The Weier family was closely intertwined with the Ziebarth’s throughout the 19th century. Henrietta, born Ziebarth, was August Ziebarth’s sister. Both families emigrated to the United States in the middle of the century, both settling in upstate New York. There, they remained close. When the Ziebarths moved to the frontier, Ella Weier joined them, eventually marrying her cousin, George Henry Ziebarth, in North Dakota.
Christian J. Weier
Christian was born August 4th, 1816 in the small town of Jasianne, a small community between the villages of Wronke and Klempitz, the ancestral Ziebarth home. His father was also named Christian. His mother was Anna Beata Linse. It appears from the records we have that his father was a blacksmith or other type of iron worker.
The marriage record for Christian and Henrietta indicates that Christian was the fourth son of Christian Weier, a farmer. At the time of their marriage on the 28th of November 1841, both his parents were still living. Arthur’s history, taken directly from his mother, Christian’s daughter Ella, mentions two brothers but only one by name, William. Arthur also noted two sisters, one of them named Tina.1Probably short for Christina
Henrietta Ziebarth
Henrietta was born in the dead of winter—January 13, 1822—to Martin Ziebarth and Beatta Mathey. Her marriage record indicates that she was their second daughter, but birth records from the church indicate two other sisters: Johanna Louise, born 1816, and Anna Susanna, born 1817. The birth records also record her brothers, Wilhelm (born 1814) and Charles August (discussed elsewhere in this history).2Her mother was widowed by her first husband, Johann Schendel, so there were four half-siblings in the household: Johann Gottlieb, Karolina Wilhelmina, Anna Rosina and Johann Samuel.
Emigration and Family
At the time of their marriage, Christian was 25 and Henrietta was only 19. They were married in the church in Klempitz, and we can assume they made their home somewhere in the vicinity, perhaps somewhere near Wronke.
Arthur Seebart tells us that Christian went to work managing the stables for a wealthy landowner in Berlin, but this was a bit of a stretch. In fact, Christian moved his family to the outskirts of Posen where he worked as an Estate Administrator—a good affirmation that there is often a grain of truth in even the most outlandish family lore. 3The courtship between Christian and Henrietta as told by Arthur, however, is an exception. Virtually every part of that tale is demonstrably incorrect. .
Their first two recorded children of this marriage, Mathilda and Edward August were both born in the 1840’s in Germany. According to Arthur, the couple lost four children—two sets of twins—in infancy before Mathilda came along in 1843.
In 1848, a popular uprising in the German confederacy sought better working and living conditions for the middle and lower classes. The rebellion was put down, leaving the already fractured political landscape in chaos.4Germany would not be a unified state until 1871. In the Posen area, stability was further undermined by an uprising of Polish troops against the Prussians. Many ethnic Germans at this time chose to leave rather than live under the old order—the risks of moving to a new land apparently outweighing the bleak future in their home country.5Also worth noting: American entrepreneurs actively recruited immigrants at this time.
Arthur recounts that the Weier family was directly affected by the brutality of the times. Family tradition has it that Christian’s brother, William, resisted conscription into the Prussian army, hiding himself in a hayloft. Soldiers flushed him out by running pitchforks through cracks in the floorboard of the loft until they drew blood. Disobedience was a capital offense; he was summarily dragged behind a wagon with a rope around his neck until he was dead. Even two generations later, the bitterness could still be heard in Ella Weier’s words: “They hated it, and all of them wanted to get away from it.”
I haven’t yet found a definitive record for Christian Weier’s passage to America. His son, Edward was born in Germany in 1845 and the family appears in the 1855 New York state census. An arrival date sometime in the early 1850’s seems likely.
By all accounts, Christian and Henrietta found themselves right at home in their adoptive country. Christian worked as a hired hand through at least 1870, but by 1876 he had become wealthy enough to purchase a farm for himself.
Henrietta gave birth to three more children once they were settled in New York. Ellen Henrietta was born in 1856 followed by William in 1859 and finally Charles Fredrick in 1864. Henrietta was 41 years old when her last child was born. Some time between the birth of her last child and the census of 1870, she passed away. There is no record of her death, and although she was buried in the family cemetery, there is no marker. William, too, disappears from the records before 1870, so I presumed he did not survive childhood.
Mathilda and Edward, the Prussian-born children, remained in New York their entire lives. Mathilda married a neighbor, John Bauer, and served as the administrator to her father’s estate when he died (due to an accident while helping to construct a bridge—at the age of 77!) in 1894. It appears that the farm was sold at that time, as it did not pass into the hands of any of his living children.
In a drive through the neighborhood in 2016, I saw that most of the old farms in the area were completely forested over. The Weier – Bauer cemetery existed in a state of neglect, but was still accessible. At the time, I was not aware of the exact address for the Weier family home, so I was unable to confirm if the original house still stands.