Who were Friedrich and Maria Timm?
A few years ago, while gathering background material for my book, I visited the Epping Cemetery. There were many surnames on the headstones which I knew from streets and parks named after the families who had lived in Epping and Wollert for generations. Some were also names familiar to me from calling the class roll as a teacher at the local school. Were those students I had taught descendants of these same pioneering families, or did they just happen to have the same surnames?
Right at the back of the cemetery, half-hidden among a patch of native grasses and trees, two headstones stand side by side, enclosed in a rusty fence. The taller one reads:
In memory of Frederick Henry John Timm. Died 20th August 1866, aged 58 years.
Also his wife, Maria Timm, died 18th December 1890, aged 83 years.
The smaller one has three names on it:
Alice Louise Louden, died May 18th 1866, aged 11 months
Also William Henry Louden, died June 4th 1866, aged 3 years & 8 months
Gertrude E.K.Olsen, died 24th March 1892, aged 5 ½ years.
Just a few names and dates… but somehow my curiosity was aroused. Why had a middle-aged man and two children all died in the same year, within the space of three months? Why did they have different surnames, yet share a family burial plot? What did Maria Timm do in the twenty-four years after her husband passed away?
I had been working on the layout for my double page illustrations, creating a setting based on photos I had taken of views across the paddocks towards the Epping Hills. Therefore I was very excited when the first thing I discovered about the Timms was that they had had lived at Bindts Lane, in the very location I had chosen as the backdrop for my illustrations for “Silent Sentinel.” I had even painted a house in one of my preliminary sketches which might have been the Timm homestead!*
I wanted to find out as much as I could, and after a lot of searching online I was able to piece together the following story from several sources:
After uprisings in Europe in 1848, many German immigrants came to Australia to escape the political unrest. Friedrich and Maria Timm were among them, migrating with their two children from Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Germany in 1850 on board the Alfred. Fellow passengers included Christian Bindt, who was to become their neighbour.
Initially the Timms lived at Westgarthtown. Friedrich was naturalized in 1851. (I wonder if this was when he began using the anglicized version of his name,”Frederick”, which appears in some documents and on his gravestone?) In 1954 they bought 258 acres of land in Bindts Road, Wollert. There they took up dairy farming.
It seems that Friedrich Timm was an outspoken character. I came across an account, written by a reporter for the Tasmanian Daily News who visited the Timm farm in 1856 while passing through the area, and quoted in an article by historian Robert Wuchatsch. This reporter wrote:
On the road, or rather foot-track, I entered the house of a German, the owner of a farm of upwards of two hundred acres, which, with another small farm at Irish Town, [Westgarthtown?] he had acquired with the proceeds of five years’ toil in these colonies. It transpired in the course of conversation that he was a native of Schwerin, and as I was well acquainted with that place, and could talk with him to his heart’s content on Northern Germany, I was rewarded with a basin of delicious milk, which I am happy to say is now to be found in abundance in every part of our country districts. My host informed me that a considerable number of his countrymen reside in this locality, and are thriving almost without an exception. I was rather astonished, nevertheless, at the isolation of himself and family from the great world sixteen miles distant, and his apparent ignorance of all that was transpiring there, the more so when he confessed that he had not till then heard of the capture of Sebastopol, or even of the retirement of the Haines ministry. My friend, however, seemed to cherish a particular aversion to the King of Prussia, designating him as both a ‘Spitzbube’ [rogue] and a ‘schlechter Kerl’ [bad fellow] and intimating his readiness to put an end to his career with an axe which he brandished in his hand if ever an opportunity offered. From the cottage of the Tedesche [partoralist], which is on the banks of the Darebin Creek, I walked on …
The Timms’ children married into local families; Frederick Timm junior married Amelia Louisa Hanuschke, and Elizabeth married the son of a neighbouring farmer, Edward Louden. Two of the Louden’s children, three-year-old William Henry and little Alice Louise, are buried alongside their grandparents in the Epping cemetery. I was unable to find out what caused their deaths, but an inquest was held into the death of their grandfather, Friedrich, who was found by a jury of twelve men (many of whom were neighbours) to have succumbed to “water on the chest”. The Loudens moved to Mansfield not long after this time.
Maria Timm continued to run the dairy farm after her husband’s death. She leased part of the land to her son, Frederik junior, but they did not always see eye to eye. In 1873 she took him to court, stating in her affidavit “That the Defendant Frederick Timm has already wrongfully felled and sold for firewood at least two hundred trees growing on my land part of Section Sixteen in the Parish of Morang and County of Bourke occupied by him as my tenant taking the finest trees on the land and leaving the least valuable standing… That I have repeatedly remonstrated with the Defendant and requested him to desist from ruining the said land as aforesaid, but that the Defendant still continues to devastate the said land by cutting down and removing trees and fences.” She won the case and Frederik was told by the court not to cut down any more of his Mum’s trees. He and his wife Amelia later moved to Deniliquin and eventually to Sydney. They had six children, and two of their sons served in the Light Horse in the Great War.
Maria Timm continued to run the farm until her death in 1890. The land passed to her daughter Eliza, who sold it -ironically- to a timber merchant.
***
As for the third name on the children’s grave, the Leader newspaper of Saturday 13th August 1892 contains the following death announcement:
LOUDEN.—On the 3rd August, at her late residence, 75 Seacombe-street, North Fitzroy, Sarah, relict of the late John Louden, mother of Edward, Mary Ann, John Louden, Mrs. Blayney and Mrs. Black, grandmother of Mrs. Olsen, Mrs. Peach, Alfred and Tina Louden, aged 83 years ; after an illness of 6 months ; a colonist of 52 years.
Also, on 24th March, at her grandparents' residence, Carlton, Gertrude E. K. Olsen, only loved child of Sarah E. Olsen, aged 5 years and 9 months.
Sarah (Mrs Olsen) may have been the daughter of Edward and Eliza Louden, making Gertrude their grandchild. Although living in Carlton at the time, it appears they chose to bury their young granddaughter with the children they had lost early in their marriage- Sarah’s brother and sister.
*(I soon found that the farmhouse at 100 Bindts Road I thought was the Timms’ was in fact their neighbour’s farm. Some reports refer to it as “Ewerts Farmhouse”, while others state that Christian Bindt owned the property. The house is not included in the final illustrations after all, where it would have been obscured by the tree. Instead I included another bluestone farmhouse, based on a building dating from the same time which is situated on what is now the corner of Harvest Home Road and Salt Lake Boulevard.)
Sources: CITY OF WHITTLESEA HERITAGE STUDY Volume 3 - Citations, 2015
Friends of Westgarthtown Newsletter (including articles by R.Wucatsch)
Extracts From An Assessment Of Heritage Significance 40-152 Bindts Road, Wollert by Graeme Butler
Disclaimer: I don’t pretend to be an expert historian and all my knowledge is second hand. I am happy to stand corrected on any erroneous facts. If you have anything to add to or amend in this article, please comment below!