Jakob HAUB 1833-1898
Jakob could trace his ancestry to the Field Juror Johann Jakob Haub, who lived at the South Gate of the village in the early 1700s. Johann Jakob married the daughter of Church Elder Balthasar Lenz, who sponsored their first son. Balthasar Haub’s son, Johann Georg, married a daughter of the organist and school assistant Johann Georg Caus. Their son Peter was married firstly to Katharina Petri from the nearby village of Hausen. None of their four children survived and the mother died prematurely in 1828. Peter remarried in 1830, his second wife being Margaretha Lenz. Their first child, born 22nd June 1833, was named Jakob. Two girls followed in the next five years but the elder one died. Peter lost his second wife in 1842 when Jakob was nine.
Jakob was confirmed at Whitsuntide in 1847 and he finished his schooling the same year. His father was a tailor and Jakob would normally have become his assistant when he completed his army service, but Peter died in 1854, before Jakob had returned to civilian life. Having no close relatives other a sister who was in domestic service, Jakob looked to the New World for his future.
On 25th March 1857, a small group of young men sailed from Liverpool on board the vessel “Indiana”; one was 23 year old Jakob Haub (with his name written as ‘Hunt’). The voyage ended in Melbourne on 2nd July, and Jakob then followed the footsteps of more than 150 migrants from Nieder-Weisel.
For several years, Jakob worked on the goldfields around Ballarat – perhaps with some success as he was able to set up a tailoring business in Wattle Flat, Castlemaine in the mid-1860s. There he made the acquaintance of Harriet Bennett, whose father was a wood carter in the neighborhood. Henry and Mary Bennett had migrated from the English county of Yorkshire with their family. Jakob’s proposal of marriage was accepted and they were married on 9th August 1869 in the registrar’s office. The father of the bride was the main witness. Harriet was 20 years of age and Jakob understated his by four years to minimise the age difference.
Their first child, Mary, was born in October 1870 in their Castlemaine home. A second child, Laura, arrived in January 1873 (at The Loddon), and a third, Ellen May, in 1883 (in Melbourne). It seems that there was a fourth child, because when Harriet remarried in 1900 (to Alfred George Crundale Hughes) following Jakob’s death, the marriage certificate stated that she had 4 living children.
In 1898, Jakob died in East Melbourne in his 66th year. Of the daughters, Mary married Arthur Henry McWhinney in 1889 (3 children), Laura married Charles Alfred Thompson in 1900 (possibly 1 child), and Ellen May remained unmarried.
View Jakob's Family Chart
