From Participant #155441:

 

"Family History is that Grandpa Hamann left Poland in 1855. and later built his house in Bethany (Formerly New Silesia) in 1859
Source: - Notes left by Norma Blanka Hamann (grand daughter), passed on by Jill Sattler (nee Hamann)

 

Johann Carl Hahman Arrived from OBER GUTSCHDF (note:OBER in German means UPPER, also "DF" is an abbreviation for DORF, hence the location he came from is "Upper Gutschdorf", coordinates approx 51 degrees North and 16 degrees 20 minutes East, see Kreis map in records ).
The shipping list shows his name as "Hahman" a  carpenter (Zimmerman), aged 34, he disembarked at Port Misery, South Australia; now known as Port Adelaide , on the Ship "AUGUST" on the 12 December 1857. Left Hamburg on the 22 August 1857. A fellow traveller, one Herr Lindner was a witness at the wedding of Johann Carl Hamann, which is part of the reason for believing that this immigration record is indeed that of Carl Hamann. The other is that there is no record of " Carl Hahmann" ever marrying, or even dying, however his age on the ship's manifest is given as 34. His birth year then, is 1823. The marriage certificate for Johann Carl Hamann on 26 December 1860, gives his age as 38, which gives a birth year of 1822/23 depending his actual birth date. Carl Probably came to Australia, like so many of the Prussian emigrants, to escape religious persecution, under King Friedrich Wilhelm the Third, who was trying to impose the Reformed Calvinist Church, or "Union" church on all Prussia. The persecutions include violence, confiscation of possessions, prohibition of holding a government job or attending school and jail sentences for anyone attending a Lutheran church
service.
Birth date of 20th January 1823 was recorded on the obverse of a photograph of Johann Carl and his wife Sophie Marie Margarethe Parbs.

 

Lexicology - name history. Source - Lutheran Archives, South Australia
Name dates back to 1399 and was then Haneman which is low German
Other variants of the name recorded include;- Hamman. Hammemann. Hahman & Hamann."

 

• Johann Carl's Marriage certificate shows his father as Gottlieb
• The shipping list shows "Point of Origin" as in the notes above, However this must be read with caution as he may have spent a night there on his journey to Hamburg and this has been recorded as "Point of Origin"
• Conversely three other passengers also showed Ober Gutschdorf as their "point of origin". One of them was a witness on the marriage certificate.
• In 1823 Silesia was part of the Prussian Empire, which has since reverted to Poland, Hence Prussia and Poland are considered interchangeable.
• The given names of Johann Carl and Gottlieb are definitely German hence it is believed that the genealogical line is German.

*Note from Group Administrator: Ober Gutschdorf is now called Goczałków Górny in southwest Poland, about 50 miles west of the former capital of Silesia (Breslau, now called Wroclaw in Poland)