Anna was born in "Thalheim, Kingdom of Wurttemburg," according to her son Ralph's baptismal certificate from the Moravian Church in Utica. German equivalents of the USGS topographic quadrangle maps (I have photocopies) show six villages in Wurttemberg named Thalheim or Talheim. Jochen Krebber tells me that the one the Simmerers (and several other Utica families, including the Kohlers) came from was Talheim in der Baar, near Trossingen, in a triangle between Tuttlingen, Rottweil, and Donaueschingen — roughly 30 miles NW of Lake Constance.
Anna was the eldest child in her family. The Moravian Church register listed Mr. and Mrs. Simmerer and six children, with their birth dates and places, as members of the congregation. Anna's parents became members in 1867; she was confirmed a member 3/29/1874, at age 13.
The federal census of 1880 showed that Anna, then 19, was working in a shoe factory.
Anna and Albert appeared in the US Census of 1910 (Waterville Village, Sangerfield Twp., Oneida Co., p. 51R). This census indicated that Anna could write but could not read English, despite living in America for most of her then 49 years. She may have had little or no schooling in Utica as a girl, when her parents were new to the country, perhaps quite poor, and possibly more intent on "bringing her up German" than being sure she learned English.
My parents tell me that I met Anna, my great-grandmother, when she was 88 or 89 and I was about one year old. She died a few months later, and of course I don't remember her. My uncle Stephen C. Weber says she was very sensitive about her German heritage, which was probably impossible for her to ignore through the anti-German hysteria that prevailed in America during the two World Wars. (There are indications that Albert's 30-year-old and hitherto-successful haberdashery business completely collapsed during the first war, and perhaps the Webers were ostracized in Waterville, where Albert had become a respected citizen and long-time School Committee member.) According to Steve, Anna was vocally and strongly anti-German at least within the family. I wonder whether, or to what extent, she was driven to that stance by condescension or hostility on the part of the Crane family or by other social pressures. Dad believed there was "no contact" between the Crane and Weber families, at least after he was old enough to be aware. The Cranes' uneasiness with the Webers, and perhaps the Webers' uneasiness with their own heritage, now seem to me to have cast very long shadows down the years in my family. I wish I could understand these matters more fully, but I have no reason now to expect that I ever will.
Albert and Anna moved to Chatham, NJ after selling their Waterville house in 1919. They did this, presumably, to be nearer to their only child, Ralph, and his family. It may also have been prompted by a desire to get away from Waterville, where the war and their Germanness had made them very uncomfortable. My father (born in 1922) never saw his father's boyhood home there, nor did he ever meet or even hear anything about any of his Weber or Simmerer relatives who remained in upstate New York. After Albert died in 1925, Anna kept house alone in Chatham for many years, then moved into a small private nursing home there. Dad remembers, as a small boy, walking a couple of miles with his father to visit her on Sunday afternoons (a tradition echoed in our frequent Sunday visits with Dad's father when I was a child). Dad often spent those childhood visits reading the Sunday newspaper funnies.
On 4/6/1950, Anna was buried in the Weber plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica. The cause of her death was listed in the cemetery record book as "arteriosclerosis." That book was also my source for her mother's parents' names.
- Eric Weber
Anna was the eldest child in her family. The Moravian Church register listed Mr. and Mrs. Simmerer and six children, with their birth dates and places, as members of the congregation. Anna's parents became members in 1867; she was confirmed a member 3/29/1874, at age 13.
The federal census of 1880 showed that Anna, then 19, was working in a shoe factory.
Anna and Albert appeared in the US Census of 1910 (Waterville Village, Sangerfield Twp., Oneida Co., p. 51R). This census indicated that Anna could write but could not read English, despite living in America for most of her then 49 years. She may have had little or no schooling in Utica as a girl, when her parents were new to the country, perhaps quite poor, and possibly more intent on "bringing her up German" than being sure she learned English.
