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Archiver > AUS-QLD-SE-Germans > 1999-01 > 0917507865


From: "Beverly Markham" <>
Subject: Listing of Ancestors.
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 07:17:45 -0000


Hello Group, I am really glad to see so many people joining in the search
for our German Roots.

I have one request to make of listers. Please give enough information so
that readers of the list would be more able to recognize names and places.

I know that in some cases all we have is a surname. If that is all you have
then please state so in your query. If you have a possible geographical
location of their birthplace and last known place of residence it would
greatly help. Dates are a godsend if you have them.

I am excited that the Group has grown. My main theory in starting the list
was this:

The Germans are ethnocentric. They followed this practice of
marrying only within their own group pretty m uch wherever they have
settled. I have seen this in Pennsylvania where I lived for 20 yrs. They
rarely married out into other cultural groups. I have it on good authority
that when the Germans went to Russia on the request of Catherine the Great,
that they instructed their daughters to marry only Germans and not marry
with the Russians in the community. In my own family, it appears that no
one married out into the other cultural groups extant in SEQld. until my
father's generation. He is the fourth generation born on Australian Soil,
and he married a girl of English and Welsh parentage.
. This practice of Germans marrying only Germans is a boon to us
who search for our German roots. It makes things a little easier for us.

While I am at this email to you all, I would appreciate hearing
from anyone who has an address of a local Historical Society in your
particular area. Many requests have come to me asking if I know of such
societies here or there and I have limited knowledge in this area. I live
in Mesa, Arizona, USA right now and so I do not have access to these smaller
groups which may contain repositories of information pertinant to our German
Ancestors. We are getting enquiries on our list from all over the world -
not just from SEQld.

By the way, do any of you have stories of pioneer times that have
been handed down to you? Would you share them with the list please?

Do any of you have stories contained in obituaries of your
ancestors? Would you share them with the list please? These stories give
colour to the lives of our ancestors. They lived under such stringent
conditions so that we, who have come after, could have a wonderful existence
in Australia. They made things better for us to enjoy.

I am also interested in the movement of our Ancestors from one place
to another. I wonder what prompted them to move from here to there and
settle in this area as opposed to that area? I wonder if the movement was
part of an Ethnic choosing i.e. we moved to this area to be near other
Prussians so that our sons and daughters will marry Prussians rather than
Germans or Poles or Pommeranians etc.etc. Germany was settled by many
Germanic Tribes and they tried to keep the lines "pure" and to keep the
ethnicity together.
On the other hand, the movements may have been prompted by a drought
that wiped out the crops or a fire burned the place down, The latter is
what happened to my GG Grandfather and family. For whatever reason, they
moved from one place to another and set up German Settlements where English
was not spoken for a couple of Generations at least. My GGrandmother spoke
only broken English at best and she died at age 96 in 1965.

Cheers, Beverly Markham, list owner.

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