Johann Georg HILDEBRAND 1824-?, Elisabetha HAUSER 1828-? & Katharina HILDEBRAND 1854-?
Elisabetha HAUSER 1828-?, Katharina HILDEBRAND 1854-?
Each of the three sons of the daily paid farmhand Johann Georg Hildebrand VI and his wife Katharina nee Reuter who survived to adulthood emigrated to England in search of better working conditions.
Unlike the youngest brother, Christoph, Johann Georg completed his military service and married in the village before he left to join his brother in the midlands town of Leicester. His wife Elisabetha, daughter of the carrier Jakob Hauser III and Anna Margaretha nee Rumpf, had no children in the five years following their marriage on 2Oth February 1848, so it may be that Johann Georg was job-hunting in other parts of the country. Their first child was born on 1Oth March 1853, but died before the year was out. A daughter, Katharina, arrived on 25th September 1854 and it was shortly after this that Elisabetha and Johann Georg left the village to live with Christoph and his family in Baker Street Leicester. All of the brothers were gifted musically and Christoph had joined a band of touring musicians.
Elisabetha gave birth to a second daughter, Maria Dorothea Elisabetha, on 9th October 1856, but this child also died young. By this time Christoph had taken his family to Victoria and Johann Georg decided that he would do the same. As with Christoph’s family, there is no record of the voyage that Elisabetha, Johann Georg and, presumably, Katharina made; it may be that Johann Georg also used his musical skills to pay for their passage as a ship’s musician. They were in Melbourne by the second half of 1859, and Elisabetha produced a third daughter in the inner suburb of Collingwood on 15th September 1859, who received the name Maria at her christening, on 3Oth October, in the Lutheran Church. (This little girl died in Nieder-Weisel during the dark days of World War II in her 93rd year).
Johann Georg and Elisabetha were back in the village by 1862; Elisabetha produced a fourth daughter on 9th May 1862; they named her Anna Margaretha. It is likely that Christoph and Elisabetha returned with them. This was not the end of their wanderings, as they were in California by about 1864. A daughter, Anna Christina Elisabetha, was born on 7th June 1866 in San Francisco and a son, Georg, on 6th March 187O in the same town. It is known that Christoph, who was also there, returned to Nieder-Weisel when his wife died; the fact that Maria died in the village suggests that Johann Georg and Elisabetha returned as well.