15 Facts About Christopher Eipper

Christoph Eipper was a pioneering missionary and Presbyterian minister in Australia.

Christoph Christopher Eipper was born to Georg Christoph Christopher Eipper and Sophie Juliane Schaettler in Esslingen, Wurttemberg, Germany.

Christopher Eipper was the twelfth of fourteen children, eight of which were from his father's previous marriages to Maria Catharina Blankenhorn and Elisabetha Dorothea Ohnmaiss.

Schreiner decided to go to South Africa, but Christopher Eipper was accepted, together with a party of missionaries under the pastoral care of Rev Carl Wilhelm Schmidt.

On 15 June 1837 at Shoreditch, London, Christopher Eipper married Harriet, daughter of John Gyles, a former missionary agriculturist at Tahiti; they had five sons and four daughters.

Schmidt and Christopher Eipper were admitted as members of Lang's Presbyterian Synod of New South Wales on 15 March 1838, and were delegated to form a presbytery of Moreton Bay.

Apart from the routine work, Christopher Eipper travelled among the Aboriginals.

In March 1843 Christopher Eipper joined Dr Stephen Simpson, acting administrator, in an expedition into this district, which Schmidt had already penetrated.

In July 1843 Schmidt and Christopher Eipper jointly reported to the Sydney committee of the Society in Aid of the German Mission to the Aborigines, and again in September, but in October the Sydney society decided to abandon the mission.

Christopher Eipper approached the Church Missionary Society in London saying that he believed he had been wrong in refusing episcopal ordination and offering to serve in New Zealand or in India.

Christopher Eipper was conditionally offered the position of master of an English school in India.

However, after remaining for a while with the lay missionaries, who proposed to support themselves by manual labour, Christopher Eipper was received by the Synod of Australia in connection with the Established Church of Scotland on 5 October 1843.

Christoph Christopher Eipper married Harriet Gyles on 15 June 1837 in Saint Leonards, Shoreditch, London, England.

Christopher Eipper later held several teaching positions at Muswellbrook and Aberdeen.

Christopher Eipper died at Charleyong, now known as Marlowe in the Braidwood district on 2 September 1894.