Peerage Record – 47399

     Adelaide Miriam Günther was born NSW BDM index no. V18472018 32A/1847 on 18 October 1847 at Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia^G.¹ She was the daughter of Jakob Wilhelm Günther and Lydia Paris.² She married Lester Stuart Donaldson, son of Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson and Maria Leicester, on 11 January 1875 at St Johns Church of England, Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia^G, in a NSW BDM index no. 3684/1875 / Adelaide’s brother, Rev. W.J. Günther, performed the marriage ceremony. marriage.³ She died on 18 January 1940 at age 92 at Mosman, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 3034/1940 / died at her home, 14 Erith St, Mosman.⁴ She was buried on 3 February 1940 at Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, Anglican area; section 3; grave no. 0001829 (buried with husband.)⁵
     From 11 January 1875, her married name became Donaldson.

     James Stuart Donaldson was born NSW BDM index no. 15284/1875 on 9 December 1875 at Gulgong, New South Wales, Australia^G.¹ He was the son of Lester Stuart Donaldson and Adelaide Miriam Günther.² He died on 15 August 1909 at age 33 at Westport, New Zealand^G.^3,4
     The Sydney Morning Herald reported the death on Tuesday 17 August 1909:

COAL AGENT FOUND DEAD.
WELLINGTON (N.Z.), Monday.  
Mr. James Donaldson, the local agent at Westport for the Stockton Coal Company, was found dead in his office. The deceased was a son of Mr. Donaldson, police magistrate, of Sydney.
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New Zealand papers published a report of the United Press Association stating that circumstances of death of James S. Donaldson pointed to suicide by inhaling gas.^3,4 He was Coal agent.³

     Amy Eliza Gunther Donaldson was born at Burrundulla, near Mudgee / NSW BDM index no. 15744/1877 on 19 August 1877 at Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia^G.¹ She was the daughter of Lester Stuart Donaldson and Adelaide Miriam Günther.² She died on 31 July 1950 at age 72 at Mona Vale, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 15110/1950 / at her residence, Heath Street, Mona Vale.³

     Maud Paris Donaldson was born NSW BDM index no. 18198/1880 in 1880 at Moama, New South Wales, Australia^G. She was the daughter of Lester Stuart Donaldson and Adelaide Miriam Günther.² She married Edwin R. Elliott in 1915 at St Leonards, New South Wales, Australia^G, in a NSW BDM index no. 3275/1915 marriage. She died on 24 December 1984 at Willoughby, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G.³
     Maud Paris Donaldson also went by the nick-name of Bud. From 1915, her married name became Elliott.

     Adelaide M. Donaldson was born NSW BDM index no. 29762/1888 in 1888 at Narrandera, New South Wales, Australia^G. She was the daughter of Lester Stuart Donaldson and Adelaide Miriam Günther.¹ She died in 1888 at Narrandera, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 11530/1888.

     Elena Peñaranda Minchin was born in 1906 at La Paz, Murillo Provincia, La Paz, Bolivia^G.^1,2 She was the daughter of Carlos Peñaranda Ribero and Sara Minchin.³ She was baptised on 9 October 1906. She married Héctor Ormachea Zalles. She died on 30 March 1991 at La Paz, Murillo Provincia, La Paz, Bolivia^G.¹ She was buried on 31 March 1991.
     Her married name became Ormachea Zalles.

     Jakob Wilhelm Günther was born on 12 May 1806 at Oberschwandorf, Württemberg, Germany^G.¹ He married Lydia Paris, daughter of Thomas Paris and Elizabeth (?), on 13 October 1836 at St. James Clerkenwell Church, London, England^G.^2,3,4 He died on 20 December 1879 at age 73 at Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 7086/1879.^5,6
     He was Clergyman; missionary. Emigrated to Australia with his family at government expense in 1837. Anglican Archdeacon at Mudgee, NSW, at time of death.

James Günther had a strong vocation for the mission field and, after many vicissitudes, entered the training college of the Church Mission Society in London. Ordained deacon in 1832 and priest in 1836, both for colonial service, James Günther went out to the Aboriginal Mission in the Wellington Valley. Here he worked until he became minister of the Mudgee district in 1843.
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Günther, Jakob Wilhelm (1806-1879)
By Anonymous
Created 06/21/2009 – 15:09
Prepared by:  Regina Ganter

James Günther was assigned to the CMS mission near Mudgee which showed up deep resentments between German and English-speaking Protestants. He trained as a missionary at Basel and London, and remained for six years at the Wellington Valley mission. In 1843 the New South Wales government withdrew all support for its missions, both of which were staffed by Germans (Zion Hill and Wellington Valley).
 
