The 'Happ' Family history

Written by Erl Happ. Edited by Jeremy Happ

This section is based on information provided by Erl's uncle Bert Happ, brother Peter, and contemporaries in the East, Robert, and Steve Happ. Memories disappear with the generations. Very little has been written down.

We begin with Maria Eva Iffland who in 1849 (age 14) arrived in Sydney in the ship Beulah with her sister Clara Iffland. They came from the small German village of Eltville located on the Rhine River, where their father worked as a cooper and vine dresser. The Rhine is a sea of vines, mostly Rhine Riesling. The Happ family were bakers and pastry cooks in the village. They owned 'Café Happ'.

Eltville is only walking distance from the village of Geisenheim where a vine research institute has propagated new varieties to suit the cool and short growing season. Eltville is a riverside town. At the foot of mountains devoted to vines, is the Bishops castle which hosts today an exhibition of the work of Gutenberg: This is the man who invented moveable type and printed the first Bible.

In 1851 Christoph Carl Happ paid his way to Sydney as a steerage passenger aboard the ship 'Australia'. Whether coerced by younger brother Andreas to join the Victorian gold rush, or chasing his childhood friend Maria Eva, who knows. Either way, he was to marry Maria Eva in 1854. At the time she was working as a ladies maid. Her sister Clara married Ludwig Yanz. Christoph had arrived in Australia a pastry cook, became a grocer, and came to be known simply as 'Charles'.

So, Andreas was the first of the Happ brothers to come to Australia. He recorded his occupation as 'vine dresser and wine cooper'. He came to Sydney in 1850 at age 21 and prospected for gold in Victoria. En voyage from Germany he married 14 year old Amelia Smidth, with ceremony conducted by the ship's captain. He lost Amelia somewhere in the goldfields and in 1858, married the 20 year old Sarah Elizabeth Stearn (born Cambridgeshire England). She bore him seven children over the next 20 years, all in Bathurst. She died at 75 in 1905, he followed at 81 in 1909.

The younger Charles Happ predeceased Andreas in 1890 at aged 64. Maria Eva died 26 years later aged 81, in a house called 'Eltville'.

Three Hills Eva Marie 2008

Three Hills Charles Andreas 2003

Charles and Eva Maria's sixth child - Charles Leopold, born 1868 in Liverpool Street Newtown, Sydney, was Erl's grandfather. He came to Western Australia in the 1890s and in 1898 married Ellen Gallagher, herself born in Perth in 1863. Her Irish mother Catherine McDermott had come to WA in 1857 in a shipload of Irish girls marrying George Gallicker in 1861.

In the family's possession is a black and white marble clock that was presented to Charles Leopold by his workmates in the Midland workshops 'as a token of esteem' on the day of his wedding in 1898. We called grandma Ellen Happ 'Little Fat Nan'. She worked for the 'Western Australian' newspaper as a proof-reader. Charles Leopold died in 1935 aged 67. Ellen passed away twenty years later in Balingup aged 92.
Charles Leopold had three sons, George, Bert and Frank (Erl's father), and two daughters Edith, and Roslyn all born in East Perth.

Frank Happ grew up during the Great Depression. For some years in the thirties he was 'on sustenance' in the goldfields like a lot of other potentially troublesome young lads. He was a gregarious personality and loved a game of cards and a bet on the horses. The terminology that conveys something of his spirit is 'happy go lucky'. He was 6 feet one inch tall, with tightly curled black hair and dark brown eyes. He was an accomplished spin bowler and, as a batsman, loved to hit other bowlers out of the ground. The Depression led him to regard government jobs as desirable, and thus a worthy aspiration for his children. He and his brothers were store keepers in the South West of WA. In his last years Frank ran a store in Balingup - where Erl, Peter, Elizabeth and Maureen grew up. Franks wife Eunice was a Moore from Boyup Brook. She was the rock who held the family together. In her nineties she still looks after herself with help from Liz who sees her every day. Eunice rides a three wheeler into Busselton and gets about on a titanium knee. She has an ear for every one of us and likes to know what is going on.

The guy that I was named after 'Erland', was a Dutch Indonesian. He studied at Christian Brothers, 'The Terrace' in Perth in the twenties, took out my aunt Edith and was a family favourite. My dad must have been impressed with him to call me 'Erland'. What was he thinking of?

Ros and Erl's oldest son Myles has four children of his own who are amongst the fifth generation of Australian born Happs. These kids have a Chinese grandmother from Shanghai, our much loved Jane Cummins.