Johann Georg ADAMI 1820-1865
On 30th January 1857, Anna Margaretha nee Marx, born in 1822 to Friedrich Marx and his wife Anna Dorothea nee Rumpf, gave birth to her third child, Konrad. This was her third son but the eldest, Peter, had died just after his first birthday.
When Anna Margaretha took her baby to the village church on the following Wednesday to be baptised during the prayer hour her younger brother Konrad went with her to stand as sponsor. The father was not present at the ceremony because, as Pastor J W Fabricius noted on the baptism certificate – “The father of this child, the local townsman and day-worker Johann Georg Adami the Third, is currently a gold-digger in Australia”.
Johann Georg Adami III was born on 14th January 1820. He was the eldest of the four surviving sons of the day-worker Jakob Adami I (1788-1846) and Elisabetha nee Reuss (1792-1868). A sister born in 1816 and a younger one who was the last of the siblings made up a family of nine, of whom six reached adulthood.
None of the other brothers migrated, and there is no record of the voyage that brought Johann Georg out to Victoria. He must have left Nieder-Weisel between April and December 1856, but was not with the very large group who left the village in late September and travelled aboard “Sunshine”. He may have secured a cheap passage on one of the small vessels operating out of Hamburg, perhaps using a nom de plume. (His wife’s sister, Katharina Marx nee Adami, was on “Sir W F Williams” the next year).
There is no record of Johann Georg in Victoria. A note on his baptism record states that he died in Nieder-Weisel on 19th February 1865.