Jensens of the World Unite!

The full birth, death and marriage details for all Jensens have been extracted from the indexes published by the Queensland Registrar General's office at the time that I did this research back in the 1970s. Yes, a long time ago!

Other information, such as burial records, have been obtained from the Genealogical Society of Queensland Library.

Immigration records and information on land selectors and wills was obtained from the Queensland State Archives.

The book references were mostly obtained from books obtained from the Sunnybank Hills and Garden City, Brisbane City Council libraries.

The diary of Christian Overgaard Jensen, who later settled in the Townsville area, was lent to me by a neighbour called Betty Partridge.

This information will provide a useful guide for people researching the Jensen family name, particularly in Queensland. It will usually lead you towards finding more information, but it will hopefully make this task much easier.

Did you know that there were very few Jensens who immigrated into NSW in the last century. In fact, the NSW Archive Records show that no Jensens arrived in Sydney between 1844 and 1896 as Assisted Immigrants. It would appear that most Danish immigration to the east coast was into Queensland in the late 1800's.

The Danish Government passed its first law on emigration in 1868. This was not long after a period of turmoil in Denmark. In 1848 a revolt broke out in the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, two German States just south of Denmark.

Although not part of Denmark, they were ruled by the Danish King. Holstein was inhabited entirely by Germans, whereas Schleswig had a predominance of Germans in its southern half. A revolutionary government of Schleswig - Holstein was set up. This government wanted to throw off Danish control and join the German Confederation, of which Holstein was already a member. All of Germany rallied to their side. Even Prussia fought for them.

Danish troops defeated the rebels in 1850. The duchies were restored to union with Denmark by the Treaty of London in 1852. In 1863, the new King of Denmark, Christian IX formed a new Constitution by which Schleswig was made a part of Denmark. This was in breach of the Treaty of London. In 1864, German Chancellor Bismarck attacked Denmark. An alliance was formed between Prussia and Austria on 16 January 1864 to take joint action against Denmark.

The war against Denmark opened on 1 February 1864. Prussia and its ally Austria won a quick victory and took over Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. An armistice was signed and an international conference met in London on 25 April 1864. Denmark refused to restore autonomy of the duchies. The conference broke up and war resumed. The Danes were again defeated. Under the Treaty of Vienna, Denmark had to cede all the land beyond the Kongeaa.

Many of the early Danish immigrants, including some Jensens were involved in the Schleswig Holstein wars and were probably only too happy to leave their country after their defeat, once the new Immigration Law was introduced in 1868. Many were single men with farming backgrounds, including many who had experience in the dairy industry.

All ships arriving in Queensland with Danish emigrants departed from Hamburg in Germany. Some of the ships made a number of trips between Hamburg and Queensland. The Immigration records at the Queensland State Archives show the following ports of arrival:-

Moreton Bay, Hervey Bay, Keppel Bay, Bowen, Maryborough, Brisbane, Townsville and Rockhampton.

Humboldt, Reichstag, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Friedeburg, Lammershagen, John Bertram, Herschel, Alardus, and Eugenie.

Hervey Bay became a very popular area for the early Danish settlers. A monument found in the cemetery at Nikenbah says "The first Christian Church in the Hervey Bay area was in 1875 and it was called the Church of Denmark Abroad". Most Danes would have belonged to the German Lutheran Church.

Many of these early Danish visitors to our shores became the first Selectors in the Hervey Bay area. Some of the names on an early Registered Plan in the Hervey Bay area are Anders Jensen, John Hansen, Hans Jorgensen, Anders Larsen, L.N. Nielson, C.L.O. Koppen, J.E. Auer, and A. Franz.

Between 1868 and 1885, 37 parcels of land were selected in Queensland by Jensens as follows:-

Between August 1885 and 1905, a total of 72 Agricultural and Grazing Farms were leased by Jensens in Queensland as follows:-

The following statistics on Jensen births in Queensland were obtained from the Queensland Birth Indexes prepared by the Registrar Generals Department:-

As you can see the first recorded Jensen birth in Queensland was in 1869, one year after the new Emigration Law was passed in Denmark.

