Christoph REUTER 1841-?
On 31st August 1857, the steamship “City of Hobart” brought 56 non-English migrants to Melbourne from Hobart Town. This group was part of the passenger complement of “Sir W F Williams”, which arrived there from Liverpool two weeks earlier.
Nearly half of the group were from Nieder-Weisel: Kisslers, Dilges, Riegelhuths, Kochs, Heinz and Hildebrands, and so on. One carried the name Reuter – Christoph, aged 16.
Christoph Reuter was born to Christoph Reuter and Elisabetha nee Haub on 25th March 1841. Their first child, a daughter, did not live and a second son, Konrad born 1846, completed the family. Christoph was confirmed in 1855 and decided soon afterwards to join the mass exodus from the village. He may have doubted the wisdom of this decision as their ship battled her way through a series of cyclonic storms on the way to Australia but eventually all but one of the apprehensive souls on board got to their destination, leaving the unfortunate purser in a watery grave.
The passenger manifest of “City of Hobart” is the last record of Christoph’s adventure in Victoria. He neither married nor died in the colony. Maybe there are descendants in Nieder-Weisel today from the marriage of his brother Konrad, in 1872, to Elisabetha Klee of Holzheim, whose family lore can shed light on the remaining years of the life of Christoph Reuter. He was not in the village in 1909.