The image above is a screenshot of the search results for “Leon Krasker” at a popular genealogy Web site that I recently accessed at the State Library of New South Wales. I’ll be heading off there again soon to continue my research and fill in some of the many gaps I’ve found at all such Web sites that I have accessed so far.
The “Shark Bay Pioneer Krasker Family Tree” looks the most promising though this partly redacted preview contains some odd errors.
For example, Leon Krasker’s name according to every official document he filled in and signed has him as exactly that, Leon Krasker, as he had Australianized his first name by removing the accent acute from the e, altering Léon to Leon.
No official document has him as also being Louis or Kersker and there is the verifiable fact that he was born in 1877 in Tulcea, Romania and not Tula in Russia.
Leon’s wife, whom he married in Paris on 26 May 1904, was Mathilde Krasker née Rubel and she was born in 1880 in Chernivtsi, a town now in Ukraine although it was in Austria and named Czernowitz when she was born.
These details are subject to confirmation by official documents.
The Krasker family had two addresses in Western Australia from where they most likely lived and worked given the nature of their pearl trading business and the needs of their children: 99 Hay Street, Subiaco and 25 Knight Terrace, Denham in Shark Bay 800 kilometers to the north of Perth.
Mathilde Krasker was named simply that and not somehow also named “Macherie”: the note Leon left for her when he was dying on the track between Denham and Herald Bight in Shark Bay in 1916 addressed her as ma chérie, that is, my dear or my darling.
“I start back for the tank and failed where you will find me – the thirst killed me. I am sorry to die before (my) life time, ma chérie, I leave everything for you.”
Fact Checks
- “Louis Leon Léon Krasker Kersker” – Leon Krasker’s name after he removed the accent acute from the letter e was exactly that, Leon Krasker, and that is how he spelled it on official documents.
- “Matilde Mathilde Macherie Matilda Rubel” – Mathilde Krasker’s name after she married Leon Krasker was exactly that, Mathilde Krasker, and that is how she spelled it on official documents. Her maiden surname was Rubel though her parents appear to have changed it to Norman after moving westwards from eastern Europe.
- “Marriage: Worcestershire, England” – The weight of evidence currently points to the marriage between Mathilde and Leon Krasker having been conducted in Paris and not Worcestershire, but that can be confirmed with potential access to their marriage certificate if such a record is still in existence.
- “Birth: Tula, Russia” – Léon Krasker was born in Tulcea, Romania.
The Robert Krasker Project 