Elisabetha KRAUSGRILL 1843-1926
Elisabetha and her twin brother, Jakob, were born on 21st August 1843. Their parents, Konrad Krausgrill and Anna Margaretha nee Wilhelmi, had a daughter, Maria, and a son who died. A third daughter, Anna Margaretha born in 1846, completed the family.
In April 1853, Elisabetha’s uncle Jakob Krausgrill went out to the Victorian gold-fields; perhaps on his recommendation, her parents sent Maria out to join him, mainly to get her away from the dangers in the village. Four years later, the rest of the family migrated, their date of departure timed to enable them to be present at Maria’s wedding. The excited children, whose ages were lowered so that they could travel in the family quarters of their ship “Queen of the East”, had fourteen weeks of onboard adventures ahead of them when they left Liverpool on 16th November 1857.
Disembarking on 24th February 1858, the family went from Melbourne to the town of Stawell in the Grampians and thence to Pleasant Creek; Maria was married a few days after their arrival in that settlement.
The events of the next several years are a matter of conjecture. Elisabetha’s brother Jakob was now in his mid-teens and would have been able to help their father had he tried to do some prospecting. It seems likely that they returned to Ballarat, as Elisabetha’s sister Anna Margaretha was confirmed there in 1860. In August 1862, Elisabetha married a German emigrant, Charles Schieblich, with Maria as matron-of-honour. The couple moved to Amherst, northwest of Ballarat, and Elisabetha gave birth to a daughter there in March 1863. They named the child, who was to be their only offspring, Emma.
Elisabetha’s parents left the colony at this time with the other children for California. Maria and her family settled not far from Amherst, but when she died prematurely in 1865, Elisabetha was left with no close relatives in the colony.
Charles was a chandler by occupation; he operated a tallow-making plant in Talbot, a few km south of Maryborough, in the 1870s. Later he took his little family to Echuca, on the River Murray, where he set up a soap making plant in Collier Street.
The Schieblichs lived in Echuca for the remainder of their lives. Charles later developed arteriosclerosis, but lived to see his daughter married in 1887 to a miner, James Miller, whom the family had known in Talbot; his father became a publican in Echuca. Charles died in the asylum in Sunbury on 21st June 1910 at the age of 80; he was interred in the Echuca Cemetery three days later.
Elisabetha survived until 1926. After Charles was incapacitated, she lived with Emma and her family and watched her five grandchildren maturing. She ran the Miller household after her daughter died. Her own life ended on 19th April 1926 in the Miller house in Francis Street. Her youngest grandchild, Walter, who had a bakery on the High Street, made the arrangements that re-united Elisabetha, then in her 83rd year and a colonist of 68 years, with her husband of almost 48 years.
View Elisabetha's Family Chart
