I am Janis Haynes, an amateur historian, genealogist and contributor to articles on this Adelaide Hills LocalWiki.  My attention focus's on any and all things to do with the passengers of 'Zebra' which arrived here on the 29 December 1838.  I write on their marriages, homes, farm lands, movements, interactions and stories, and where possible I base it around the many photographs and records that are still available today in descendants homes.  

I am a descendant from the LIEBELT, STEINBORN, KUCHEL, LUBASCH, GREISER, families on the 'Zebra' which makes me related to a lot of the Hahndorf emigrants of 1839.  I was not raised Lutheran, nor did I take any interest or live anywhere near Hahndorf, or think I had a close link to German heritage.  My interest was initiated by cycling the route my german grandfather’s [Johann Carl Friedrich FÄHRMANN], 27th battalion [AIF} followed during World War 1, along the Western Front in Belgium and France, which led me to think about his ancestors.

Another long cycling trip took me [2018] down the Oder River and into accommodation at Mozow winery where I could visit the villages of the 'Zebra' folk.  Then I ‘found’ the ‘Friedrich Wilhelm Kanal’ and followed the Spree the Havel and the Elbe to Tangermünde where my great great grandfather [Johann Carl Friedrich FÄHRMANN, came from in 1849 and married the 5 year old LIEBELT of the ‘Zebra’ in Hahndorf.

Carl worked on the redgum timbers for the Old Hahndorf Mill [1854], the roof of St Michael's [1858-59] and St Paul's [1885] in Hahndorf.  It is possible that he was responsible as a 'Zimmerman' for building the Paechtown houses and other homes & barns that have survived to this day around Hahndorf.  Then I started to meet ‘cousins’ in and around Hahndorf who had collections of old photographs and then during covid I spent a year identifying some of the 300 photographs and their relationships to each other and then hundreds more came to my attention.  Hence my articles now include collections of photographs and other archival material belonging to cousins: John MUELLER, Beryl BENHAM, Glen LIEBELT, Lorraine KRAMM, Gwenda LUCAS, Alan REDDY & Kathryn SCHMEISS  and others who have generously allowed me to scan their items in their own homes, and then allowed me to share those images through my articles.  

I then started to work with several people including Lothar BRASSE, historian & heritage architect [he has sketched most Fachwerk houses in Australia and particularly in South Australia.]  While volunteering at the museum in the Hahndorf Academy I heard about author & researcher Tony Finnis, [Captain Finnis’s descendant].  Tony is also the administrator of the ‘Adelaide Hills LocalWiki’, which is a free site which Tony set up years ago to enable a community wiki based web-site for the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia and which forms part of the overall world-wide community based LocalWiki project.  The Adelaide Hills LocalWiki, apart from its community based role, includes comprehensive genealogical and historical based information related to the Adelaide Hills area and allows such data and research to be uploaded and shared.  I started working with Tony to present my own research in the form of articles on anything and everything to do with the ship ‘Zebra’, https://localwiki.org/adelaide-hills/Zebra-Project

I love working with Tony Finnis on this website because whatever story I am working on I can add and change it whenever I discover something new.  Tony has given me editing assistance and stresses that the content is always up to me, my pages are my own to creatively preserve the images that I can now share with you all.  The website is accessible to all to add information /stories/ research. You could use it for any of the work you do or have done in the past regarding the ‘Old Lutherans'.  I would be happy to assist you.

All of my articles are a work in progress, added to as I receive photographs or find other information.  I attribute all the collection of memorabilia to the current guardian, I only scan photographs in peoples homes, I don’t ‘collect’ anything other than information, evidence, identification of lands owned in Hahndorf & districts.

I have also have website for my none German ancestors 'https://rosecottagefamilyhistory.com'

In my previous life I was a Registered Nurse & Midwife, for over 43 years where I gained qualifications in, Coronary Care Nursing, Diploma of Teaching [Adults], Psychiatric Nursing, Graduate Diploma of Health Counselling, while finding employment in a variety of country hospitals, as well as in the neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Jerusalem, Israel and 2 years in rural nursing in Zimbabwe [Rhodesia] during the civil war.  

I live in Middleton, South Australia and am grateful that this new passion of mine has resulted in having friendships with FAEHRMANN relatives in Tangermünde, Germany and Polish friends near the Prussian villages of Nickern & Schönborn,  as well as the delightful guardians in and around Hahndorf who have shared their memorabilia. 

You can contact me on [email protected]

Updated 30 July 2022 author Janis Haynes, [email protected],au

​Aim of this article
Provide documents to those interested in the history of the early pioneers of Hahndorf

Hahndorf Volume 2, A survey carried out for the Australian Heritage Commission page 342, 1981.

Source:  Australian Lutheran Almanac 1939 page 44

"In order to settle the German emigrants I brought here, the following offer has been made to me - through Mr DUTTON's partners, Messrs. MacFARLANE and FINNIS, the owners, of an important stretch of land near Mount Barker.

  1. One hundred acres of land are to be set aside for them rent-free during the first year.  Of this area, 19 acres are allowed for the erection of houses and for constructing roads; the remainder is for cultivation but will again be subdivided among the 38 families.
  2. The above-mentioned gentlemen partners pledge themselves to deliver the emigrants and their belongings to the dwelling place granted them for their habitation-this be on credit.
  3. The above gentlemen pledge themselves to provide the emigrants with provision for on eyer, until they be indefatigable industry will harvest produce from the soil allotted them.  See of the kind they need is also to be provided, but this is to be debited to those few referred to above, who asked for seed and other provisions; it is not to be considered as a communal debt;
  4. The partners promise to supply fowls, cattle and pigs on credit, in the expectation that the emigrants will soon be able to cancel their debt by selling their produce in town and be enabled to purchase their own domestic animals.                                                         The following was agreed to by those concerned without my demanding it.
  5. On the arrival of the company at their dwelling-place 6 milch cows are to be distributed to them and during the course of the month of March each family is to have as many cows as they wish, but these cows must first be broken in.  In every third month these must be exchanged for some not yet broken in, but they are to retain sufficient broken-in cows so that they never have only cows not broken in.
  6. If, as well all hope and expect, the gentlemen concerned find that the emigrants are industrious and thorough workers on the land, they promise to have a church and a school built next year, whereby the settlers will have to render service as manual labourers and serve with teams, but the partners (owners) are to pay building costs;
  7. Mr DUTTON promises to present 20 pound a year, Mr FINNIS and Mr METCALFE 10 pound sterling each for the clergyman and the school master.
  8. Mr H. KOOK (sic) (he was a cabin passenger, an agriculturalist) is to be appointed by the partners as supervisor over the new settlement and is to be supported by them, but he is to be paid an annual salary of forty pound by emigrants.
  9. All the above is to be valid only for this year on trial.  If the partners find that the land proves itself suitable for agriculture owing to the industry of the emigrants, the latter are to be granted more land at an appropriate rental.  The gentlemen will also not be disinclined to take on more German emigrants of unexceptionable character."

Herewith the stipulations were completed and immediately agreed to by these gentlemen, so that after acceptance by the emigrants, they could be considered as a valid contract.  

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