Jakob REUTER 1831-? & Anna Elisabetha KLIPPEL 1832-?
Johann Jakob Reuter II and Katharina nee Jung had four children in the eleven years following their marriage in 1831: Jakob on 18th July 1831; Katharina 1835 (died 1836); Elisabetha 1838, and Christoph 1842. Elisabetha was born in the English town of Durham during the several years her parents spent looking for more rewarding work in that country. Johann Jakob went back to farm labouring on their return to the village, but the family’s financial problems worsened when he died in 1851 at the age of 43. Jakob went back to England and Elisabetha was one of only three young woman who tackled the arduous, albeit cheap, trip to Victoria on one of the tiny barques plying out of the northern port of Hamburg. Christoph was also about to emigrate, leaving their mother quite alone in the village – her sisters having died and her only brother also heading for Australia.
On 1Oth June 1852, Jakob married another expatriate from Nieder-Weisel, Anna Elisabetha Klippel, one of four children born illegitimately to the farm-hand Wenzel Klippel by Anna Elisabetha Wilhelm, a daughter of the tailor Johann Georg Wilhelm. They married in the Yorkshire town of Leeds where they were both employed. Katharina, Anna Elisabetha’s only sister, was also in England. She married Johann Peter Heinz (Jakob Reuter’s best man) six months after Anna Elisabetha was married, and joined the Reuters in Leeds. The couples decided to emigrate to Victoria together.
It is possible that Jakob’s brother Christoph travelled with them; he claimed to have got to Melbourne in 1854 on “Star of the Sea”; they may all have been on this vessel. Each of the wives gave birth to a baby in Melbourne in 1854 – Anna Elisabetha on 2Oth May and Katharina on 25th June; their sons were baptised in the Lutheran Church. Two years later, Anna Elisabetha produced a daughter, Katharina, in England. The Heinz pair had made another trip to Victoria that year; Anna Elisabetha gave birth to another daughter in 186O in Nieder-Weisel. Jakob was out of the country in 1866. These movements suggest that Jakob, a musician by occupation, may have worked as an entertainer on the ships they travelled on.
Jakob was in the syndicate that repurchased the estates of the Order of St John in 1862 for a very large sum of money.
View Jakob's Family Chart
