Katharina WINTER 1840-?
Two groups with the family name of Winter were on board “Fulwood” when she reached Melbourne on 15th February 1855, 133 days out of Liverpool. The smaller group comprised the tailor Jakob Winter, his wife Katharina Elisabetha Kohler, and two ‘daughters’, both named Catherine, ages 17 and 13.
The Winters were married in the English cathedral town of Manchester in 1838. No children had been notified to the parish church till the birth of a daughter Juliana in Nieder-Weisel in 1849. There was a second girl, Katharina, born on 30th September 1852 and also baptised in Nieder-Weisel. It would be a curious circumstance if the couple were childless during the first ten years of the marriage; it may be that the younger girl on “Fulwood” was in fact a daughter, born about 1840 somewhere in England. (The older girl was a daughter of Jakob’s brother Nikolaus, Katharina Elisabetha Winter).
The two Winter families firstly went to Ballarat; later they spread out to other gold fields in the area. The older Catherine was married in Ballarat early in 1860 and settled with her husband in the township of Hepburn Springs. Both Winter couples returned to Germany at about this time. Juliana, daughter of Jakob and his wife, had died in 1857. The other daughter they left in Nieder-Weisel was married to Jakob Haub XII in 1870.
There is no proof that Katharina went back to the village with Jakob and his wife. No record has been found of either her marriage or death in Victorian statistics. She may have gone to England, which was her birthplace, rather than Germany.