I told you I was ill!

One of my early blog posts concerned the absence from her employment of our 3xgreat grandmother, Caroline Kuhn. At the time, I wondered what she might have been doing that caused her to miss her work.

While the exact cause of her absence is still unknown, there is evidence that suggests that she was genuinely unwell.

The Journal of Accounts for Treatment of Patients¹ at the Brisbane Hospital records that Caroline was hospitalised from 11 November to 28 November 1859. She was charged at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per day; at a time long before health insurance was widely available.

The facing page of the ledger was used by hospital officials to note when and how each patient's debt was settled. It appears to show that Caroline did not ever pay the £1-4-0 she owed. No doubt, Mr Bell stopped her pay while she was ill which would make finding such a sum nearly impossible.

Nevertheless, Caroline must have made a full recovery because she lived until 1906 and played her part in the development of our family history.

¹Queensland State Archives Item ID2888, Journal (cash)

Wurst or Windsor Sausage? Erasing the Hun

When our KUHN and CRAMER ancestors came to Queensland, they were part of a wave of germanic immigration actively encouraged by the colonial authorities. Although it was made plain that they were not "British", the continental Europeans were well received. After all, the Queen had taken a German husband.

Rich detail can be seen in the on-line presentation Immigration Stories: The Germans by the Queensland State Archives.

Relationships between the communities changed at the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 and deteriorated further as the Great War progressed. Individuals with obviously germanic names or strong accents fell under (usually groundless) suspicion of aiding the enemy and 2,940 German and Austrian men were interned in ten different camps under the provisions of The War Precautions Act 1914.

It is a widely-held belief that "all the German place names" or at least very many of them were altered to more appropriate British titles. Certainly there were examples known to our family that make this claim plausible.

The township of Engelsburg where our COLEY ancestors would have shopped for supplies and obtained their news between trips to the major centre of Ipswich was renamed Kalbar in 1916. Gramzow, originally named for the ancestral village in Uckermark, became Carbrook at approximately the same time.

So how many other places must have had their names altered in this wave of patriotic fervour? The Australian Bureau of Statistics provides a full list extracted from Year Book Australia 1926 and the detail is surprising.

In Queensland there are only twelve locations to be added to the two with which our family has an association.

Original name	From 1916	Postcode (2012)
Bergen	Murra Murra	4353
Bergenside	Neuve	4353
Bismarck	Maclagan	4352
Engelsburg	Kalbar	4309
Fahley	Kilbirni(e)	4354
Gehrkevale	Mount Mort	4340
Gramzow	Carbrook	4130
Hapsburg	Kowbi	4660
Hessenburg	Ingoldsby	4343
Kirchheim	Haigslea	4306
Murden	Frenchton	4311
Roessler	Applethorpe	4378
Stegeht	Woongoolba	4207
Teutoburg	Witta	4552

The changes occurred between July and October 1916 and comparison with modern maps indicates that a number of the old names have come back into local use.

Perhaps the earliest change in Australia took place in May 1915 on the Richmond River, northern New South Wales where the township of German Creek became Empire Vale. There were only two more changes (at Germanton and German's Hill) in the whole of NSW for the rest of the war.

There were more than 60 placename changes listed for South Australia, the other major centre of germanic settlement in Australia. Does this discrepancy reflect the fact that the immigrants were able to name fewer places in Queensland (and so there were not so many to change) or a greater acceptance among northerners that the name of the mountain nearby was not a slur on your honour as a citizen of the Empire?

Evidence suggests that any public demand for these changes was selective. Teutoberg (north of Brisbane) was altered but the township south of Brisbane from which that community had moved remained Bethania. Perhaps the latter sounded "less German" or more biblical to English ears.

While there was certainly anti-german sentiment during the war years, the extent of the changes to placenames was not so great as is commonly believed. On the other hand, no patriotic Australian could possibly buy and eat wurst.

So in Queensland, sausage followed the lead of the British Royal Family and changed its name to Windsor. Its cousins in other states adopted other names including devon, belgium, polony and fritz (those rebel South Australians!). What is it they say about the first casualty of war?

Lost in translation

Like many Australians of my generation, I have an uneasy relationship with what were called "foreign languages" (but are now LOTE, Languages other than English). Fifty years ago, the inclusion of the study of German in my schooling was explained by the fact that "you like chemistry, so a knowledge of German will help there". (Latin was assumed not to need justification.)

