In 2013 I came across a very interesting grave in the Newstead Cemetery. The inscription on the grave said that Henry Mertin and his wife Christina were buried there. It was not the surname Mertin that attracted my attention, but the first names, Henry and Christina, because I knew from my family history work that there was, in my family tree, an interesting couple with those names who had lived in Yandoit in the mid-1800’s. The surname though, was wrong . The couple in my family tree were Henry and Christina Martin, not Mertin. So the name was wrong, but close enough for me to follow up to find if this couple was in fact the one I was interested in.

But first, why am I interested in the history of the Newstead/Yandoit area at all? Very briefly, my great grandfather and great grandmother came separately to Australia for the gold rush. They met, married and settled in Yandoit in the 1850’s. They ran a hotel and store in Yandoit and lived there for the rest of their lives. Some of their descendants lived there until the 1940’s. My great grandfather came to Australia from America, and my great grandmother came from Germany.

I have always been interested in the lives of these ancestors of mine, and particularly in my great grandmother, Anna Elisabetha Dern. Although my father knew a lot about our family history, all he could tell us about Anna Elisabetha was that she came from Germany, at the age of 16, apparently accompanied only by another girl of about the same age.

Over many years of research, I have found a lot more information about Anna Elisabetha, why she came to Australia and who came with her. In fact, many German immigrants came here in the mid 1850’s to escape very hard times in Germany, and Anna Elisabetha was actually accompanied in the sailing ship that brought her here by many other Germans from the same village including some close relatives. These included two brothers and a number of first cousins. Several of the cousins had the first name of Christina, a very popular name for girls in Germany at the time.

That’s enough background. What follows is an account of what happened to one of those cousins, Christina Dern.

We know of three Christina Derns, all first cousins of our great grandmother Anna Elizabetha Dern, and who were all born in the Nieder Weisel/Lang-Göns area of Germany in the period 1839-1843. All of the birth, death and marriage certificates referred to below, for events which occurred in Australia, are included in our family history files.

The eldest of the three Christinas was the daughter of Maria, a sister of Anton Dern, Anna Elizabetha’s father. Maria Dern married a Johannes Dern, probably a distant relative and she and her daughter thus retained the Dern surname. This Christina was born on 21st March 1839.

According to an email from Marei Söhngen-Haffer of Gemeindearchiv Lang-Göns, dated 18 Jan 2010, a Christina Dern, in 1856, applied for a passport in Lang-Göns to go to Australia. Her father was given as Johannes Dern, and since the records indicate she was born in 1840, she could be the above Christina, (assuming a small inaccuracy in the birth year), or she could be the second Christina, who was the daughter of another Johannes Dern (Anton’s brother) and his wife Catherine, nee Bruckel. This Christina was born in 1840 (21st August) but there is no evidence she came to Australia, indeed Axel Schmidt’s records show she was married to Johannes Mulder in Lang Göns in 1868 at which point she ceases to be part of this story.

The third Christina Dern, born in 1843, was the daughter of Heinrich Dern, Anton Dern’s younger brother, and his wife Christina, nee Loh. She was therefore also a cousin of our great grandmother and on the web site, www.niederweisel.com, it is concluded that she came to Australia in the late 1850’s.

In May 1859, at Castlemaine, one of the Christinas married James Richard Austin from Newstead, near Yandoit. Her name is spelt ‘Deine’ on the marriage record but her birthplace is given as Germany and her parents as John, farmer, and Mary, which correspond well with Johannes and Maria, the parents of the eldest Christina. Other evidence, given below, helps to confirm that she is in fact Christina Dern, not Deine. This James Richard Austin was one of the witnesses at the marriage of George Dixon and Anna Elisabetha Dern in February 1860. He, presumably, was George’s witness, while Jacob Krausgrill, an uncle (by marriage) of Anna’s, was her witness.

Tragically, in March that same year, 1860, James was killed in an accident. The Coroner’s finding was that he ‘fell from his cart’. The inquest report records that he was not sober at the time, and that his neck was broken in the fall, which took place on the Newstead Road. He was initially taken to his home, but next day was taken to the Castlemaine Hospital where he died. He was buried in the Castlemaine General Cemetery. The drunk driving road toll is clearly not just a modern phenomenon.

Jumping ahead in time, on Christina’s death certificate, in the list of her children, the eldest is a Christina (or Anastina) who was born in either 1860 or 1861, and thus could have been James Austin’s daughter.

In 1863, the same Christina Dern gave birth to a daughter, Mary Anne, at Yandoit Plains. On the birth certificate, the mother’s name is given as Christina Austin, formerly Dern, birthplace Germany. The name of the father is blank, but the informant is one ‘H. Martin, friend’. Remember that in those days, the law considered it to be impossible for your mother not to be married to your father, so that if that was actually the case, all sorts of subterfuges were used in filling in your birth certificate

In 1865 Christina gave birth to another daughter, Louisa. This birth certificate is very interesting. Under father, the name ‘Henry Martin, storekeeper, 40’ is written but then crossed out and the words ‘not known’ are written. The mother’s name is given as ‘Christina Dern, formerly Austin’, born in ‘Langons’, Germany. The baby was born at Chance Reef, Yandoit. Christina first signed the certificate ‘Christina Martin’, but then crossed it out and re-signed it ‘Christina Dern’. In another terrible accident Louisa died in1867,aged 2, of ‘scald, when she fell backwards into a boiler of water’, according to the death certificate. In this certificate Louisa’s surname is given as Martin, and her parents as Henry Martin, miner, and Christina Martin.