My parents tell me that I met Anna, my great-grandmother, when she was 88 or 89 and I was about one year old. She died a few months later, and of course I don't remember her. My uncle Stephen C. Weber says she was very sensitive about her German heritage, which was probably impossible for her to ignore through the anti-German hysteria that prevailed in America during the two World Wars. (There are indications that Albert's 30-year-old and hitherto-successful haberdashery business completely collapsed during the first war, and perhaps the Webers were ostracized in Waterville, where Albert had become a respected citizen and long-time School Committee member.) According to Steve, Anna was vocally and strongly anti-German at least within the family. I wonder whether, or to what extent, she was driven to that stance by condescension or hostility on the part of the Crane family or by other social pressures. Dad believed there was "no contact" between the Crane and Weber families, at least after he was old enough to be aware. The Cranes' uneasiness with the Webers, and perhaps the Webers' uneasiness with their own heritage, now seem to me to have cast very long shadows down the years in my family. I wish I could understand these matters more fully, but I have no reason now to expect that I ever will.
Albert and Anna moved to Chatham, NJ after selling their Waterville house in 1919. They did this, presumably, to be nearer to their only child, Ralph, and his family. It may also have been prompted by a desire to get away from Waterville, where the war and their Germanness had made them very uncomfortable. My father (born in 1922) never saw his father's boyhood home there, nor did he ever meet or even hear anything about any of his Weber or Simmerer relatives who remained in upstate New York. After Albert died in 1925, Anna kept house alone in Chatham for many years, then moved into a small private nursing home there. Dad remembers, as a small boy, walking a couple of miles with his father to visit her on Sunday afternoons (a tradition echoed in our frequent Sunday visits with Dad's father when I was a child). Dad often spent those childhood visits reading the Sunday newspaper funnies.
On 4/6/1950, Anna was buried in the Weber plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica. The cause of her death was listed in the cemetery record book as "arteriosclerosis." That book was also my source for her mother's parents' names.
- Eric Weber
Anna was born in "Thalheim, Kingdom of Wurttemburg," according to her son Ralph's baptismal certificate from the Moravian Church in Utica. German equivalents of the USGS topographic quadrangle maps (I have photocopies) show six villages in Wurttemberg named Thalheim or Talheim. Jochen Krebber tells me that the one the Simmerers (and several other Utica families, including the Kohlers) came from was Talheim in der Baar, near Trossingen, in a triangle between Tuttlingen, Rottweil, and Donaueschingen — roughly 30 miles NW of Lake Constance.
Anna was the eldest child in her family. The Moravian Church register listed Mr. and Mrs. Simmerer and six children, with their birth dates and places, as members of the congregation. Anna's parents became members in 1867; she was confirmed a member 3/29/1874, at age 13.
The federal census of 1880 showed that Anna, then 19, was working in a shoe factory.
Anna and Albert appeared in the US Census of 1910 (Waterville Village, Sangerfield Twp., Oneida Co., p. 51R). This census indicated that Anna could write but could not read English, despite living in America for most of her then 49 years. She may have had little or no schooling in Utica as a girl, when her parents were new to the country, perhaps quite poor, and possibly more intent on "bringing her up German" than being sure she learned English.
My parents tell me that I met Anna, my great-grandmother, when she was 88 or 89 and I was about one year old. She died a few months later, and of course I don't remember her. My uncle Stephen C. Weber says she was very sensitive about her German heritage, which was probably impossible for her to ignore through the anti-German hysteria that prevailed in America during the two World Wars. (There are indications that Albert's 30-year-old and hitherto-successful haberdashery business completely collapsed during the first war, and perhaps the Webers were ostracized in Waterville, where Albert had become a respected citizen and long-time School Committee member.) According to Steve, Anna was vocally and strongly anti-German at least within the family. I wonder whether, or to what extent, she was driven to that stance by condescension or hostility on the part of the Crane family or by other social pressures. Dad believed there was "no contact" between the Crane and Weber families, at least after he was old enough to be aware. The Cranes' uneasiness with the Webers, and perhaps the Webers' uneasiness with their own heritage, now seem to me to have cast very long shadows down the years in my family. I wish I could understand these matters more fully, but I have no reason now to expect that I ever will.