I recall two occasions during my time at university when I extracted information from a German chemistry journal — not because I needed the content, but to demonstrate that I could do so. At the time, I did not believe that this justified five years of anguish at school.

Today, with my Deutsch-Englisch dictionary (purchased for 27 shillings in 1965) beside me, I actually regret not making more effort to master the language that can help me to uncover a significant part of our heritage. As in all learning, motivation is crucial.

Fortunately, the modern mono-lingual family historian can call upon the services of Google Translate when an intractable problem arises.

In running general searches for Gramzow, I came across a passage that seemed to be about a town in Australia that was named after the home of the KÜHNs in Prussia. Der Name ist eine Übertragung von Gramzow in der Uckermark.

I thought that I had made a reasonable translation but turned to the machine for confirmation. I was shocked when the output did not mention Gramzow at all. Then came the realisation that the software tries to translate every word; including the placenames. A quick reference to the instructions showed how to mark proper nouns and the tool could be run again with much happier results.

The text confirmed that, until 1916, the locality south east of Brisbane city now known as Carbrook was named Gramzow. This is yet more evidence of the impact on the Fassifern, Logan and Lockyer Valleys of the people who left Uckermark in the middle of the nineteenth century for a new life in Queensland.

It has not escaped my notice that, once again, I was almost tripped up by the intricacies of a language (albeit a programming language in this case). However, I am learning to love translation from German.

What is the significance of 1916 in the change of name from Gramzow to Carbrook? That is a topic for another day.

Make a quick copy of this.

Who would have imagined that reading a few lines of text could prove so difficult?

Family Search has images from the Germany, Brandenburg and Posen Church Book Duplicates in which I have been able to find records of significant events in the lives of our Prussian ancestors at the turn of the eighteenth century. I was prepared for the fact that these documents would be in German (I studied that to Year 12), probably in old script (I had seen examples of that before), and perhaps not calligraphically immaculate (I have marked student essays). So how tough could it be?

Well, the record of the death of our 5xgreat grandmother Sophie GRÜNHAGEN on 7 July 1824 is proving to be a challenge.

I know this is "just the duplicate"; but the old monks from the scriptorium must be turning in their graves.

Three degrees of separation

In his regular Saturday Night Genealogy Fun posting, Randy Seaver set the following challenge:

Using your ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with three degrees of separation? That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor, who knew another ancestor." When was that third ancestor born?

Gramzow church tower

This struck me because of its similarity to my recent post on children and their grandparents. That three-step chain could not stretch back too far when it begins with my grandchildren, but if I were to add a step on the other end … ?

Our 3xgreat grandmother, Caroline KUHN, grew up in the region of Uckermark (currently in north-eastern Germany) in the mid-nineteenth century.

Her paternal grandmother, Sophie GRUENHAGEN, was born in 1763 but died in 1824 so she never knew Caroline. On the other hand, Anna BERT, her maternal grandmother lived in Gramzow well into Caroline's teen years.

This makes my three degree chain:

1. I enjoyed almost 12 years of the life of Sydney Thomas CRAMER (1902-1963).
2. He lived in the same home as Caroline KUHN (1835-1906).
3. She grew up within a short distance of the home of Anna BERT (abt 1760-1850).

I imagined that I could do better by following the line of S T CRAMER's wife, Isabel Corry SUDDABY. Her mother, Jane DAVIES was born in 1877 and I visited her regularly (with my mother) during the 1950s. But Jane was born after her parents left Rhyl, so it is unlikely that she knew her grandmother Susannah (b 1815). Making either of her parents the mid-point of the chain limits the next (evidence-supported) step to post-1800, despite the individual longevity of 2xgreat grandmother, Jane.

Family historians need a ready supply of answers to the inevitable question "So, why do you do this?". Without the opportunity to analyse our tree, how else could I comprehend that the Seven Years' War was not merely a footnote of "ancient" history, but the lived reality of someone just three lifetimes removed from me!

Wild Cards and Transcription Errors

Trying to solve a puzzle in which you have no emotional involvement can provide an opportunity to reflect on how you work and to learn some important lessons.

