Anna Margaretha WILHELMI 1836-1894
After the birth of daughters Katharina, 1834, and Anna Margaretha on 4th December 1836, Johannes Wilhelm II and Anna Margaretha Jost lost three sons, leaving a lengthy age gap between the two sisters and the two other children who completed the family. This meant that the two girls were thrown very much together in a household, which was also a home for two sons and a daughter from their mother’s first marriage to Philipp Krausgrill.
Although both of their parents were from families that had been affluent, their father now had to support the nine members of the family on the not generous wages of a seasonal farm hand. It is not surprising, then, that four of the older children joined the emigration to Victoria. Though she was the youngest of the four, Anna Margaretha was the first to leave, being sent with a group of 20 Nieder-Weiselerns who left Liverpool on Wednesday 5th December 1855 on board “Marco Polo”, flagship of the Black Ball line and the fastest vessel on the run to Melbourne. Anna Margaretha had her 19th birthday on board the day before they sailed.
There were other teenagers in their group, so Anna Margaretha passed the time pleasantly until their arrival in Port Phillip, on 27th February 1855. She went to Ballarat and later on to Sandhurst, where both her sister Katharina, wife of Johannes Heinz, and her half-brother, Konrad Krausgrill, were living. Eventually most of the Heinz family settled in or around Sandhurst. It was in this throbbing mining centre that Anna Margaretha found her partner: On “Sir W F Williams”, which brought Johannes Heinz and Katharina to Australia, was a young man from a neighbouring village, Johannes Muller, a son of Konrad Muller and Katharina Webe. He had also made his home in Sandhurst and he and Katharina formed a relationship which led to marriage in May 1862.
Anna Margaretha’s life for the next twenty years was devoted to producing and raising their family of three daughters and seven sons. The firstborn, in 1863, was a girl who was named for her mother; the next girl, Augusta Louisa, did not put in her appearance until 1879 – and she was followed with hardly a pause by her twin sister, Maria Matilda. In the meantime, a succession of boys had arrived in the Müller’s homes: John August, 1864; Conrad 1866; John William 1868; George Ernest 1871; Carl Conrad 1871; Herman Anton 1873; Philipp Theodore, 1879. The first three were born in Happy Valley – a misnomer for the Muller parents as none of the three survived infanthood. John August died when he was 2 and Conrad died a day after his sister in 1867. Of the later children born in Sandhurst, Herman Anton also failed to pass the age of 2.
Anna Margaretha did not live long enough to watch the next generation arrive; she died in her Long Gully home in April 1894, soon after Johannes had taken out letters of naturalisation. He survived her by almost eight years, dying at the age of 63 in April 1902.
Katharina Heinz, widowed in 1872, settled in Long Gully also and the sisters’ close friendship was maintained until Anna Margaretha’s death.
View Anna Margaretha's Family Chart
