funds available, he chose a cheaper ship, The San Francisco, which took 235 passengers to South Australia instead of America. The voyage took 121 days and the congregation’s faith was sternly tested with a storm that broke the masts and swept a lifeboat overboard.
I had always believed that my grandmother was born in Germany but now, after reading my family history, Isee that this is not true. She was born at Fechner’s Bridge near Angaston in the Barossa Valley in 1862 and went to a Lutheran school at Light Pass, where she learnt to read and write, not in English but in German.
My mother believed to her dying day that her father was born in Cornwall, and was an illiterate shepherd boy who had been too busy minding sheep to attend school. She did not know (and, until recently, nor did any of her children, nor theirs) that he was the son of a convict, John Shemmeld, transported from Sheffield for stealing. Her father, William Shemmeld, the convict’s son, had been born at Strathalbyn in South Australia. Whether her mother knew the truth, I cannot say, but if she did she made sure none of her children knew he was a convict’s son, born in South Australia. They all died secure in the knowledge that their father was a shepherd from Cornwall. Sometimes, though, my mother said he was from Wales and that he spoke with a Welsh accent.
(In the 1980s, my mother wrote her autobiography, and my brother Tucker had it privately published. She declined to number the pages, so the editor had the challenging task of putting it in order. It is called The Humble Folk. A friend of ours, hearing of this title, said, ‘Humble folk! Good God! They are all a mob of gogetters!’
It took my mother many years to write the book and, before she ended it, she was in a retirement village, airilydashing off pages. She passed her days writing, knitting and cooking her own vegetables, which she had a friend buy for her. She didn’t like the way they were cooked for those in the communal dining room.)
This is how the marvellous tale of the convict’s son is described by my mother:
A young Welshman was employed as a driver of coaches, he was not long out from Wales. In Wales only the wealthy went to school. William had no schooling and could neither read nor write. He had spent his young life minding sheep in the mountainous country of Wales. We cannot find any record of how he came to Australia.
Now I see how many stories and beliefs that are held within a family are tainted with myth, apocrypha, tall tales, misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Nobody has been telling lies but stories grow up of their own accord and bend and sway with the years until the history has more the flavour of a novel rather than being a list of actual events.
Cherries have a part in this tale for several reasons. One is that in 1872 Gottlieb Lehmann drove his horse and buggy from his small farm into Angaston and brought home a branch of ripe cherries for his ten-year-olddaughter, Bertha. (My grandmother’s name was Hannah Maria Bertha but it is German custom to call a person by their last Christian name.) My mother wrote in her autobiography, ‘All her life she remembered with tenderness the unusual gift’ and that when she had children she told them about it.
Cherries were a luxurious fruit and they still can be, so it was memorable that my mother could hang from her turned-up nose a pair of cherries – which she did every Christmas. None of her children could hang cherries from their nose with so much ease. So, to me, cherries are entangled with laughter.
Gottlieb died soon after the gift of cherries and Bertha’s godfather, Gottlieb Stieler, became her stepfather. In her autobiography, my mother wrote of what happened to my grandmother after this:
Bertha was not a big build, in fact very small for her age. One day her stepfather harnessed a team of horses attached to a scarifier and told Bertha to drive across the paddock which was to be prepared for a crop.
I had always believed that my grandmother was born in Germany but now, after reading my family history, Isee that this is not true. She was born at Fechner’s Bridge near Angaston in the Barossa Valley in 1862 and went to a Lutheran school at Light Pass, where she learnt to read and write, not in English but in German.
My mother believed to her dying day that her father was born in Cornwall, and was an illiterate shepherd boy who had been too busy minding sheep to attend school. She did not know (and, until recently, nor did any of her children, nor theirs) that he was the son of a convict, John Shemmeld, transported from Sheffield for stealing. Her father, William Shemmeld, the convict’s son, had been born at Strathalbyn in South Australia. Whether her mother knew the truth, I cannot say, but if she did she made sure none of her children knew he was a convict’s son, born in South Australia. They all died secure in the knowledge that their father was a shepherd from Cornwall. Sometimes, though, my mother said he was from Wales and that he spoke with a Welsh accent.
(In the 1980s, my mother wrote her autobiography, and my brother Tucker had it privately published. She declined to number the pages, so the editor had the challenging task of putting it in order. It is called The Humble Folk. A friend of ours, hearing of this title, said, ‘Humble folk! Good God! They are all a mob of gogetters!’
It took my mother many years to write the book and, before she ended it, she was in a retirement village, airilydashing off pages. She passed her days writing, knitting and cooking her own vegetables, which she had a friend buy for her. She didn’t like the way they were cooked for those in the communal dining room.)
This is how the marvellous tale of the convict’s son is described by my mother:
A young Welshman was employed as a driver of coaches, he was not long out from Wales. In Wales only the wealthy went to school. William had no schooling and could neither read nor write. He had spent his young life minding sheep in the mountainous country of Wales. We cannot find any record of how he came to Australia.
Now I see how many stories and beliefs that are held within a family are tainted with myth, apocrypha, tall tales, misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Nobody has been telling lies but stories grow up of their own accord and bend and sway with the years until the history has more the flavour of a novel rather than being a list of actual events.
Cherries have a part in this tale for several reasons. One is that in 1872 Gottlieb Lehmann drove his horse and buggy from his small farm into Angaston and brought home a branch of ripe cherries for his ten-year-olddaughter, Bertha. (My grandmother’s name was Hannah Maria Bertha but it is German custom to call a person by their last Christian name.) My mother wrote in her autobiography, ‘All her life she remembered with tenderness the unusual gift’ and that when she had children she told them about it.
Cherries were a luxurious fruit and they still can be, so it was memorable that my mother could hang from her turned-up nose a pair of cherries – which she did every Christmas. None of her children could hang cherries from their nose with so much ease. So, to me, cherries are entangled with laughter.
Gottlieb died soon after the gift of cherries and Bertha’s godfather, Gottlieb Stieler, became her stepfather. In her autobiography, my mother wrote of what happened to my grandmother after this:
Bertha was not a big build, in fact very small for her age. One day her stepfather harnessed a team of horses attached to a scarifier and told Bertha to drive across the paddock which was to be prepared for a crop.
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