Christopher Eipper

Christoph Eipper
Christoph Eipper, missionary to the aborigines at Moreton Bay.
Born	20 August 1813 Esslingen, Württemberg, Germany
Died	2 September 1894 (age 81) Durran Durra, Braidwood, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Missionary to the aborigines, then Presbyterian minister and then teacher for the Commonwealth of Australia
Spouse(s)	Harriet Gyles
Parents	Georg Christoph Eipper (father) Sophie Juliane Schaettler (mother)

Christoph Eipper (20 August 1813 – 2 September 1894) was a pioneering missionary and Presbyterian minister in Australia.

Christoph Eipper was born to Georg Christoph Eipper and Sophie Juliane Schaettler in Esslingen, Württemberg, Germany. He was the twelfth of fourteen children, eight of which were from his father's previous marriages to Maria Catharina Blankenhorn and Elisabetha Dorothea Ohnmaiss. He studied at the institutions of the Basle Missionary Society, Switzerland, in 1832-36, and of the Church Missionary Society at Islington in 1836. However, despite having received financial support from the Church Missionary Society on condition of accepting Church of England ordination, he and his German colleague Gottlieb Schreiner, father of the novelist Olive Schreiner, refused episcopal ordination because they would not submit to vows of unlimited obedience to a bishop, although they were prepared to receive Lutheran ordination. They consequently ceased their connexion with the Basle Committee. Eipper, together with Schreiner, applied in March 1837 to Rev. John Dunmore Lang for appointment as missionaries to the Aboriginals at Moreton Bay. Schreiner decided to go to South Africa, but 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, Eipper married Harriet, daughter of John Gyles, a former missionary agriculturist at Tahiti; they had five sons and four daughters. On 27 June he was ordained at an Evangelical service by German and French Protestant clergy resident in London. The united mission party arrived in Sydney in the Minerva in January 1838. Schmidt and 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. Eipper and fourteen others of the party sailed to Moreton Bay in the government schooner Isabella in March 1838 and, on the recommendation of the commandant, Major (Sir) Sydney Cotton, selected a site about seven miles (11 km) from Eagle Farm which they named Zion Hill. Classes were conducted by Eipper, and Rev. J. C. S. Handt helped the newcomers to acquire the Aboriginal dialect.