SHE travelled to Rosewood from Clontarf, just to hear the guest speaker at the local history group meeting talk about German ancestry, what happened next was serendipitous.
When Sandra Pinno discovered Eric Kopittke from the Queensland Family History Society was booked to speak about German generational connections at a meeting, she knew she had to be there.
Eric’s presentation was called ‘Some of my family were German. What can I do?’
Sandra sat in the audience, listening and watching as Eric explained how to find information on German families in and around Rosewood.
She’d arrived clutching photographs and hoping she’d have answers for at least some of her questions.
When the talk moved onto an example of a Rosewood Scrub German family, she realised these were her ancestors.
She was holding photographs of the same family Eric was referring to in his example.
“Eric randomly chose a family who settled in the Rosewood Scrub back in the mid 1800s and he just happened to have found my family,” Sandra said.
“He found my aunt Helena, who was my great grandfather’s sister and worked my family into his presentation.
“As he began speaking about the Arndt family, Helena, Charlotte, Willamina and Frederick, I put my hand up and said, ‘this is actually my family’,” she said.
“He was awestruck as were the other people in the room, I had some photographs of Helena and her birth parents who were born in Germany.”
The connection added depth to the discussion and Eric gained more historical artifacts.
Sandra said history was important to her and her husband who was born in Germany.
When she discovered the history group meeting, they both wanted to go to find out if there was more to Sandra’s ancestorial lines.
“I had more information than Eric of course, because they are my family,” she said.
Sandra’s Australian connection started when her ancestors arrived in Moreton Bay in 1863 on a ship, ‘Beausite’.
Eric continues to use the Arndt family as an example when demonstrating how to research German ancestors using passenger lists, naturalisation documents, births, deaths and marriages and many other sources of information.
