Friedrich MARX 1828 or 1833-?
The ten young men who sailed on “Victoria” as the first organised group from Nieder-Weisel who made the long journey to Ballarat included a Friedrich Marx. The shipping record does not show the ages or occupations of the passengers, and there is no mention of Friedrich Marx in Victorian statistics subsequently, so he cannot be specifically identified.
The Nieder-Weisel records offer two possibilities (who were first cousins):
(a) born 10th March 1828 to day-worker Johannes Marx and his wife Margaretha Haub, and
(b) born 25th October 1833 to Friederich Marx and Anna Dorothea Rumpf.
The first was 26 years old when the group arrived in Melbourne on 21st November 1854. Both of his parents had died in their 50s. His only two siblings were girls who married and lived in Nieder-Weisel. He married, on 29th December 1850, Susanna Koch, a daughter of Johann Georg Koch and Katharina nee Krausgrill, who was born on 27th July 1830. Susanna had children in 1851 and in 1853. Then followed a six-year gap before the arrival of her third child; the fourth followed three years later. This was an identical birth pattern to that of the wife of Johann Georg Reuter (who was a mess-mate of Friedrich). Reuter and Marx were actually first cousins by marriage, as Reuter’s mother, Katharina Koch, was a sister to Johann Georg Koch, the father of Friedrich’s wife Susanna.
This being the case it seemed likely that the two men had planned the venture together, while their wives agreed to support one another in caring for the four little children of the two marriages.
However, the situation becomes complicated by the fact that the second Friedrich Marx had a sister married to Johann Georg Adami, who was known to have been in Victoria between 1856 and the early 1860s. His brother Konrad Marx also migrated to Victoria (in 1857) with his second wife Katharina Elisabetha Adami (leaving two young children in the village).
The real identity of Friedrich Marx is not really of concern, as he left no descendants here.