Travels with my Ancestors #23: ‘Dear Christian’
After several years of Travels with my Ancestors posts and a book, all about my father’s side of the family tree, at last I come to my mother’s side. Mum was, if anything, even keener than Dad about all things family history, so if she were still with us she might very well be saying About time, too!
My sister and I are looking forward to a trip later this year to explore the place where our mother’s great-great grandfather originated. He’s the outlier in the family tree: the only person I know of whose roots did not lie in England or Ireland (with the exception of one other as yet unconfirmed possibility who may have been born in France.)
Our 3 x great-grandfather arrived in Australia in the mid-19th century but I know so little about his life before then. When I sat down to write about him, I felt a bit stumped. How do you tell a story when you don’t know its beginning?
Rather than make things up, I decided to write a letter, of sorts, expressing my dilemma. Here it is.
Dear Christian,
(or perhaps I should call you great-great-great-Grandfather,
but that’s a little wordy)There is so much about you that I don’t know. I’m doing my best now to rectify that, but it is difficult to dig about in records from another country when I am so far away, here in Australia. I know plenty about you since you arrived in Sydney in 1861 – where you lived, what you did for a living, who you married, your children, when you died and where you were buried. But before that? Not so much.
For example, there is the business of you being Prussian—or not. On your New South Wales Naturalisation document of 1880 your original citizenship was described as Prussian. When I found Kirn, the town where you were born, on Google maps and saw that it’s located in the Rhineland-Palatinate region (on the other side of the country from Prussia)—well, that was confusing.
I revisited my history books and learned that several of the many little states and kingdoms that later became Germany were controlled by Prussia at various periods, including the Rhineland at the time you lived there. One mystery solved.
Source: By Adam Carr at English Wikipedia – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34552576 Other questions have not been so easily answered.
Such as, why did you leave your homeland?
Your father had been born and lived near Kirn, and was a skilled tradesman: a tuchmacher or clothmaker. You likely grew up within a comfortable home, along with your six siblings. Your family was of the Protestant faith and you were baptised at the Kirn Evangelisch church in September 1838.
You did not take up your father’s trade in the cloth industry. Instead, you became a baker. Another skilled trade, but one involving flour, yeast, salt and sugar rather than wool or linen.
Your working day would begin early, well before dawn, as you loaded the ovens with wood and filled the heavy mixing bowls with flour. There must have been satisfaction as you brought out the dark rye loaves or sweet apfelkuchen, arranging them on the wooden shelves each morning, ready for customers. Your bakery would be redolent with the savoury scent of caraway seeds and the warming aromas of nutmeg and cinnamon. As you wiped your floury hands on your apron, did you give a nod of approval at another day’s good baking?
Source: https://germanculture.com.ua/german-bread/german-bread-the-heart-of-germanys-baking-culture/ Or were you wanting something different? Was Kirn, its small-town sights and familiar faces, too confining or commonplace? Did you dream of bigger horizons, new people and customs, adventures across the seas?
Or—and here historical events may have played a part—there were very different motivations for you to leave. Your homeland was experiencing seemingly never-ending turmoil, political and economic. In your father’s time it was the devastation of the wars wreaked by Napoleon Bonaparte. Then confusion as the Rhineland came under French control for a time.
You were just ten when the first of several uprisings began across Europe, led by people demanding more freedoms in how they were governed, and—amongst the German-speaking states—national unity. This was long before a German nation was planned and at a time when most Europeans were governed by autocratic, conservative rulers and officials.
Barricades at Alexander Platz, Berlin,
Source: By JoJan – Own work; photo made at an exhibition at the Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, Germany, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17630682I wonder how your parents felt about this push for more freedoms for ordinary people, or if they even knew about the demonstrators and the movements’ leaders and their demands? Did they agree or did they just want to get on with their lives and be left in peace?
The revolutions largely failed but the effects lingered as new political ideas took root and grew. Economically, life was difficult for many. The spectre of famine hung over villages and towns with crop failures in the countryside.
Was Kirn affected? Perhaps you struggled to get flour for your bakery. Customers may have fallen away as money for a daily loaf of bread became harder to find. You could no longer see a prosperous future there.
The pickelhaube, symbol of Prusso-German militarism from the mid- nineteenth century.
Source: By G.Garitan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25768801Even worse, you may have dreaded the call of conscription into the Prussian military—then a requirement for all able-bodied young men. Given the number and ferocity of wars and internal conflicts in your lifetime, it would be understandable if you’d longed to be somewhere where these were not constant threats.
Maybe your family were among those who harboured a dislike of the militaristic nature of Prussian rule. If you had inherited such feelings, you may have decided that leaving was preferable to submitting to such authoritarianism.
Whatever your reasons, you embarked on a ship to New South Wales. As far as I know, you had no contacts or family already in the colony. You might have come as part of a government-sponsored immigration scheme, though so far, I have found no record of that. I don’t even know the ship you arrived on!
