Where did we Down-under Wageners come from?

The Wagener family of New Zealand originates in Germany, having come to New Zealand via Victoria, Australia. As far as we know, we are the only Wageners in New Zealand, at least until recent times, and came to the Far North of the North Island when the Subritzky family owned much of the Aupouri Peninsula.

Family records show Cassel, near Essen, as the original source of the family, but it is reasonably certain that their residence there was only for the two years necessary to qualify for Australian emigration, and that they actually came from either what is known as Luxembourg, or from the northern province of Mecklenburg.

Strangely, we know our family history very well as far back as Maldon, in Victoria, where the Subritzkys and Wageners first became involved with each other, resulting in a shift to northern New Zealand. The original Edward Ferdinand Wagener's marriage certificate shows Cassel as his birthplace, and it is clear that he emigrated in the second half of the 19th century. As New Zealanders we were always content to leave it at that, leaving the German connection as being 'too hard'. Remember, most of Germany was flattened through war, and many records were lost.

Now that Wageners have returned to Australia we are getting serious about tracking the emigration of Edward Ferdinand Wagener. We are reasonably sure that he did not come alone; it was far more likely that he came with parents, siblings and with other locals, as it was common for whole neighbourhoods to move. It seemed best to begin by tracking the other Wageners in Australia, and finding how they came, and where they came from, with the expectation that we would soon run across 'our lot'.

This has so far proven to be far more difficult than we expected. There are significant family lines in Australia, but so far all but one of them has been eliminated as having any direct relationship with us. In addition, it has proved very difficult to find any records of emigration. This work is on-going, and we would very much appreciate any input from others. To date Colin Wagener of South Australia has been extremely helpful in our search, having been able to eliminate a large number of possibilities since 'his lot' have largely populated South Australia...

The name WAGENER has always been differentiated from WAGNER in Europe, because in the Middle Ages when it first became useful to have surnames, those surnames usually described the occupation of the holder of the name. When the families came to the new colonies this clear difference was eroded and destroyed, as people entered different occupations and as in many cases they were effectively illiterate, the spelling of their names became something new, or similar names merged.

In the Middle Ages a 'WAGENER' was apparently a maker of 'wagens' (wagons), while a WAGNER drove those same wagens. This explains why the names stayed separate for so many hundreds of years when the natural tendency is to shorten or modify the name, and the relative abundance of 'Wagners' over 'Wageners'. When whole families emigrated to America things changed. In many cases these were the family members most willing and able to accept change, including any name simplifications. Indeed, some name changes were probably very welcome, particularly with the more complicated Slavic and Germanic titles.

In the case of WAGENER, the newcomers quickly blurred to WAGGONER and variants, but that there was resistance to this casual mutilation is evident by deliberate changes to names such as WAGONMAKER, possibly a rejection of being lumped in with mere truckie kin...
For the most part the WAGENER name survived unchanged in the Southern Hemisphere, and since most of the emigration to the region was post 1850 the effect is to leapfrog the American distortions, or simplifications, as you will. Nevertheless, in America a huge effort has been made to correlate their genealogical information, and there is a page dedicated to the WAGONER/WAGGONER/WAGNER variants, a rich source of historical data for large areas of the United States.

Our efforts are much more modest, and it is only in the area of original European families that our interests coincide with our American cousins. We also have an on-going interest in our own colonisation, and the family histories associated with that. For this reason many parallel genealogies of Australia are included or will be included, or linked if their families have already initiated a project.