Gunning & District Historical Society

Waratah (now Warrataw) Street, Gunning, circa 1905. Article by Kim Lees The Lees family emigrated from Germany in the 1850’s as Bounty Immigrants under a scheme to bring citizens from various countries to Australia to assist in establishing farming and other industries. They came from the wine growing area of Grossbottwar, some 26 kms north of Stuttgart. It has been possible, through a German Ancestry organisation ‘Beyond History’, to trace the Lees family in Grossbottwar as far back as the late 1500s, some 6 generations before the family emigrated from Germany to Australia. In 2013 I visited Grossbottwar where I met with a cousin and his family who still live there.  The Lees family (parents Johannes (48) & Louisa (44) and children Conrad (20), Adam (16), Jacob (14), Fredricka (9), and David (6)) travelled to Australia on the Dutch Barque ‘Helene’ with 215 other German Immigrants. The youngest child, a daughter Christiana (aged 5 months) died on the voyage to Aust...

Memorial plaques for the Browns and the Wilsons, Dalton Methodist Church The year 1861 proved to be a sorrowful one for many of the residents of Wesley Vale and the Jerrawa Creek area. Along with scarletina (scarlet fever), the rapid spread of diphtheria among the children of the district took a heavy toll on families. Among the local families to suffer the loss of children were Thomas and Sarah Brown of Wesley Vale. Fatally affected also were the children of John and Elizabeth Wilson at Jerrawa Creek. The Dalton Methodist Church has two significant memorial plaques, the one mentioning the Brown family and the other tells the story of the Wilsons. Both families lost children to the diphtheria outbreak in the district- all in the year 1861. John and Elizabeth Wilson Tom Brown, so well-known for his varied and vigorous evangelism from the time he arrived in Wesley Vale in 1847, and his wife Sarah, lost three children in 1861. David aged 14 years, Mary aged 9 and Ebe...