Recently, at lunch with a Uebel cousin, another of your descendants, my sister and I were stunned when our cousin mentioned a version of your arrival story which had you jumping ship here during the gold rush days. We looked at each other, amazed. How had we never heard this family legend? And my mind immediately went to the question: how can I find out whether that story is true? If so, you would have been amongst many hundreds of others, literally gambling on finding a fortune on the messy chaos of the goldfields.
I still hope to find those details, and to learn more about your travels here. However you came, what must you, born and raised near the river Rhine but otherwise nowhere near a body of water like the vast oceans you voyaged across, have made of that long journey to this southern continent?
I think you came alone—a young man of twenty-three. Within five years, you’d married an English girl from Plymouth, and with Sarah you had eleven children. You continued your trade, opening a bakery and shop in Sydney’s St Peters.
You had some tragedies in your life here—losing two children before they’d had a chance to fully grow—and you never saw your native Kirn again.
But I am grateful that you took that ship from Germany and gambled on a better life here, because otherwise I would not have existed. I hope you did not regret your decision to come.
I will continue my search about your life before you left Germany. I want you to be more than just a name on my family tree. Yours is a good name—Christian Uebel—and both names have been handed down through subsequent generations. Still, I want to be able to see your name and feel a connection, to feel that I know something of you, not simply your name.
With thanks, from your great-great-great-granddaughter,
Denise
Sources:
NSW Certificate of Naturalization No 866 1880 for Christian Uebel
Death Registration 10554/1906 for Christian Uebel
Einwohnerbuch Stadt Kirn 1544-1900 Teil 4 Familiennamen Schr – ZIt’s complicated: ‘Germania’ by Simon Winder
This is not a new book: first published in 2010 and one of a trilogy of books about Central Europe, Germania is described as a personal history of Germans ancient and modern.
Why did I pick up a fourteen-year-old book about Germany?
Because, in my investigations into my family tree, there is one individual about whom I know very little: my mother’s 3 x great-grandfather, Christian Uebel.
In a tree made up of mainly English and Irish branches, Christian Uebel is an outlier, on a branch of his own. He emigrated from the Rhineland region of the country we now know as Germany, arriving in Australia in the 1860s. I realised that I knew so much more about British history and culture and almost nothing about Germany, so Germania was my first step to correcting this.
I quickly realised that the history of central Europe is much more complicated than I had imagined. I knew that the German nation did not exist until the unification in 1871, and in the centuries leading up to that, there were endless squabbles between and about the many, many small and large states that made up the German-speaking parts of Europe.
Germania traverses the history of this region from the days of the ancient tribes in the forests, all the way up to 1933, when the Nazis took power. I wondered about this timeframe until I realised it was for an entirely sensible reason. The dark shadows of WWII have so dominated German history, that apart from the first World War, many people know very little about what came before it.
This is not simply a book about history, although of course that is an important theme. It’s also a travelogue of a particular kind; one where the author indulges his pet loves – and hates – about a country and culture, and describes these in a very amusing – even humorously disrespectful – way.
Here’s an example: in discussing the appearance of a particular abbey, which gives a sense of an ancient and brilliant culture, but whose main interior unfortunately looks as though something has gone horribly wrong involving a collision with several trucks filled with icing sugar, having had an extreme rococo makeover to mark its seven-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. (p65)
There are plenty of gems like this, along with more serious discussions of the ups and downs of German history. On this, we are told that there were three points at which it was the worst time to be alive in central Europe’s past: the 1340s (famine and plague), the 1630s (the Thirty Years War) and the 1940s.
No prizes for guessing why that last one is on the list.
I was grateful for the map of Germany and its neighbours in central Europe at the front of the book, flipping frequently back and forth in my quest to learn more about this fascinating and (to me anyway) somewhat bewildering region.
Winder’s analysis of the themes and movements, great and small, of European history is thoughtful and thought-provoking:
But, as with so many aspects of Central European history, there is such an amazing spread of unintended consequences that only a form of political paralysis can substitute for the actual kaleidoscope of decisions which generate the oddness of European history – a small, bitter and crowded landscape somehow incapable of (indeed allergic to) the broad-ranging uniformity of the Chinese Empire or the United States. It is unfortunate that what seems in many lights so fascinating about Europe should also, as a spin-off, be the basis for so much rage and death.
Germania p273
Germania was published by Picador in 2010.
Travels with my Ancestors #6: Kick-ass Jane-The Longhurst and Roberts families
Tiny Ewhurst, a village in a narrow parish in the south of Surrey, was almost left off the Travels with Ancestors itinerary. I had somehow forgotten to include this, the birthplace of Jane Longhurst, my 4 x great-grandmother, who I can only describe as my most ‘kick-ass’ ancestor. Fortunately my ever-patient husband and our travelling companion are willing to do a small detour on our way east, towards Kent.
