Konrad (1843-1921)

Konrad JUNG 1843-1921 & Jakob JUNG 1849-1930

Konrad Jung, born in Gateshead, England on 19th April 1843, was from a much-travelled family. Konrad V, his father, lost his parents when he was still in his teens and had to fend for himself. He and his bride, Anna Elisabetha nee Bill, left the village soon after their marriage on 13th February 1842, to look for work in industrial England.

After the birth of Konrad’s brother Christoph, the Jung family had gone up to Scotland where a third son, Jakob, was born in 1849. Christoph died soon afterwards and the family returned to the village in 1850. This move was made because of the health of the mother, who died in December that year and was buried in the Nieder-Weisel cemetery.

Konrad had a stepmother by 14th March 1852 when his father married Anna Margaretha Klos, who was from the nearby village of Hausen. A daughter was born to this marriage in January 1855 and a year later the family left the village once again, this time as part of the mass exodus to the Victorian goldfields. The family travelled independently of the other villagers. Konrad, his brother Jakob, their half-sister Katharina, and their parents were the only Nieder-Weiselerns amongst the 274 passengers on board “Mermaid” when she sailed from Liverpool on 22nd July 1856. Konrad was then 13, but travelled as a 10 year-old child so that he could remain in the family quarters with the others. He and Jakob had 81 days of exploring the ship before they got to Melbourne on 19th October.

Konrad and Anna Margaretha took the children from Melbourne to Ballarat and thence to Beechworth in northern Victoria. Their stepmother had five more children in the next ten years, three boys, one of whom died in infancy, and two girls. Their father worked around the various diggings in the region, joined by Konrad junior and, in turn, Jakob and the half-brothers as they became old enough.

At Eastertide in 1859 Konrad went to Melbourne to be confirmed in the Lutheran Holy Trinity Church, as Jakob would do four years later.

There is no evidence that either brother married. Their half-sister Katharina also remained single, though she gave birth to a daughter in 1875. She lived in Beechworth, as did their widowed mother. Their half-brother Adolphus died in his twenties, but his brother Christoph married and remained in Beechworth.

Konrad Jung died late in 1921 at Mitta Mitta, 80 km east-south-east of Beechworth; said to be 81 years of age but actually 78. The informant did not know the names of Konrad’s parents, so he was probably not related.

Jakob Jung died at Wodonga on the Murray River in 1930, said to be 86 but really 81. His mother was named as Margaret Cleison – the name Klos appears in many variations on statist’s certificates.