Georg HAUSER 1847-1862
Born on 25th June 1847, Georg was the eldest son of Peter Hauser VI and Anna Katharina nee Knipper. Two other children were born during the next several years but, when his parents joined the earliest of the organised groups to leave the village for the gold-fields of Victoria, only Georg, then 6 years of age, accompanied them. With others from the Hauser and Knipper families, and with Bills, Hildebrands, Schimpfs and Zimmers bringing to 28 the number of Nieder-Weiselerns on board, Georg and his parents sailed from Liverpool aboard the sailing ship “Glenmanna” when it left on its maiden voyage to Victoria on 28th October 1854.
Arriving at Melbourne on 14th February 1855, the trailblazers made their way to Ballarat where most of the men went mining. In 1857 Anna Katharina gave Georg a baby sister, but the little girl died in her second year. The family remained in Ballarat where Peter established a wood-carting business. As Georg grew up, he learned to help his father with the horses, and by the time he was 14 he was a driver in his own right. This led to his death on 12th May 1862. Collecting a load of timber from the American Saw Mill at Bungaree, near Ballarat, he was crushed when a stack of timber shifted. He was taken to nearby Forest Hotel whilst medical aid was called but he died almost immediately. A coroner’s jury, on which six immigrants from his home village served, found that his death was an accident, without blame on any other person.
Georg was laid to rest on 13th May, and his parents decided to return to Nieder-Weisel. Only a weathered headstone over their lonely grave in the Old Cemetery at Ballarat today bears witness to the brief and tragic lives of Georg Hauser and his sister Catherine.
“George and Catherine Hauser
Do not weep over their grave. They go, in the springtime of their youth, to join the Lord Who is our Saviour”.
(The inscription on the headstone is in German)
View Georg's Family Chart