The following Statistics on Jensen Marriages in Queensland were obtained from the Queensland Marriage Indexes prepared by the Registrar Generals Department:-

As you can see there was a Jensen Death in the Queensland Country area in 1865, some three years before the Danish Emigration Law was passed.

The first European settlement in Queensland was a penal colony established at Moreton Bay in 1824. The last convicts arrived in Moreton Bay in approximately 1839. On Thursday 10 February 1842 the Moreton Bay district was open to free settlement. Despite its shaky beginnings the settlement and economic exploitation of Queensland were based on immigration. At the time of the first Census in the newly created colony of Queensland in 1861, the white population numbered a mere 30,000 concentrated mainly in the southeast corner. Private or sponsored migrants paying their own way to Queensland were rewarded with land orders entitling them to forty acres after two years residence. Agricultural labourers, domestic servants and other groups in demand were offered free passage. Immigration agents were appointed to overseas countries. Queensland launched an extremely generous immigration program in the 1870's.

Throughout the 1880's there were some 106,000 arrivals with 28,000 alone in 1883. Between 1861 and the termination of state assisted immigration in 1893, Queensland attracted 208,000 immigrants of whom 46,300 were farm labourers and 36,500 were domestic servants. By 1891 the population of Queensland had risen to 394,000, an increase of 1200% in thirty years.

5,000 Scandinavians arrived in Queensland and took up dairying or mixed farming. Although they formed only 1% of the population in Queensland, they represented a third of all Scandinavians in Australia.

In 1861 there were only 66 females for every 100 males in the colony, in 1891, 76 and, by 1921, 95.

Exploration and early settlement in the Mary River Area
Andrew Petrie along with Henry Stuart Russell, Walter Wrottesley, midshipman Jolliffe, five prisoners of the Crown as boat's crew and two Aboriginals as guides set out in a small Captain's gig (boat) on 4 May 1842 to investigate reports of huge forests of cedar and pine well north of the Maroochy River.

They met up with and took on board a runaway convict called Bracewell and his Aboriginal woman. After navigating through many islands and inlets they eventually entered the broad mouth of the Wide Bay River (Mary River) known to the natives as the "Moonaboola". Petrie was impressed by the massive stands of forests, where gargantuan logs of kauri and hoop pine grew in thick masses. Petrie named the river Mary, after Lady Mary Fitzroy who was killed in a buggy accident at Parramatta in 1849.

Midshipman Jolliffe who had accompanied Petrie on his expedition up the Wide Bay River established a station at Tiaro under instructions from a wealthy Maitland squatter, John Eales. Jolliffe brought 20,000 sheep overland and supplies were brought in from Brisbane aboard the schooner "Edward". Soon after their establishment, the Aboriginals attacked, killing two shepherds and drove off hundreds of sheep. The lonely outpost was under a virtual state of siege. Jolliffe resigned and his successor only lasted a few months before the station was abandoned. This situation repeated itself on a number of stations in the Wide Bay area. Homesteads were built like fortresses using full strong logs with loopholes in the wall to facilitate musket fire.

The Maryborough and Hervey Bay areas were not explored until March 1843, when Moreton Bay district Crown Lands Commissioner Dr. Stephen Simpson, in an attempt to determine the boundaries of the bunya country, followed up the Brisbane river, passed through Mount Brisbane, Kilcoy and Durundur stations, crossed the Conondale Range into the Mary Valley and returned to Brisbane by the cutter "Edward" which had just brought up the supplies for Jolliffe's new station at Tiaro.

By 1846 thirteen squatters had established runs in the Mary River country. In 1847 Government surveyor James Charles Burnett was sent to explore the Mary River with a view to establishing a port for the export wool. On Burnett's recommendation the town of Maryborough was established on the Mary River as a port for the sheep men.

What is now Maryborough was then called by the aborigines "Murryba". As the aborigines decreased in numbers and the whites increased, many of the whites not knowing the aboriginal language were responsible for the change of "Murry" to "Mary". When the place became a town with a corporation, it automatically would become a borough and replace "ba" so that the name was completely changed from "Murryba" to Maryborough.

"Murry" was aboriginal for "kangaroo" and "ba" meant "plenty". Hence "Murryba" meant "kangaroo plenty" or "the home of the kangaroo".