We reach the village after navigating roads that steadily decrease in width, the closer we come to it. It takes a steady nerve to drive along England’s tiny rural lanes and byways, but Andy does a good job as tour driver.
The road to Ewhurst 
Unlike many of my ancestors, as far as I can tell, Jane was not born into poverty. The Longhursts were an established family in the district; probably not wealthy, but her father may have owned some land, as he appeared on a voter registration list for Ewhurst. In the 1700’s only people who owned property were eligible to vote.
For whatever reason, Jane was tried and convicted of a crime that earned her the sentence of seven years’ transportation. Rather surprisingly, though there are records of her trial and sentence, details of her actual crime have not yet surfaced – but I live in hope of uncovering this one day.
She was born about 1783 in Ewhurst, and baptised at the church of St Peter and St Paul in the village. That is my first port of call, because it’s the one definite pinpoint in England that I have for her.
Before leaving Australia, I had made contact with many of the parish churches I hoped to visit, to check on opening hours and so on. I was put in touch with a local woman, Janet, an active member of the local historical society. She is kind enough to meet me at the church and show me around, giving so much rich detail about the village’s history in the process. Janet wrote the History Society’s Guide and History of St Peter & St Paul, so she is a perfect companion for this visit.
The oldest part of the church dates from Norman times, and Janet points out the distinctive Norman use of rough stone rubble and pieces of red Roman-era tile, that were frequently reused in later buildings. Other parts of the church were added, built or rebuilt over subsequent years, much of it after Jane’s time there. But I am able to photograph the church and its baptismal font, certain that baby Jane’s tiny head was wet with water from here at her baptism in March, 1783.
Out in the lush churchyard, Janet points out the ancient, spreading yew tree, sheltering a number of old headstones that are too weathered to read. A lower churchyard has at least 83 species of wildflowers, and grass cutting is carefully timed to allow different species the chance to set seeds and flower. A monument with stone wings seems to stand as guardian angel over the place.
Jane’s father and grandfather were likely buried in this churchyard, though possibly in different sections. Her grandfather, James, would have been laid to rest in the ‘respectable’ part of the churchyard, whereas her father John may have taken his own life. Records are a little confusing here, but if his death in around 1793 was a suicide, he would most likely have been buried away from the general burial ground , as suicide was regarded as a dreadful sin in the eighteenth century. Gazing over the beautiful grounds, I can only hope that he lies in peace, wherever that may be.
As we drive away from little Ewhurst, I am very grateful to Janet for all her information and help.
What happened to Jane after her trial and sentence?
She arrived in Sydney on the transport ship Glatton in 1803, and was assigned to labour for a master or mistress there. Seven years later, she’d completed her sentence and she married William Roberts, also an emancipated convict. They’d been living together before that date and had four sons together; then later two daughters and three more sons were born.
WIlliam had done rather well for himself. Through hard work, diligence and commitment, he had caught the eye of Governor Macquarie, becoming a sought-after road and bridge building supervisor. He was paid handsomely for this work, in land grants on Dharug country in the Hawkesbury Valley of NSW, plus cash and liquor – this was the era of the ‘Rum Corps’ and rum and other spirits had a stranglehold over the economy of the colony.
The family lived at Windsor and then in Sydney, at The King’s Arms, the public house they ran at Castlereagh and Hunter Streets.
When the Governor became disturbed at the rapidly increasing number of liquor establishments operating in the town, and the unruly behaviour of patrons, he issued a decree closing a great many of them. The Roberts’ hotel was one of those approved by Macquarie and allowed to keep trading.
Sadly for Jane, William died in 1819. For a widowed or single woman at that time, life was not easy. Even having money (which Jane now certainly did) was no guarantee of continued success. The male – and military – dominated colony held strict expectations of a woman’s place. It did not include the world of business or trade.
There were very few exceptions to this, and Jane became one of them. She wrote to the Governor, successfully requesting payment owed to her husband for work he had carried out before his death. She continued the hotel businesses that she and William had established. Later, another request to the Governor resulted in an allocation of land for grazing cattle. She became one a very small number of women who were early subscribers to the newly established colonial bank. Her name appears on the bank records alongside the likes of better-known colonial women such as fellow emancipist Mary Reiby, and the Governor’s wife, Elizabeth Macquarie.
She did this all while raising nine children into adulthood, many of whom went on to become successful business people and farmers themselves.
Jane remarried in 1825 and had eleven years with another William, also an emancipist: William Hutchinson. His story is also an interesting one. But this post is all about Jane – the girl from a tiny Surrey village whose 3 x great granddaughter was my mother, Doreen. She would have recognised something in Doreen, had they been able to meet – a quality of determination, a refusal to give up.
I can understand why Mum was always fascinated by Jane and her story. I’m delighted and grateful to have made the pilgrimage to Ewhurst, the birthplace of our kick-ass ancestor.
