The Australian Women's Register

Margarethe Von Puttkamer (or Peg, as she was known to friends) was of German descent. Her father, George Christian Hermann (Baron) Von Puttkamer, was born on the 18th December 1820 in Pomerania, Germany. He was a member of Infantry Regiment No. 9 in Stargard, Pomerania, before serving as a lieutenant in the Schleswig-Holstein Army from 1848 to 1850. Georg migrated to South Australia in 1850 and worked as a labourer and shepherd, and as a gold prospector in Victoria. On 22 July 1851 in Adelaide he married Amalie Catarine Hirdes, who hailed from Kassal, Hessen in Germany and who, like Georg, had travelled to South Australia on the barque Sophie.

Margarethe trained as a nurse in Melbourne before moving to Adelaide, where she was a trainee in 1884. Around 1885, she moved to Broken Hill and became matron of the Broken Hill and District Hospital, working with Emma Burkhill. On 16 May 1889 she married John David Robertson (b.28 May 1854, d.19 April 1926), a compositor for the local paper, the Silver Age. She resigned from the Broken Hill Hospital, but opened her own private hospital in Chloride Street.

John and Margarethe had two children, Amelia Hermine Ethel Robertson (born 15 January 1890) and John ‘Jock’ David Robertson Junior (born 6 August 1895). Georg Von Puttkamer had died some years earlier – 21 October 1859 – near Blanchetown, South Australia. His wife Amalie lived until 24 October 1910, when she died at Angaston, South Australia.