Phillip (1840-1914)

Philipp HAUSER 1840-1914

Philipp Hauser, aged 73 years, died on 7th March 1914 in Hamilton hospital in western Victoria after an illness lasting a month; he was normally resident in Coleraine, 3O km to the north-west. He was interred in Hamilton cemetery on the day that he died – a most uncommon practice which suggests that he had no close relatives in the area and/or that there was a medical reason for interring the corpse as soon as possible.

The birth of Philipp Hauser occurred in Nieder-Weisel on 2Oth April 184O. He was baptised six days later, being sponsored by Philipp Doringen, a son of his father’s sister Elisabetha who had married a resident of Melbach-by-Friedberg. Philipp was the first of six children who were born to Elisabetha nee Fett, wife of a farmhand in the village, Wenzel Hauser IV; the second child was a boy and the next four were girls. The younger son Konrad, and the eldest daughter Juliana also chose to migrate to Victoria, as did their father.

Unfortunately the shipping records of all members of the family who came out to the colony have not been found and the records of the time they spent in Victoria are fragmentary. The death certificate for Philipp made it clear that he did marry, but the informant knew none of the details. It is now known that he married Caroline Williams (1846-1915) in Mt Gambier in 1865, and that the couple had nine children. It is thought that they lived at Yahl (a few km south of Mt Gambier) which was known as “The German Square Mile” because it was a place where Germans lived and farmed and into which no outsiders were allowed.

The Nieder-Weisel “Familienbuchen” show that his father also died in Australia, but no date is on record. A Conrad Hauser, who died in Ballarat in 1925, was probably his brother Konrad, born 1842. Their sister Juliana (Mrs. Theodore Gottliebsen) died in her home in Daylesford in 1889.