Eliza Farnbach
| First name | Eliza |
|---|---|
| Last name | Farnbach |
| Country of Origin | England |
| Date of Birth | 1814 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1857 |
| Submitted by | Ralph Farnbach |
Story
Migration Story
Eliza Farnbach
Eliza Farnbach sailed from London on 26 September 1857 aboard the ship Indemnity of 741 tons under the command of Captain Phillip Sayer. Ninety five days later (30 December 1857) she arrived in Melbourne.
Eliza was born in London in 1814. Her parents were Thomas Webb and Rebecca Webb (n. Waldice). Some years before coming to Australia she had been to Germany with ‘some wealthy people\’ and met Johannes Mathias ((John Mathew) Farnbach whom she married at The Parish Church, Monkstown, County of Dublin, Ireland on 31 January 1853.
John Farnbach was a very keen gold seeker and had been to California where he had been successful in finding ‘a lot of gold\’. He felt he would like to try his luck in Australia but his wife, Eliza, would not go unless accompanied by her sister or brother. She managed to get her way and the family left England in 1857.
Eliza\’s brother, Thomas Wallace Webb, his wife, Frances Mary Webb (n Amey), and their six week old daughter, Isabella Harris Webb, accompanied Eliza and her four year old son, John Hampden Thomas Farnbach, to Melbourne on the Indemnity.
Following her arrival in Australia, Eliza had two more sons Ð William born in 1859 (and died in 1861) and Conrad Edward Bell Farnbach born 25 August 1863. Both were born in the goldfields near Talbot, Victoria.
Eliza returned to England when her son John was a teenager to enable him to attend school at Oxford to ‘make him a gentleman\’. Conrad also went. They returned to Melbourne in 1870 on the Hampshire. Upon their return they found John Mathew Farnbach had grown a beard and ‘got into the ways of a gold digger\’. However in various documentation he is described as a miner, or a carter or a contractor. He died near Talbot on 23 March 1883 of ‘old age and asthenia\’; he was 67years of age.
John Hampden Thomas Farnbach died in Talbot in 1877 while working in a post office Ð apparently he had to walk a long distance to work in the rain and contracted ‘galloping consumption\’ (probably tuberculosis).
On 21 March 1894 Conrad Farnbach married Sarah Elizabeth Walker Airey at St Johns Church, Melbourne. They then lived in Footscray, Victoria where he had established an estate agency business. Children of this marriage were Eliza Constance (1895), Charles (1896), John Hampden Thomas (1898), Mary Isabella (1900), Gertrude Sarah (1901), Conrad Alan (1903), Ralph Joseph (1906), and Marjorie Ward (1908).
Eliza lived with Conrad and his family until her death when 97 years old on 1 August 1911. She is buried in the Footscray Cemetery.