National Family History Month Challenge; Week 1 August Jasper


Alex Daw has set us another great challenge for Family History Month.

Week 1.

Who do I think is the most respected or impressive member of my family tree? This is this week’s prompt but I’m taking a slightly different tack and going with an ancestor named August.

 

My great-grandfather, August Frederick Conrad JASPER was born, not in August to be given that as a name but in December! 3 December 1846, to be exact, in Heidenoldendorf, Germany. His parents were Toens Simon Herman Christoph JASPER and Wilhelmine Friederike KESSEMEIER.

August was baptised on 13 December 1846 and then nothing about him until he arrives in South Australia on 29 March 1876, on the Dilbhur, having left London on 29 December 1875. Listed as a brickmaker, aged 29 years. Looking at the passenger list he and one other were listed as brickmakers.

He again proves to be elusive, with nothing until a small newspaper article in 1880, where he has taken his employer a Mr Sampson to court for back wages and wins! Court Case

I next discover August in Sydney, when on 23 August 1884, he marries Isabella Mary Ann Martin, nee VAUGHAN. Isabella was a widow. August and Isabella have four children, Evelyn, 1885, Lydia, 1887, Violet, 1889 and Walter, 1891. Only Evelyn lives to adulthood, marries, and raises a family of her own.

On 18 August 1914, August became a naturalised Australian.

 

August died on the 9th November 1922, at Glebe and his death certificate makes for interesting reading. I will accept the date and place of death, his place of marriage and wife’s name and his children, as being true. I have checked them.  Where it asks for where born, that is correct BUT it is how long in the country and where that has me puzzled!  53 years, in Australia, both New South Wales and Victoria. A mystery for me to research, but Isabella could have got the place wrong.

So while August wasn’t born in August, he did marry in August and take out his naturalisation in August, two very important things for him.

 


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