Günther was born on 12 May 1806 in the village of Oberschwandorf near Nagold (Württemberg). He trained at Basel [4] and then attended the Church Mission Society (CMS) college in 1833 and was ordained into the Anglican ministry in London. At this time Basel was working closely with the CMS in London.
 
He arrived at the CMS mission in Wellington Valley in August 1837 with his wife Lydia née Paris, and took over the mission’s superintendence from Rev. William Watson in 1840, until the mission was disbanded in 1843.
 
During his six years as a missionary he prepared a Wiradjuri grammar which was published in 1892 by J. Fraser, and he also conducted a larger language work which has been lost . [1] [5] Günther entertained a voluminous correspondence with Basel, including 34 letters, and therefore often appeared with short news in the Basler Missionsmagazin and the Christlicher Heidenbote. The activity reports of the Wellington Valley were submitted in English to the London Missionary Society (LMS), and extracts appeared in translated form in the mission magazines.[2] [6]  
 
By 1843, when the New South Wales government withdrew funding from all its missions, Günther was already discouraged. There had been no baptisms and little progress in ‘civilising’. Günther’s journal records a significant interaction with an indigenous man called Cochrane, whom he considered the only promising convert to Christianity. Attempting to address the traditional power structures which interfered with the imposition of mission authority, he asked Cochrane ‘Why do you obey the old men?”, to which Cochrane responded: ‘Why do you obey the governor?” [3] [7] 
The Anglo-German relationship at this mission was never a happy one. Watson and Handt had been operating almost independently of each other until Handt requested a transfer and was replaced by Günther. Watson expressed resentment of the appointment of another German:
 
The Society may prefer German Lutherans to English Episcopalians – and all their labourers may eventually be from Basle. Yet while other missionary societies can find a sufficiency of English candidates, it argues something faulty in the C.M.S. that more than half its labourers are foreigners who consider it hard that they must submit to Episcopal ordination[4] [8].
 
This comment presumably referred to an incident in 1837 where four Basel candidates, including Eipper, refused to swear obedience to a bishop in order to be ordained into the Anglican Church. When Watson was dismissed from Wellington Valley and set up a private mission nearby, Bishop Broughton was more impressed with the Apsley mission than with Wellington Valley under Günther. As a matter of fact, when the NSW government withdrew funding from ‘all missions’ in 1843, it was supporting only two, both of which were staffed by Germans. The bishop subsequently designated a wage for Watson to conduct his mission, and replaced Handt [9] at Moreton Bay with an English pastor.
 
In a review of all missions in Australia, Harris expresses criticism of Günther, whose standards were ‘cruelly high’:
 
Guenther was among the first of a long line of missionaries in Australia who failed to nurture and recognise the Christian faith of their own converts. He so entangled the gospel with European culture that he was unable or unwilling to see spiritual development, demanding to see total, absolute changes of lifestyle as evidence of conversion, which meant denying virtually all Aboriginality and becoming European.[5] [10] 
Having been ordained in the Anglican Church stood Günther in good stead when the Wellington Valley mission was disbanded. Günther became chaplain for the convicts, and later archdeacon at Mudgee where he died on 20 December 1879, age 73.[6] [11] [1] [12] When A. Howitt was compiling his work on the Native Tribes of Australia, he was unable to locate it, and presumed that it must have been conveyed to Max Mueller in Germany.
[2] [13]Basel Archives, Personalkonventikel, Akte 160.
 
[3] [14] Günther Journal, 7. 8. 1838, AJCP M224NL, in Harris, John, One Blood: 200 years of Aboriginal encounter with Christianity: a story of hope, Sutherland, NSW, 1990, p. 139.
 
[4] [15]Watson to Jowitt, 12 September 1842, AJCP M233NLA, cited in Harris, John, One Blood: 200 years of Aboriginal encounter with Christianity: a story of hope, Sutherland, NSW, 1990, p.70.
 
[5] [16] Harris, John, One Blood: 200 years of Aboriginal encounter with Christianity: a story of hope, Sutherland, NSW, 1990, p.71.
 
