The children attended school where they were taught English, German and Arabic. It is mentioned in Gustav Thiel’s diaries that his sons Gustav and Samuel accompanied him on a journey to the river Jordan, the Dead Sea and the city of Jericho when they were respectively 13 and 12 years old. The children travelled on donkeys and it is mentioned that travelling conditions were very difficult because of the severe heat while some of the adults who lagged behind were robbed by Bedouins.

During their stay in Palestine five children were born to Gustav Thiel and his second wife. Gustav Thiel wanted his children to return to Germany to further their studies. For this purpose the eldest son, Gustav, travelled to Germany accompanied by a visiting Englishman. He first went to the parents of his stepmother in Boppard am Rhein and then worked as an apprentice for a merchant in Elberfeld. Samuel travelled to Germany by himself at the age of 14 (most probably during 1867) to stay with his father’s parents at Höltgestal and started working as an apprentice joiner in Solingen.
On 26 March 1869 Maria died in Beirut where she was attending a boarding school run by a Mrs Thompson. When Gustav Thiel (Sr) and his second wife left Jerusalem in January 1870 to return to Germany with their four children, the only surviving children from his first marriage, Gustav and Samuel, were already waiting for them in Germany.

Back in Germany Gustav Thiel operated a tourist business and arranged five tours to the Orient during 1871 and 1872. The tourist business was, however, not as successful as he thought it would be and he then managed the Protestant Club House in Barmen for some time before the family moved to Neukirchen. It was difficult to find employment in Germany at that time and in 1878 Gustav Thiel (Sr) decided to emigrate to Kimberley in South Africa to join his wife’s uncle, Wilhelm Rausch, who had apparently moved to South Africa as a missionary. Gustav travelled to Kimberley without his family in 1878 where he set in business as a greengrocer. His wife and children were to follow him five years later.

Samuel Thiel married Ida Zenft from Barmen, Germany on 4 July 1879.
About 18 months before their wedding, Samuel, who was trained in carpentry, made his wife a beautiful wooden sewing box for Christmas 1877. This box is still in the possession of his great-grandson, William Gerard Thiel. Photographs of the inlaid lid of the box and an inscription inside are shown below.

When the rest of the Thiel family joined Gustav, Samuel and Paul in Kimberley, Samuel was working for the Hess Bakery. The group of women and children who travelled to South Africa in 1883 to join the men, included Gustav’s wife Maria and six of her children, Karl, Ernst, Johanna, Otto, Julie and Hermann as well as Samuel’s wife Ida and three of her children, Walter, Wilhelm and Mary. According to the handwritten memoirs of Walter Thiel the group of 11 people left Germany on 22 February 1883 and arrived at Du Toits Pan near Kimberley on 14 April 1883.

Samuel and his family initially lived in Kimberley. They later moved to Beaconsfield where he owned the Beaconsfield Hotel. A further 5 children were born to Samuel and Ida while they were living at Beaconsfield. Paul Gustav was born in 1884, Adolf Robert in 1885, Emily in 1887, Carl in 1890 and Ernst in 1892. Both Carl and Ernst most probably died as infants as the only record of their births was found in the handwritten memoirs of their brother, Walter Samuel.

After his return to South Africa he stayed with his daughter, Mary Farquharson in Bloemhof in the Western Transvaal where he continued prospecting and digging for minerals and diamonds. He later moved to join his son Walter at Modderrivier, a small town about 40 kilometers south of Kimberley in the Cape Province where he started farming with ducks on the river. In all the years that Samuel stayed with his son Walter and his family, until he passed away in 1921, he apparently never lived in the house but preferred to stay outside in a tent.