On 8 July 1838 at the Bethlehem Church in Berlin, six couples were married by Pastor Johannes Evangelista.^[1] They were part of a group of twenty recruited for a Christian mission to the indigenous population at Moreton Bay. My great great grandmother, Dorothea Caroline Weiss, sometimes called Caroline or Maria, was one of the women who married that day. But she was not married to my great great grandfather yet. Her new husband was Heinrich Moritz Schneider (Moritz), a medical student from Leipzig, Saxony.^[2] My great great grandfather was one of four single men in the mission group.

Marriage of Dorothea Caroline Weiss on 8 July 1837 at Berlin, Brandenburg, Deutschland. From Ancestry.com.au

I wonder what the reason would be for Dorothea and the other women, to marry, possibly to men they didn’t know well and to leave their families and travel so far away, knowing they would likely never return. Arranged marriages would still have been common. Missionary work was seen favourably and perhaps, as members of The Bethlehem Church they saw this venture as a way to serve their God.

I don’t know much about Dorothea’s family. She was born on 26 October 1810 in Berlin to Johann Weiss and Wilhelmina Dorothea Hegneckie or Heinike, and I am unsure if she had siblings.^[3] Her father was a clerk at one of the public offices.^[4] He was a ‘Koniglidren Logenschliesser’, literally royal box closer and presumably this means he was employed as an usher in the royal theatre.^[5] Dorothea was 26 years old when she married. It’s unlikely that she had a profession before her marriage. Societal norms limited women’s roles to domestic duties and child rearing.

Immigration record for Mrs Maria Schneider on Minerva into NSW April 1838. Ancestry.com.au

The day after the marriages, the group set out for Britain and in September 1837 they boarded The Minerva for the final leg of the voyage that would change all their lives when the ship was struck down with Typhus. When the ship’s doctor became ill, the missionaries, led by Moritz Schneider, took on the care of the sick. Some of them, including Dorothea, Moritz and Theodore succumbed to the fever.^[6] Dorothea and Theodore recovered, but Moritz was ill when they landed in Sydney and unfortunately, he died soon after on 3 February 1838.^[7]

In late March, just before the remaining members of the mission group were to be released from quarantine, their departure was delayed when Dorothea suffered what was thought to be a relapse of Typhus and was admitted to the hospital. A newspaper report stated:

It was soon ascertained, however, that Mrs. Schneider’s illness was more likely of the mind than the body, arising from the loss of her husband, to whom she has been devotedly attached.^[8]

It must have been a dreadful time for Dorothea, pregnant and newly widowed in a foreign land. Although the pastors leading the group spoke English, most of the rest apparently did not. Those who had not been ill went ahead to Moreton Bay in March 1838. The rest, including Dorothea and Theodore were released from quarantine in April but remained in Sydney until June 1838.

Article in The Centenary of Queenslands First Free Settlement p13 The Telegraph 21 Apr 1938. National Library of Australia Trove collection.

Over the next few years, a baby boom occurred at the Nundah mission in Brisbane. The first child of my Australian family was Moritz (Maurice) Theophilis Schneider, Dorothea’s son. He was the second child born at the settlement. But a woman with a child needed to marry and in 1839 Dorothea married Theodore Franz. With only four unmarried men in the mission party, it was probably inevitable that she would have married one of them. Perhaps she made a connection with Theodore during their time in Sydney? I’d like to think it was a marriage of genuine affection.

While early dealings with the Yaggera peoples (Jagera and Turrbal), on whose land the mission stood, appeared favourable, the missionaries struggled to support themselves. In late 1840 and early 1841 the Moreton Bay district was subjected to severe flooding resulting in a lack of supplies from the mission’s Support Committee in Sydney. A report by the Commandant of Moreton Bay, dated 18 February 1841 stated:

… the very scanty supplies that have been received by them from their society in Sydney has left them in a state bordering on starvation during the last months. I have been obliged to issue them with 1,050lbs of flour from the commissariat magazines here: they have not received any supplies by the last vessel. One of the females fell into such a state of extreme debility, induced by want of proper nourishment after her confinement that the medical officer deemed it necessary to remove her to hospital.^[9]

The female referred to was Dorothea after the birth of Jane Caroline Franz, her first child with Theodore. The hospital records show she was admitted on 30 December suffering from lack of nourishment. It must have been serious as she was not discharged until the end of April 1841.^[10]

My great grandfather, William Frederick, was the second child for Dorothea and Theodore, born in 1842. In 1855, their sixth and youngest child, a daughter, Clara Patience was born. Dorothea died not long after in 1855, maybe from complications of the birth of Clara. She was only 44 years old. Sadly, Clara also died young in 1859 at only 4 years of age.

Tombstone of Caroline Dorothea Franz nee Weiss died 21 Feb 1855 from the Nundah & Districts Historical Society Inc.

Perhaps Dorothea had never fully recovered from her previous bout of ill health that required her hospitalisation in 1840. Perhaps her illness after the episode of Typhus also contributed. For the first two years after her mother’s death, Clara most likely would have been raised by her sister Jane who was just 14 years old when her mother died. It was probably a relief for Jane in 1857 when her father Theodore married a young Irish woman, Mary Ann Best. They had seven children together. The name Dorothea has been passed down to each generation in several of the families of her descendants. I hope she would feel proud of her legacy.

[1] Egan, Allan Joseph (2010) Nundah: Mission to suburb, Edited and Produced by Mavis Baxter, Noela Gibson-Wilde and Bruce Gibson-Wilde – Supported by Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor’s Suburban Initiative Fund and Kim Flesser, Northgate Ward Councillor
[2] New South Wales Assisted Immigrants Passenger Lists 1828-1896, ancestry.com, PROVO, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data- New South Wales Government “Returns of convicts applications for wives and families to be brought to New South Wales at Government expense” series 1190, Reel 699 Stat.
[3] Germany Select births and baptisms, 1558-1898, ancestry.com, PROVO, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2014
[4] New South Wales Assisted Immigrants Passenger Lists 1828-1896, ancestry.com, PROVO, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data- New South Wales Government “Returns of convicts applications for wives and families to be brought to New South Wales at Government expense” series 1190, Reel 699 Stat.
[5] Egan, Allan Joseph (2010)
[6] The Ship Minerva in Quarantine, 1838, thesis by Champion, Shelagh, B.A. (Lib. Sc.) and Champion George (George Annells), Dip. Ed. Admin. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
[7] Egan, Allan Joseph (2010) p 4.
[8] Sydney Gazette, 24 March 1838, page2
[9] Egan, Joseph Allan (2010) p13. Report of Commandant of Moreton Bay, Lieutenant Gorman to Governor Gipps, dated 18 February 1841
[10] Egan, Allan Joseph (2010)