In April 1868, Christina gave birth to a son, whom she named John Lewis Henry. In this case, under father, the birth certificate simply says ‘Not Married’. The mother’s name is given as Christina Dern, birthplace Langgons Germany, and she has signed it, as Informant, using that name.

Who is this Henry Martin whose name appears on the earlier certificates? A clue comes from the Allotment Plan of Yandoit in 1865, reproduced in ‘The Settlement of Yandoit Creek and the Gervasonis’ by C C Culvenor. A block of land in the main street has the name ‘Mrs Austin’ written next to it. However also on the block is written, apparently later, ‘H Martin’. Does ‘Mrs Austin’ refer to Christina, who, having been widowed before 1865, could have inherited the land from her husband? Was she in a relationship with H Martin who then somehow became the owner of the land?

Further information comes from a marriage certificate dated 22nd Nov 1882. It shows that at the Collingwood Registry Office in Melbourne, Christina Austin and H Martin were married. She is described as ‘housekeeper, age 43, of Yandoit’. His name is given as ‘Henri Martin, storekeeper, age 50, of Yandoit’. Henri’s birthplace is given as ‘Danzig, Germany’. Her parents are given as Johannes Dern, farmer and Marie Dern. Her birthplace is Frankfurt on Main, Germany.

An obituary published in the Western Argus of Kalgoorlie on 20th March 1928 throws light on what happened to Christina’s fourth child, John Lewis Henry. It says that Mr John Louis Martin of Kanowna WA, who died in Perth, was born at Yandoit, near Newstead, Victoria on April 11, 1868, and was the son of John Henry Martin, farmer and merchant of that place. This birth date is exactly the same as that given on the birth certificate for John Lewis Henry referred to above. The obituary goes on to describe his life in some detail. He became very successful in gold mining in the Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie regions of WA. He took a great interest in public affairs, serving on the Roads Boards in the region and becoming a member of the Kanowna Municipal Council and later, the Mayor. He was the owner of a large station property abutting upon Kanowna, was a senior figure in the Freemasons and took a keen interest in horse racing, and bred and raced several good horses.

Returning to Christina and Henry (or Henri) Martin, there is a grave in the cemetery at Newstead with an inscription on the stone cover slab in memory of Henry and Christina Mertin (note the ‘e’). Death certificates for both of these people, using the spelling Mertin have been found in the Government Archives and they contain a number of details which indicate strongly that this couple are the Christina and Henry Martin of the above story. The most compelling detail is the list of Christina’s ‘issue’. The first four are Christina (although it looks rather like Anastina), Maria (similar to Mary Anne), Louisa, and John Louis Henry. Louisa is listed as deceased, and the ages for the others correspond within one year to those given earlier for the children born to Christina Dern/Austin/ Martin in Yandoit. There are also five more children, born in the years 1870 to 1880, before she and Henry were married. Why the name changed to Mertin, we do not know.

As to which of the two Christinas the story is about, whether she was the daughter of Maria and Johannes Dern or the daughter of Christina and Heinrich Dern, we can look firstly at birth dates indicated in the records. On the marriage certificate to James Austin her age is given as 22, giving a birth date of 1836 or 1837, depending on the exact month of her birth. At the other extreme, on the marriage certificate to Henry Martin her age is given as 43, giving a birth year of 1839 or 1840. Other certificates give dates between these two extremes. Unfortunately, this type of inconsistency is quite common with these records! But this range of dates does include 1840, the date deduced by Marei Söhngen-Haffer from the passport application, whereas it does not include 1843, the birth date for the daughter of Heinrich given on the Nieder Weisel web site. Another clue is that on several certificates Christina gave her father’s name as John or Johannes rather than Heinrich. Both of these considerations therefore tend to favour Christina being the daughter of Maria and Johannes.

On the other hand, the Nieder Weisel web site referred to above concludes that the Christina Dern who came to Australia in the late 1850’s and settled in Yandoit, where she gave birth to Louisa and John Lewis Henry, was the daughter of Heinrich Dern. But this doesn’t tally with another important piece of evidence in the Dern saga, the website http://www.woodylabounty.com, which tells the story of the Slinkey Family of San Francisco, and the Christina Dern who had an extraordinary life in the USA, which is well worth reading about on the web site. This Christina is stated in the website to be the daughter of Heinrich Dern of Germany. She was living in San Francisco from well before 1865 and married John Slinkey, an Australian, there in 1868. She couldn’t therefore be the Christina who gave birth in Yandoit Australia to Louisa in 1865 and John Lewis Henry in 1868 as stated in the Nieder Weisel website.
On the basis of the above, it seems certain that the Christina who came to Yandoit, married James Austin, then lived with and finally married Henry Martin, was the daughter of Maria and Johannes Dern of Lang-Göns, and was the first cousin of Anna Elisabetha Dern, the matriarch of the Dixon/Howells family of Yandoit.

As a final note, there is yet another Christina Dern in our family history. She was the daughter of Konrad Dern, Anna Elizabetha’s brother and his wife, Anna Juliana Belloff. This Christina was born in Australia in 1859 and married George Foster, a butcher of Clunes in 1878.

David Howells

February 2011
this revision 17 December 2015