudes towards
family size than some of our Catholic ancestors.

Like Eugene, Charles was a skilled vine dresser and also like him, Charles found employment in the coal mine at Four Mile Creek. At some stage while he was living near Four Mile Creek, Charles adopted an anglicized version of his surname, and from then on the family surname was Stair.

Soon after Charles and his father arrived in the Maitland area, Eugene’s sister, Anna Rosina, and his mother Elizabeth arrived in Four Mile Creek. Inevitable the two German families developed strong bonds of friendship and, perhaps also inevitably, the families were joined together by the marriage between the Charles Stair and “Rosanna” (as Anna Rosina was known) Nebauer, on 7th February 1858. Charles became a Catholic some
time before the wedding, and the Stair family brought up their children in that religion.

My great grandmother “Rose Annie Stair” was born nine months later, on 12th November of that year. She was my Dad’s grandmother and known simply as “Annie”.

At some time, my 3rd great grandfather Wendalin Stoehr decided to go back home to Schriesheim. Possibly he found life in such a strange country less bearable without his dear wife Anna Maria. He died there in February 1881.