DOPPER

Peter Dopper and Mary Dytum

Peter Dopper, according to his marriage certificate, was born in Rotterdam in The Netherlands. Peter and Mary were married on February 8th, 1862, at the home of Charles Fisher of Wahgunyah, Victoria. Peter was 32 and Mary Dytum was 21.

Peter Dopper was a brickmaker, as was Mary Dytum’s father. John Dopper, Peter’s father, was a shoemaker and his mother was Laurina Hurcel. No record of Peter’s arrival can be found. Unlike convicts and assisted immigrants, unassisted immigrant records were poorly kept as there was no obligation to record passenger names.

Mary Dytum was born in Buckinghamshire, England, the daughter of Edmund (Edwin) Dytum and Hannah (or Anna) Spooner. The Dytum family, Edmund, 40, Hannah, 37, William, 11, and Mary, 7, arrived on the ship “Statesman” on September 14, 1851.

Peter and Mary Dopper had three children, Limena, born September 3, 1863, in Wahgunyah. Limena died in 1863 also. John Edmund Peter, born April 17, 1866, in Chiltern, Victoria and died March 1, 1890, in Jindera, NSW and William George Dopper, born October 21, 1861, although no official birth certificate can be located.

 

 

Peter Dopper appears in a couple of newspaper articles, involving missing horses and complaints about inferior brick supplies. A 1910 article refers to Peter Dopper as the first brickmaker in Jindera and states that he built the kilns in which the bricks were constructed for the building of the Forest Hotel which was built in Jindera in 1870. The last mention was in February 1885 in the Beechworth newspaper. A Jindera map, dated 1889, shows a block of land showing the owners name as P. Dopper. Peter Dopper died from pneumonia on February 21, 1886, in Albury Hospital.

In Germanton NSW on December 18, 1886, Mary Dopper married Walter Butcher, also a brickmaker, both of whom lived in Gerogery at the time of their marriage. Mary stated that she was a widow at the time of her marriage. Mary Butcher died in Albury in 1913, survived only by her son William George.

(William) George Dopper married Louisa Matilda Lange at Jindera on November 10, 1881. Louisa was born in Adelaide on August 14, 1860, the daughter of Charles Lange and (Johanne) Sophia Breitenbach. George and Louisa lived on Adams Street in Jindera according to a hand-drawn map of Jindera displayed in the Jindera Pioneer Museum. George, like his father and his grandfather, was a brickmaker.

                                                                                               Louisa & George Dopper with daughter Elsie and granddaughter Hazel

Charles and Sophia arrived in 1854 on the “Caesar Godeffroy”, from Hamburg, Germany. Charles died in April 1860 and Sophia was remarried in Mount Gambier, South Australia in 1866 to Francis Breust. In 1880 Francis had land in Moorwartha, NSW. Sophia died in 1894 and is buried in Jindera.

 

George and Louisa had 10 children. George died in 1938 and his obituary states that they had 43 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. Louisa died in 1947, aged 87.

 

 

Jindera 150th celebration Reunion Event

 

Maps, Photos, Certificates, War Service Records and Other Information are available from:

https://sites.google.com/site/mareesfamilyhistorysite/

You will need a google account or a Gmail email address to access, however.