Maria Elisabetha KRAUSGRILL 1835-?
Maria Elisabetha was the second of four daughters in a family of five children born by Anna Juliana nee Schimpf to the farmhand Konrad Krausgrill IV. She and her sister Anna Elisabetha were separated from the two younger girls by Christoph, the only brother; their close relationship ended when Anna Elisabetha died in 1843 when she was only ten.
Maria Elisabetha made her first communion in 1849 when she was fourteen. She helped her mother with the younger children and her father with the farm animals. She celebrated her 20th birthday on 7th December 1855 and left the village shortly after the Christmas celebrations in a group of thirteen villagers, which included seven young women in the age range 16 to 20. Like Maria Elisabetha’s own mother and father, many of the parents of young girls in the village were reluctant to have them exposed to an increasingly undisciplined culture.
This group sailed from Liverpool aboard “Mindoro” on 22nd April 1856, to enjoy the rare experience of a shipboard journey, which ended in Port Phillip on 14th July. From Melbourne, they found their way to Ballarat, where there were work opportunities for the young women as domestics. About twelve months later Maria Elisabetha’s brother Christoph joined her in the bustling gold-mining centre.
Late in December 1862, Maria Elisabetha married a German immigrant, Gottfried Jann, in the Lutheran Church in Ballarat. They settled in that town and a daughter, Caroline, was born there in 1863, but she died on 6th December 1866. Caroline’s death ends the statistics in Victoria of this Jann family. Maria Elisabetha and Gottfried probably returned to her husband’s home village of Petterweil, 10 km south of Nieder-Weisel.
Christoph Krausgrill married and lived out a long and active life in Victoria.
View Maria Elisabetha's Family Chart
