"If you ever meet a Gersbach, you're related to them!"

These were my father's words as I grew up hearing about Anton and Margaretha Gersbach, my second great-grandparents, and their son Francis (Frank), my great-grandfather!  We knew Frank as "Pargie".  He died 7 years before my birth but was always talked about with such love and affection that I feel close to him.  

Our earliest photo of "Pargie" aged 24
Sydney, 1885

Then, there was his bible that always fascinated me as a child - beautifully coloured and with those faded photos of Anton and Margaretha who'd come from German to Australia.  When I started to research the family, it provided wonderful details of a large and close family!  So, it's time to start documenting what I've found in the hope that others will add to the story, correct as necessary and share any treasured photos of our Australian/German ancestors.

The starting point, are two small towns on the Rhine, Eltville and Oestrich-Winkel, just over 8kms apart and not far from Frankfurt.

Four Gersbach men arrived in Sydney as part of a wave of German migrants from this region of the Rhine in the 1850s.  Most came as vinedressers, shepherds or agricultural labourers.  Our four Gersbach's were two sets of brothers-

• Johann (known as John) and Anton and 
• Johann Valentine (known as Valentine) and Joseph. 

Valentine was the first to arrive in November 1853.  He was a single man when he arrived and never married.

In March 1855, John arrived with his wife Clara and the five young children aged between 1 and 8.

Anton and Joseph were on the same ship and arrived in September 1855.  Both were married in Eltville in 1855 prior to their departure from Hamburg on 1 March.  Confusingly both wives were named Margaretha (known as Margaret).  Was it a double wedding?  Anton and Margaret were married on 18 February.  Anton's Margaret was pregnant for most of the journey as their first child, Phillip, was born in Kempsey on 28 December 1855!

You can read more about their migration HERE.

What's the relationship between the four Gersbach men?

Dad recalled that Pargie had told him that-

• Anton and Margaretha had travelled to Australia with his cousin, 
• Anton's brother met them in Sydney and travelled with Anton and Margaretha to Kempsey and
• Anton never saw his brother again.

In the 1990s, the wife of a descendant of Anton's brother told us that Anton and Margaretha hadn't travelled with a cousin but a "kinsman" which she explained as a distant Gersbach relative.

A couple of years ago, I contacted a St Mary's Gersbach fourth cousin.  He'd engaged a German family historian to do some research while he was working near Frankfurt about 15 years ago.  In his report, the researcher commented that civil and church records were not always available.  However, with few on line records available, this was the best I had.  From the evidence provided, it seemed that Joseph and Valentine were the half first cousins 1x removed of John and Anton.  

In 2019, I visited the Rhine region around Eltville.  On the first day, I met the priest at the Catholic Church in Eltville.  He told me they didn't have any records from the nineteenth century.  

So you can imagine my surprise finding dozens of Gersbach baptism, marriage and burial records on FamilySearch for the Catholic Church in Eltville and surrounding towns!  They'd become available in October 2020.  After many hours, I'd scoured the church records to link the four Gersbach men and a lot more as well...

John and Anton are the 2nd cousins 1x removed of Valentine and Joseph - more kinsmen than cousins!   I'd tracked the Gersbach's back to that small area on the Rhine in the 1700.  Very dry but I'll document the evidence I found in an upcoming post for future family researchers to use and build on.

And yes Dad's correct...    After much searching, these are the only Gersbach's I can find migrating to Australia in the past 175 years.  So if you're a Gersbach, we're kinsmen or cousins!