Manns in early colonial South Australia
Philip Mann
Posted on by Mannco
I have often been asked whether I am related to this or that Mann.
Charles Mann (1799-1860), advocate-general, sailed to South Australia on the Coromandel in 1837.
He is no relation of mine being born on 8 July 1799, at Syleham, East Suffolk, England, son of Charles Mann and his wife Sarah, née Moxon.
My great grandfather, Johann Christian Mann, was born in Hirschfeldau, Silesia, Prussia, in 1812 and was in South Australia about 1846. We have not yet deduced how he arrived.
Family rumour has it that he was a crew member who jumped ship. Whatever the truth may be, he married Johanne Louise Bradtke in 1847 at Bethany, and was an early member of the Lutheran Church at Hoffnungstahl.
Nor do I seem to be related to the Manns who ran the Eudunda Hotel for some years. It appears they come from a different part of Silesia. My DNA results have to date indicated no matches with Wilhelm Julius Mann or Ernst Albert Mann or his father, Friedrich Wilhelm Julius Mann, who arrived as an 18 years-old cabinet maker and single man on the Wandrahm in 1854. His Naturalization Certificate shows that he was born in Royn, Province of Silesia. The town is now known by the Polish name of Ruja. Jelenin (formerly Hirschfeldau, where my ggf was born) and Ruja are about 250 kms apart. Friedrich WiIhelm Julius Mann married Anna Christiana Hubner at Langmeil on 22 January 1857. Anna Christiana arrived with her parents and 3 siblings on the Leontine in 1848, having come from Groz Tinz, Liegnitz, Silesia. Gross Tinz is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Ruja, within Legnica County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland and lies approximately 2 kilometres (1 mile) west of Ruja. In his application for naturalisation in 1865, he is living in Greenock and his occupation is shown as carpenter and joiner.
When I first started working in Adelaide, I was periodically asked whether I was related to the Manns who ran the hardware shop at Woodville. Again the answer is no.
However in the Bradtke Family History, published in 2000, descendants of my great grandfather are covered from pages 50 to 141 so I have no shortage of relations on my Mann side.