Anna Maria Barbara Eiser

GEDCOM Note

My father, Carl Johan (John Charles) Steger was born on 10 July 1838, traveled to Australia in the boat called “The Alfred”. He met my mother, Annie Mary Barbara Gegen-Ward, who was 20 years of age, born 11 November 1842, on that same ship. My father came from a town in Germany called Frankfurt, where he worked in a big flourmill and had great experience in “Growing all the best kinds of wheat.” My mother worked in a warehouse trimming hats and dressmaking. They brought with them on the ship their bibles and hymn books, also wheat and vegetable seeds. The Ship took 3 months to travel out to Sydney and they landed on the 10th November 1862, which was my mother’s birthday. My mother’s father (Gegen-Ward) was killed in the Indian Mutiny, and there were only two children, my mother and my Uncle Simon, who was learning bootmaking, carpentering and gunsmithing. My mother’s mother then married a German missionary from New Zealand named Liveler, whose wife had bee killed by the blacks and who had a son of 19 yrs who returned to New Zealand and was not heard of afterwards. Mr. Liveler and my mother’s mother were married in the Church of England in Sydney on the same day as my mother and father and all were naturalized on the same day and given a land grant. Sydney was a small town consisting of one two-storied hotel, one Church of England, one store and one butcher shop. My father now intended to go to Toowoomba where he had a sister who had come to Australia in the early 1850’s, and whose husband Peter Flegler took up land at Middle Ridge. Fleglers had a family of 4. Two girls and two boys. Peter Flegler was a carpenter and bricklayer and built many shingle-roofed houses with brick chimneys in them. He also built the first woolshed at Glenferrie station and also the cellar at Glenferrie homestead for Mr. Strover. At his property at Middle Ridge, he also had all kinds of fruit trees and a large vineyard from which he made his own wine and sold it for one shilling a bottle. One of the Flegler boys died from a kick from a horse. My father and mother and my mother’s parents came from Sydney by boat to Brisbane, where there was only one pub, one Church of England, one store and a butcher shop. They left Brisbane and came to Toowoomba by bullock team, a journey which took 3 weeks. Then crossing the creek at Ipswich, my mother and her mother had to stand up in the wagon to keep out of the water. They traveled up the Toll Bar Road to Toowoomba, which was a fair sized town. After arriving in Toowoomba, father and mother engaged in a job of shepherding for Mr. James Taylor of Cecil Plains, on a run called Clear Water Holes on the Condamine plains. My mother’s parents also worked as shepherds for James Taylor on Dunmore Station. My sister Maggie was born on the Condamine, Cecil Plains, and also my sister Mary who died with convulsions at the age of 8 months. My mother’s mother died from a Red Back Spider bite while picking wild hops to make bread and mother’s stepfather died with yellow fever. Both were buried in the cemetery at Cecil Plains. One day at Clear Water Holes, while mother was away fetching a tin of water, the blacks burnt down the slab hut in which they were living and the manager of the run charged father and mother twenty pounds for the loss of the hut. After that they left Cecil Plains and went to Grieshaber’s place in Toowoomba, near Hatcher’s corner, where my brother John was born on 10 July 1867. Father then obtained work as a shepherd at Drummers Ridges near Felton, working for the Honorable James Tyson, where I, Annie Maria Barbara Steger was born on the 7th October 1869. From there father went working as a teamster carting wool to Cambooya for Mr. William Hogarth, also plowing and looking after stud ewes and lambs. (There was a Mr. Trott in the shearing shed in the wool season, may be related to the Trotts at Yarramba). Father then took up a land grant on a forfeited selection of 320 acres on the North Branch, at the price of two pence an acre (total price, two pounds thirteen shillings and four pence). He called the selection Frankfurt after his birthplace in Germany and went in for mixed farming. He purchased 200 culled stud ewes from Mr. William Hogarth, who made father a present of 300 more culled stud ewes. From this stock, my father reared five lots of stud lambs out of fine wooled rams from Talgai. He also went in for stud milking cows and purchased the baldy hereford strain from Lovell’s at Cambooya. They were excellent short horn milkers from which he reared 200 head of stud cattle. Father sent all of his wool overseas to England for sale where he got as much as twenty-one pence halfpenny per pound for it. The last shipment to England got burnt on board ship and as it was insured by a firm called Gregory and Schofield, Father got them to pay the insurance cheque to his bank