Konrad KRAUSGRILL 1810-1868 & Anna Margaretha WILHELM 1812-1889
Jakob (1843-?) & Anna Margaretha (1846-1865) KRAUSGRILL
Among the passengers on “Queen of the East” when she reached Melbourne on 24th February 1858 was the ‘Grenskill’ family: ‘Conrad, 47, Gentleman’; his wife ‘Margt’; twins ‘Jacob and Eliza, 10’; and ‘Greta, 9’. The parents were actually Konrad Krausgrill III and Anna Margaretha nee Wilhelmi, married in Nieder-Weisel in 1835. Another daughter, Maria, was sent to Victoria in 1854. Jakob and Elisabetha were 14 and Anna Margaretha junior 11 when the booking was made, but the ages were lowered to avoid payment of adult fare and to enable them to travel in the family quarters.
Konrad, born on 29th September 1810, was the tenth of twelve children of Jakob Krausgrill, who married Katharina Wilhelmi in 1794. Konrad learned the craft of linen weaving when he finished school in 1824. His younger brother, Jakob, was a member of the very first group to immigrate to Victoria from the village (in 1853).
In 1857 Konrad and Anna Margaretha heard that Maria, then 21, was engaged to be married and they took the unusual step of going with their family to Victoria to attend the wedding. This took place near Stawell, a few weeks after they arrived. Maria and her spouse Philipp Presser moved away from the area and Konrad took his family to Ballarat. Anna Margaretha junior was confirmed in the Lutheran Church at Easter 1860 when she was 14 as was the village custom. Elisabetha was married to Karl Schieblich in 1862 and the Krausgrill family left the colony soon after.
Anna Margaretha was married in San Francisco on 3rd April 1864 and, as Konrad was not resident in Nieder-Weisel in 1866, it can be assumed that he took his family to California from Victoria, and remained there for some years. Anna Margaretha died in Dallas, Wasco County, Oregon on 7th August 1865, and her husband, Johann Jakob Hauser XIII, married again in 1867 in Nieder-Weisel. Perhaps Konrad and his wife returned after that event; in any case he is recorded as having died in the village on 1st May 1868. The record of the death of his wife has yet been found. As Jakob was in his twenties when his parents returned to Germany, he may well have decided to stay in California.
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