Alice WINTER ~1842-? & Margaret WINTER ~1838-?
When “Fulwood” reached Port Phillip on 15th February 1855, her passenger list showed two groups of the Winter family. On Ticket Number 419 was Alice Winter 12, and Margaret Winter 16, described as daughters of the tailor John Winter 34, and Lisbet Winter 28.
Johannes Winter was born in Nieder-Weisel in 1820 to Ambrosius Winter and Maria Dorothea Bodenroeder. He married Anna Elisabetha Richter in 1844. There were two sons to this marriage, born in 1845 and 1847. It is clear that Margaret born 1839 and her sister born 1843 could not have been the children of Johannes and Anna Elisabetha.
There was no (Anna) Margaretha Winter born in the village in the period 1835-1840 who survived. The (Anna) Margarethas in the confirmation classes of 1851-1854 had no close relationship to the Winter couple.
The diminutive ‘Alice’ was normally a contraction of Anna Elisabetha. The age of teenage passengers was often dropped to 12 or below so that the girl or boy could travel in the family quarters of the vessel (at half fare) – Alice may therefore have been as old as 16. This makes it virtually impossible to identify her from the confirmation lists, as Anna Elisabetha was the most commonly recurring female name in the village. It is also impossible to identify either child in the Victorian BDM indexes, assuming that they did remain in the colony.
Johannes and Anna Elisabetha went back to Nieder-Weisel in about 1860, and the girls may have gone with them – although both were old enough by then to make their own decisions. Also, the reason for bringing young females to the colony was to give give them the opportunity of finding husbands and settling here, so it would be expected that they stayed in Victoria.