account, but when he went to withdraw the money, he found he had been charged ten percent extra commission. I think they robbed him of a good deal of money before he became aware of how things were going. After things went right again, he got James and Alexander to wash and shear his sheep at a cost of eight pence per head and so gained the highest price in England for his wool. The four youngest children in the family were born on the selection making a total of twelve, 8 girls and 4 boys. The boys were John, Charles, Frederick William and Henry (born 1883) and the girls were Maggie (Reid), Mary, Barbara (Eiser), Agnes (Volz), Kate (Rogers), Eva (Anderson), Lizzie (born 1882) (Kirstenfeldt), and Rose (Stenberg). Some years later father sold the selection and the family moved to Evergreen, where mother passed away on 1st August 1913 at the age of 72 yrs. Father never lost his faculties and had all his own teeth except one, which he got me to extract because it was loose. He passed away on the 16 February 1924, and was buried beside my mother in the Evergreen Cemetery. I was married on the 3rd January 1888 to Frederick George Peter Eiser of West Street, Toowoomba and our first son, Frederick Charles Phillip was born there on 23 May. In June that year I took a job of Laundress for Mrs. John Knight in New South Wales and signed an agreement to stay for twelve months. ‘while we were working for the Knights, baby Phillip contracted whooping cough and we nearly lost him. I laid him in the sun to die. I got enough breast milk to feed him that day with a teaspoon and gargled his throat with alum water and he slowly got better. After that, I got Typhoid Fever and nearly went out to it myself and Fred borrowed the station horse and cart and took me to the doctor in Goondiwindi, who ordered me to go to the hospital, but I could not go on account of signing the agreement and so I returned to the station to work. The Doctor called in to see me on his way back from seeing a patient at Yetman, and found me sitting at the wash tub. He ordered me to bed and went down tot he big house and brought Mrs. Knight back with some medicine and milk broth and sent the washing to the other side of the run to be done. We left there at the end of the agreement in June 1889, and stayed in Goondiwindi for 3 months where I sold fish as one could catch all sorts of fish and sell them at 6 pence per pound. We then bought a horse and cart and got a job herding scrub cattle for Mr. Woodward on Murgon Station. We stayed there for 6 months until heavy rains set in and they could not muster as the scrubbers would not come out. When we left there in March 1890, everything was in full flood on the Downs, and we just reached father’s selection when it rained for three weeks without a break. When the weather cleared, and the land dried out, we went to Toowoomba where Fred worked with his father on a fencing contract and I did their cooking and washing. Our daughter Annie Maria Catherine was born in Toowoomba on 6th march, 1892, and as time went on, I was asked by Mr. Briggs if I would take on the job of cooking for the overseer at Strathane, so we moved there and things went well until the overseer (Douglas) got married and then the going was not too good as his wife did not want tea before eight O’Clock at night, his breakfast at 6 O’Clock in the morning, her bath ready at quarter to eight in the morning and then her breakfast at eight O’ Clock. As well as all this, I had to milk the cow and had three houses to scrub and clean and also care for my own two children so we left there and I went selling fruit in Pittsworth until Fred got a job clearing the line for the rabbit fence and we went to live in Leyburn where I took in plain sewing. Our second daughter Frances Margaret Victoria was born in Leyburn, on 20th June 1897. We then struck bad luck as Fred’s tent got burnt down and all his belongings with it. Our next move was from Leyburn to Tannymorel where our youngest daughter Sophia Christina Hagedorn was born on 15 October 1899 and where I met my doom… While carting water in a tank on a four-wheeled horse drawn trolley, I fell and the trolley ran over my leg, busting my kneecap. It was in a very dry time, and after that we left here and moved to Ellangowan station. The drought kept up, and out of a thousand sheep, only half were saved and they were lucky to save that many but in late 1903, the rains came and there were big floods. I will never forget them as our youngest child, Norman Victor George Eiser was born on the 30th November 1903, and not a soul could come to me, as everything was flooded. A few years after the station was cut up and sold in small allotments and we moved from there to Evergreen when I was 37 yrs old and took up land there.

This infoprmation above came to Alan Phillips from Marion Diggles at the Darling Downs Family History Association.