Ambrosius HAUB 1835-1876
Ambrosius was born on 25th November 1835, sixteen weeks after the marriage in Nieder-Weisel of his father Ambrosius Haub and his mother Anna Dorothea Haub. Two sisters, Katharina Elisabetha and Margaretha, followed in 1838 and 1840, and a brother, Konrad, completed the family in 1844.
Ambrosius senior was a farmhand, reliant on seasonal work to provide an adequate degree of sustenance for his family. His daughters became a source of worry as they reached adolescence, the more so as his wife’s health declined. The younger girl, Margaretha, only 14 years of age, was sent out to Victoria in 1855. Anna Dorothea died in June 1856 and Katharina Elisabetha was married two months later.
Ambrosius junior served the prescribed period of time with the army and then decided that he also would emigrate. He left with the last sizeable group to leave Nieder-Weisel, including a Krausgrill and a Muller family and several young people in his own age group. They sailed from Liverpool on “Queen of the East” on 16th November 1857, reaching Melbourne on 24th February 1858.
From Ballarat, Ambrosius moved up to the northern goldfields around Stanley and Beechworth, perhaps because his sister had gone that way with some of her travelling companions – the Klippels, Heinzs and Winters. On 13th April 1860, he stood with Konrad Winter of Nieder-Weisel as witness to the marriage in Beechworth of Katharina Heinz and Christoph Hildebrand. Other arrivals from Nieder-Weisel at about this time brought Ambrosius news of the death of his father on 26th April 1859.
Ambrosius was unable to find a companion to share his life and he died single. His premature death occurred in January 1876, shortly after he turned 40.