I had taken an afternoon away from tracking our own ancestors to respond to a request from a friend. Family legend had it that a young woman travelled to Queensland in the late 19^th; century, had a baby, married the next year, and then returned to her interstate home where her death was recorded some years later. Could I corroborate any details of this tale?

It sounded straight forward because the family name of the young woman was unusual (at least in Queensland). That proved to be the case—just a single entry and that was for the marriage I was seeking. I now had the year of the marriage and so (if the legend was accurate) the year of the birth.

The first blockage came when I found that there was no birth registered with the surname of the (soon-to-be) husband. I had already established that no-one had been given the mother's surname at birth in Queensland. So I was looking for a child born in a (probably) known year to a mother who might or might not have used her real name.

Fortunately the on-line tool for Queensland Births Deaths and Marriages historical index searching allows the use of wild cards prefixed by an initial letter in the mandated family name field. Could I try a brute force search?

The initial result was pleasing. Not because I found the missing birth, but because the test query generated a very manageable five results. (With hind-sight, this should not have been a surprise. The total population of the Colony was less than 175,000 at that time.)

So it was worthwhile continuing the wild card strategy through the alphabet. Within a few minutes, I had found my target. I could be fairly certain that I was correct because the family name of mother and daughter differed from my original information by only one letter— ..tt.. had been written as ..tl...

Which is where the learning takes place. It made no sense to leap to the worst-case conclusion (that I had no idea of the child's name) before considering the possibility that there had been a variant spelling. With German ancestors whose names are recorded with and without umlauts (Kühn, Kuehn, Kuhn), I should have known that, but charged blindly on.

It is a very useful strategy to pause to consider how a name under study might look when poorly written, or sound when spoken with an accent. A few moments reflection might open up a line of enquiry that saves hours.

And my puzzle … Further confirmation came when a search on the tl-variant of the name turned up the registration of the death of the little girl at just a few weeks of age. Emma married and returned to Victoria as the tale claimed. Was her husband the father of the little girl? That remains a mystery.

Time with grandchildren

Here, two snappily-dressed gents set out for a day on the town in the mid-1950s. The taller one is Sydney Thomas CRAMER, our great grandfather.

This photograph came to the front of my mind because the shorter gentleman in that photograph has spent the last few days with his own grandchildren. Apart from reflecting on the unseemly rush of time and wondering if I will ever be regarded with the same awe as I felt for S T Cramer, I could not help but recall my recent finding about his grandparents.

Caroline Louise KUHN (his grandmother and our 3xgreat grandmother) was in the Moreton Bay District before it became a separate colony in 1859. In 1903 when Sydney was just a year old, she was recorded on the Electoral Roll as living in King Street, Gympie in Queensland. Her sons Ernest William Henry CRAMER and Fredrick William CRAMER and their families lived in the same street.

It is uncertain with which family she was living in 1903, but in 1905 when Fredrick had moved to nearby Berrie Street, Caroline remained at King Street with Sydney's parents. There can be no doubt that during his first few years, Sydney's grandmother must have been a significant presence.

So two little Australians in 2012 have a direct connection through two grandfathers to a grandmother who grew up in Uckermark, Prussia before the country that we know as Germany even existed and travelled to Australia long before our nation was formed.

As family historians, we work with the abstract notion of a generation all the time. It acquires new meaning when you recognise that although seven distinct generations of our family have been born in the last 177 years, that entire period can be spanned by the lives of just three people.

And two of those three looked pretty good in suits!

Unauthorised absence

At the beginning of summer, many residents of Brisbane town may have the feeling that they just don't feel like going to work that day. Employers might not like it, but there is not much they can do about it when a worker takes a "sickie".

It was not always so. This advertisement appeared in The Moreton Bay Courier of Wednesday 19 October 1859.

There were two gentlmen in the colony who could have signed themself as "H Bell". It seems likely that Dr Hugh Bell (staff surgeon at the Hospital) would have used his title (as he did in other advertisements he placed), so the aggrieved employer was probably H Bell, Engineer and Gunsmith, of Edward Street.

Perhaps Caroline was a domestic servant. It would be fascinating to know what our 3xgreat grandmother was up to; and, if she did return to the employ of Mr Bell, what was the penalty for her absence without leave.