The new port of Maryborough's first resident, George Furber, was suddenly attacked by two Aboriginals in October 1847. Furber was terribly wounded along with his colleague. He rode 150 miles to Ipswich to have his wounds attended. He recovered but was killed in December 1855 by two Aboriginals employed by him.

There were many attacks by Aboriginals in the Maryborough area in the 1850s. The tribes in area were the Dundubara and the Batjala.

By the 1850's squatters had taken up the best of the Mary Valley country and were moving down from the forests of the upper Mary onto the headwaters of the Maroochy just north of the bunya country. In 1851, on the eve of the gold rushes, the population of Brisbane had reached 2,500.

In December 1859, Queensland became a separate colony from New South Wales. One of the first Acts passed by the new Government was the Unoccupied Crown Lands Occupation Act which cancelled Governor Gipps bunya country reserve proclamation of April 1842 which declared that no licenses would be granted for the occupation of lands within the Bunya Pine district, and that no licenses would be granted for the cutting of timber within that district.

Maryborough is the third oldest city in the state and the second eastern-entry port to Australia in the last century. 22,000 immigrants arrived in Australia between 1862-1901 via Maryborough, which was first called Wide Bay village. The first immigration ship from Europe was the Ariadne, which arrived in Maryborough in 1862.

The port was used in the blackbirding trade and there was an influx of settlers after the discovery of gold near Gympie during the 1860s.

Hervey Bay began its life in 1854 as a cattle station, the "Toogoom Run". The first permanent white settler was timber getter Boyle Martin who arrived by boat from Maryborough with his wife Sarah and young son in 1863. He set up camp where the Hervey Bay Hotel now stands. Five years later the first land subdivision took place. Foreshore blocks of 100 to 200 acres were snapped up by Maryborough businessmen, many of whom built weekenders for their families.

When Boyle Martin arrived there was thick scrub right down to the beach in a lot of places. Martin felled a lot of timber from this scrub along the beach front. Bullock teams hauled the timber to the sea and the timber was lashed together in rafts and pulled in the water to Urangan where they caught the current in the Mary River.

From there, men in dinghies pulled them with the tide and poled them from the banks. In later years steam boats took them to Maryborough for Pettigrew and Sim Mills.

As there were no roads, timber was brought in to the Hervey Bay area by punt to build the first homes. Timber for the first Police Station was brought this way.

In the years of 1870 and onwards, the Danes and Scandinavians came by sailing ships, mostly direct to Maryborough. Some came by coastal boats from larger ports. Mostly, these people were not well off and had come out to get away from the Wars in their own countries. If they had come as assisted passengers, they had to work for a few years for other people. They stayed at the Immigration Centre in Maryborough and were allotted to land holders and people wanting servants.

As soon as their years of service were up, many of these Scandinavians came to Hervey Bay. All the good land was taken up and they had to buy land from the Pialba scrub. This was land which lay at the back of Pialba and took in Nikenbah.

The Danes and Scandinavians stayed together partly because of the difference of language and as they had come from the same parts of Europe and could understand each other in this totally different country.

They made a central site at the camp of timber getter Ruben Denman at Nikenbah. The site was near Mango Bend. At this place they had good water. From this site, the men travelled out to their selections and cleared the land and built small homes out of bush timber. They all helped each other.

The township of Aalberg was founded near here. Aalberg was the name of a seaport in northern Denmark. Many of the Danes possibly came from Aalberg.

A Danish Scandinavian Church was built of slabs and a shingle roof. Inside the church, they placed a board with the words "Dansk Kuke I Udlandet" which meant "The Danish Church in the new land". Aalberg was later named Nikenbah after Mr. Tooth and Mr. Bartholomew, who were councillors.

A lot of timber was carted from Aalberg to the bend in the Susan River behind Sinfields Hill. This was done, as there was a bar of rocks behind this point of the river. The timber was then punted out to the Mary River and up to Maryborough.

At first, the land was used for dairy farming and in the late 1880' and the early 1890's there were two creameries in operation, one at Urraween and one at Nikenbah. The farmers would take their milk to be separated by a steam driven plant and then taken back as separated milk.

Then came the sugar boom of the 1880's and the land was given over to cane fields. Kanakas worked in the fields and there are many reminders of them including a memorial in the Polson Cemetery at Point Vernon. About 12,000 Kanakas came to the Maryborough - Hervey Bay area between 1863 and 1906.