[6] [17] Weiss, Peter, Short General and Statistical History of the Australian Lutheran Church, Lutheran Archives Australia, 2001-2007.
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The Moreton Bay Courier newspaper published the following item on Saturday 19 July 1856:

MUDGEE.?EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF SURGICAL SKILL.—?An astonishing cure has been lately performed by Doctors Macdonald and Harris, surgeons, on a young lady, the daughter of the Rev. James Gunther, who had been seriously injured by a kick from a horse which was standing in front of one of the stores in Market-street, and while the young lady was passing, the animal struck her a violent blow on the forehead, fracturing the frontal bone over the eye, so that a considerable portion of the brain protruded. The most remarkable feature in the case is, that notwithstanding the loss of a part of the child’s brain, who was, previous to the accident, known to be a lively girl, she lost nothing of her former vivacity of disposition, and is restored to health with scarcely any disfigurement of person.
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The Sydney Morning Herald of 31 December 1879 published the following obituary, in which the date of death is given as 19 December—one day earlier than that of other sources:

OBITUARY.
ARCHDEACON GUNTHER
The Venerable Archdeacon Gunther died at Mudgee on the 19th December, aged 73. He was (says the Post) born in Oberschwandorf, near Stuttgart, in Germany, in the year 1806. After receiving a suitable primary education, he studied for five years in the Mission University, Basle, in Switzerland. About this time there was an appeal in England for young men for mission work, and Mr Gunther went to that country, and studied for three years at the Missionary College at Islington. He was ordained a deacon by the Bishop of London in the year 1832. About this period his health failed him, and he returned to his native place for a time, but went back to England with the intention of carrying out his original plan of undertaking mission work in the year 1836, and was ordained a priest of the Church of England in Westminster Abbey. He was married during the same year, and arrived in this colony early in 1837. He came out under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society, and after doing duty at Liverpool for a short time, proceeded to Wellington, where he arrived during August, 1837. He first visited Mudgee during 1839, and visited it occasionally afterwards, making periodical and frequent visits before his final settlement in this town, which took place during 1841. Since then, till a month or two back, when he resigned through infirmity, he has acted continuously as senior clergyman of St John’s Church, Mudgee. In the earlier days he had a large district, and having no assistant, had to travel a good deal, and, during the lengthened period he performed ministerial duties in Mudgee, had no regular holiday till a few months back.^{7,8,9,10,11,12}

     Lydia Paris was born on 10 September 1804 at England.¹ She was the daughter of Thomas Paris and Elizabeth (?)² She was baptised on 5 March 1811 at St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England^G.³ She married Jakob Wilhelm Günther on 13 October 1836 at St. James Clerkenwell Church, London, England^G.^4,5,6 She died on 11 February 1889 at age 84 at Homebush, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 2788/1889.⁷ She was buried on 12 February 1889 at Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, Anglican area; section GG; grave no. 0000236.⁸
     Of Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell, London, at the time of her marriage.

Came to Australia on the emigrant ship, Brothers, with her husband, arriving in Sydney on 8 April 1837.

Died on 11 February 1889 at “Hatherley”, Homebush, the home of her son-in-law, J. B. Jones (husband of her daughter Mary).^6,5,7 From 13 October 1836, her married name became Günther.

     Elizabeth Tabitha Gunther was born NSW BDM index no. V18422051 26A/1842 & V18422051 56/1842 in 1842 at New South Wales, Australia^G. She was the daughter of Jakob Wilhelm Günther and Lydia Paris.¹ She married Alexander F. D. Greville in 1869 at Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia^G, in a NSW BDM index no. 2847/1869 marriage. She died on 23 February 1915 at Woollahra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, at her residence, “Westbourne”, Jersey Road, Woollahra / NSW BDM index no. 2561/1915.²
     From 1869, her married name became Greville.

     Mary Lucy Gunther was born NSW BDM index no. V18452202 30A/1845 in 1845 at New South Wales, Australia^G. She was the daughter of Jakob Wilhelm Günther and Lydia Paris.¹ She married John Booth Jones in 1865 at Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia^G, in a NSW BDM index no. 2597/1865 marriage. She died on 18 August 1928 at Woollahra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 14365/1928.² She was buried on 19 August 1928 at South Head Cemetery, New South Head Road and Old South Head Road, Vaucluse, New South Wales, Australia^G.²
     From 1865, her married name became Jones.