Albert and Anna moved to Chatham, NJ after selling their Waterville house in 1919. They did this, presumably, to be nearer to their only child, Ralph, and his family. It may also have been prompted by a desire to get away from Waterville, where the war and their Germanness had made them very uncomfortable. My father (born in 1922) never saw his father's boyhood home there, nor did he ever meet or even hear anything about any of his Weber or Simmerer relatives who remained in upstate New York. After Albert died in 1925, Anna kept house alone in Chatham for many years, then moved into a small private nursing home there. Dad remembers, as a small boy, walking a couple of miles with his father to visit her on Sunday afternoons (a tradition echoed in our frequent Sunday visits with Dad's father when I was a child). Dad often spent those childhood visits reading the Sunday newspaper funnies.
On 4/6/1950, Anna was buried in the Weber plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica. The cause of her death was listed in the cemetery record book as "arteriosclerosis." That book was also my source for her mother's parents' names.
- Eric Weber
Anna was the eldest child in her family. The Moravian Church register listed Mr. and Mrs. Simmerer and six children, with their birth dates and places, as members of the congregation. Anna's parents became members in 1867; she was confirmed a member 3/29/1874, at age 13.
The federal census of 1880 showed that Anna, then 19, was working in a shoe factory.
Anna and Albert appeared in the US Census of 1910 (Waterville Village, Sangerfield Twp., Oneida Co., p. 51R). This census indicated that Anna could write but could not read English, despite living in America for most of her then 49 years. She may have had little or no schooling in Utica as a girl, when her parents were new to the country, perhaps quite poor, and possibly more intent on "bringing her up German" than being sure she learned English.
My parents tell me that I met Anna, my great-grandmother, when she was 88 or 89 and I was about one year old. She died a few months later, and of course I don't remember her. My uncle Stephen C. Weber says she was very sensitive about her German heritage, which was probably impossible for her to ignore through the anti-German hysteria that prevailed in America during the two World Wars. (There are indications that Albert's 30-year-old and hitherto-successful haberdashery business completely collapsed during the first war, and perhaps the Webers were ostracized in Waterville, where Albert had become a respected citizen and long-time School Committee member.) According to Steve, Anna was vocally and strongly anti-German at least within the family. I wonder whether, or to what extent, she was driven to that stance by condescension or hostility on the part of the Crane family or by other social pressures. Dad believed there was "no contact" between the Crane and Weber families, at least after he was old enough to be aware. The Cranes' uneasiness with the Webers, and perhaps the Webers' uneasiness with their own heritage, now seem to me to have cast very long shadows down the years in my family. I wish I could understand these matters more fully, but I have no reason now to expect that I ever will.
Albert and Anna moved to Chatham, NJ after selling their Waterville house in 1919. They did this, presumably, to be nearer to their only child, Ralph, and his family. It may also have been prompted by a desire to get away from Waterville, where the war and their Germanness had made them very uncomfortable. My father (born in 1922) never saw his father's boyhood home there, nor did he ever meet or even hear anything about any of his Weber or Simmerer relatives who remained in upstate New York. After Albert died in 1925, Anna kept house alone in Chatham for many years, then moved into a small private nursing home there. Dad remembers, as a small boy, walking a couple of miles with his father to visit her on Sunday afternoons (a tradition echoed in our frequent Sunday visits with Dad's father when I was a child). Dad often spent those childhood visits reading the Sunday newspaper funnies.
On 4/6/1950, Anna was buried in the Weber plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica. The cause of her death was listed in the cemetery record book as "arteriosclerosis." That book was also my source for her mother's parents' names.
- Eric Weber
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