There were no Kanakas contracted to work on the cane fields in Hervey Bay area. The Kanakas who did come were "free boys". They had worked in Maryborough, Childers and Bundaberg and had been freed.

The following is an excerpt from a book titled "The History of Maryborough" by George E. Loyau which was written between 1850 and 1895:-

"Pialba and Urangan are situated on the south east portion of the division, about 20 miles from Maryborough. The farming portion has been settled over 17 years, the scrub having been previously held by timber-getters, and was the chief supply of timber for the Maryborough sawmills in the early days. The farmers chiefly consist of sturdy Danes, who, with great perseverance, have turned the thick scrub into cultivated farms, but are still heavily handicapped by having 20 miles of land carriage to get to a market. Large quantities of bananas, oranges and other tropical fruits are now produced. Maryborough is also largely supplied with butter from this District, and now that the Central sugar mill is established in Maryborough it only requires the extension of the railway line from Colton Junction to Pialba a distance of 16 miles for the cultivation of sugar to be a success. The marine summer resort of Pialba is much frequented by Maryborough inhabitants and those of the surrounding districts; it is also a favourable resort of Gympie inhabitants. The beach which extends from the town of Polson to Daymans Point, Urangan, a distance of 7 miles is unsurpassed in Australia. There are now about 80 marine residences which are fully occupied during the summer season. Also 3 large and well-appointed hotels, telegraph station, and Post Offices at Polson and Torquay, several comfortable boarding houses and the necessaries of life are plentiful and cheap, several stores catering to the wants of visitors, whilst the farmers find from them a ready market for their produce, fruits, and vegetables."

The railway line from Maryborough opened in 1896, and the famous mile long Urangan pier was completed in 1917 to provide a deep water port for the sugar ships. The sugar trade was lost with the construction of a bulk terminal at Bundaberg and the pier was later used by tankers to discharge fuel to a depot at Urangan. The last ship called at the port in 1985.

Tourists began to discover Hervey Bay in the 1950's and since then the district has never looked back. What had been part of the Burrum Shire in 1917 became the Hervey Bay Town Council in 1976. In 1984 Hervey Bay was proclaimed a city making it the youngest city in Queensland.

The Burrum District, including Torbanlea, Howard, Toogoom and Burrum Heads, was first settled by timber getters who supplied logs to the flourishing mills in Maryborough.

In 1863, Robert Miller, a timber getter, discovered coal in the bank of the Burrum River. Samples were sent to Maryborough for the sawmills, and so over 100 years of coal mining on the Burrum coalfields began.

The discovery provided the impetus for settlement. Between 1875 and 1890 many small mines began operating specifically to provide coal for the railway which reached the area in 1884.

As the district expanded, Toogoom and Burrum Heads became the seaside retreat for the residents. With settlement, diversification followed and considerable areas were devoted to citrus orchards growing oranges and mandarins. The Ellendale variety of mandarins was first produced in this area and derived its name from the grower's wife's maiden name – Ellen Dale. Sugar cane and pineapples are also grown in the district.

There is a Jensen Drive at Hervey Bay near the intersection of Main Street and Doolong Road.

Danish is a Scandinavian language which belongs to the Germanic group of languages. Like English, Danish is very often pronounced differently from the way in which it is spelt, and sometimes the same letter may stand for different sounds in different conditions.

Danish pronunciations often give foreigners the impression of being rather indistinct and slovenly.

Some of the early Danish immigrants would have anglicised their names after arrival in Australia. For example, Jens became John and Anders became Andrew.

The patronymic system of naming a child as the son or the daughter of a particular man, was common until around 1875 in Scandinavian countries. Women retained their maiden names after they married, this custom being kept up to around 1900.

In the patronymic system if Anders Jensen had a son called Nils, he would become Nils Anderssen, that is Nils son of Anders. If Anders had a daughter her surname would become Andersdatter.

2. "Sugar Coast - Burnett" brochure by The Sugar Coast-Burnett Regional Tourism Board Ltd.
3. "The History of Maryborough and Wide Bay and Burnett Districts from the year 1850 to 1895" by George E. Loyau.

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