Peter Joseph Becker

Peter was the ninth child of eleven; a twin although his sister only lived for a few weeks. He was the fourth child to be born in Australia to his German immigrant parents who had arrived ten years before his birth.

Peter grew up in Surry Hills, Sydney. His father was a stonemason and builder. By 1885 though, Peter had moved south to the Queanbeyan area, possibly with one of his brothers, where he had met and married his wife.

In 1926 their family was grown and most of their children were married. They had been dairy farmers in the Illawarra district and possibly earlier near Queanbeyan. Although they had voluntarily declared bankruptcy and surrendered their farm in 1910, they were once more dairy farmers at Dunoon in the Northern Rivers district. Several of their married children had also migrated north with their families, and their younger daughters married local boys.

Peter was sixty-four, still happily married, a father and a grandfather to twenty-nine grandchildren.

Out of sixteen great-great-grandparents, thirteen were alive in 1926 and Peter and Sarah from the previous post were the eldest living of those. The remaining three living ancestors of my daughter in 1926 are from the next generation back. They will be coming up next.