Rosewood History

From the Queensland Times (Ipswich), Saturday 4 September 1926, page 7

ROSEWOOD DISTRICT.
ANOTHER HAIGSLEA PIONEER.
(No. 7.)

Mr. Valentine Heid, of Haigslea, started his 85th year on March 11. He was born at Baden, in the south of Germany, in 1841, and was educated at Neckarhausen, near Heidelberg. He has often drunk Rhine water, and any amount of Rhine wine, he says. He spent his boyhood and youth beside the river, where his father was engaged in river shipping. The boy spent much of his time on the tow-paths of the Rhine and its tributary, the Neckar, with his father’s horses, and saw many thousands of tons of Ruhr Valley coal going upstream to the industrial towns, and farm produce and rock salt going the other way on the river barges. When his father died and his property had been sold and divided up by the Corporation among the family of nine, according to the law of the time, Mr. Heid came to Queensland.
He was 22 years old when he left Hamburg on the Johanne Caesar, a fast sailing vessel. He landed in Bris bane on April 25, 1864, and went to Moggill, where he worked for two years for a farmer named Sexton. The late Mr. Prior, grandfather of Mr. Murray Prior of Dugandan, had received 100 acres of land in that locality as a “gift of grace” from the Government. Mr. Heid went to him, and worked there four years. He then went to Haigslea, where he had selected land. He soon found that the land was not suitable for farming, and be gan work as a teamster. For many years he was selling brigalow bark, and doing carrying work in the district. With the money he made from this he made the improvements on his selection.
In 1887 he was married. Using all the roads in the district in his carting work, he became greatly interested in better road construction. He challenged the Walloon Divisional Board to prove “that as much money was spent on the roads as was spent on the members’ dinner on meeting days”. He contested the next board election, and was elected. He remain ed a member of the board from 1884 until 1890.
Ten years later he became Overseer for the board, and supervised much of the road construction of the District. When Mr. Heid went to the district in 1870 there were many settlers in the vicinity, most of them German. Since then, however, most of them have left, and the more intense settlement is centred around Marburg.
In 1873 the settlers “put their heads and their money together,” Mr. Heid says, and built a church. Before this they had been attending the German Church in Nicholas-street, Ipswich. They then called the locality Kirchhelm (Church home). In the war time the name was changed to Haigslea. The church, on the Marburg-Ipswich road, about five miles from Marburg, had as its first minister Pastor Canstadt, a Dane. The church was burned down a few years ago, and has been rebuilt nearer to Marburg.
Mr. Heid was one of the founders of the district German Friendly Society, which was started on January 1, 1882. The society still lives, and has about 20 members and a bank balance of about £270. Its members pay two shillings a month, and in cases of sickness receive from the funds £1 a week for the first six and a half weeks, and 10/ for the next six and a half weeks, and a funeral allowance. For 44 years the society has held its meetings on the Saturday nearest to the full moon in each month. A sports meeting is run each year to supple ment the funds. The present Secretary is Mr. Jacob Kreis, and the President, Mr. L. Littmann. The society was registered with the Government as a friendly society in 1887, and is probably unique in the State.