I had to change boats in midstream today. I was leaning toward doing a story on a girl who was born on this day whose surname was Dietzfeldinger. Now how can you resist a story about a name like that? But I am going to. Instead, other local events have caused me to do a different story. In fact, it is two stories. They just so happen to be stories about Charles Weber. Only they are two entirely different Charles Webers who lived during very different times and circumstances.
First of all, there is the Charles Weber who came to America as part of the Gesellschaft in 1839. His full name was Christian Adolph Charles Weber. It just so happens that the Perryville Republic Monitor newspaper just published an article on this Charles Weber recently which was titled, First Mayor Has Spot on Wall of Honor. It describes much of the military and civic history of Charles’s life while he lived in Perryville. This article can be found by clicking on this link.
I will fill in some blanks on how Charles is tied into the East Perry County community.
When Charles set sail from Germany in 1838, he was just 5 years old. Here is the passenger list of the Republik upon which he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean. The family can be found on three different pages of the list. Charles (shown as Christian), the youngest, got to make the voyage in the fore-cabin area with his parents, Johann and Dorothea. The rest of the family traveled in the steerage area.
Before the Weber family even got to Perry County, the patriarch of the family, Johann, died in St. Louis on March 29, 1839. So it was the widow Dorothea who brought her family of six children to live here.
On Thursday, October 23, 1856, Rev. Georg Schieferdecker performed a double wedding at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg. The wedding couples were Immanuel Estel and Wilhelmina Krahmer as well as Charles Weber and Martha Hellwege. Here are their marriage records as they appear in the Trinity Lutheran Church books.
Here are photos of both Charles and Martha.
In 1860, we see Charles and his family living in Wittenberg, Missouri. It was a time period before the Civil War in which he ran a general store in Wittenberg. Here is the 1860 census record showing the Weber family.
We have this photo which includes cameos of all the members of the Weber in 1877.
Charles’s military and civic service is well described in the newspaper article mentioned above, so I won’t go into that. However, I will show you a photo of Charles in his military uniform when he fought with the Union Army.
We do know that Charles moved his family to Perryville after the Civil War and spent many years in that city where he became their very first mayor. Here is a photo of their home in Perryville.
In 1906, on the 50th wedding anniversary of Charles and Martha, a photo was taken of his family at that time. It appears to be taken outside the Weber home.
His old friend, Immanuel Estel, was also a prominent Perryville resident at that time, and since these two were married on the same day in 1856, both families gathered to celebrate their golden anniversaries. Both families also gathered for a photo taken inside Immanuel Lutheran Church in Perryville.
If you look at the clothes being worn by the members of the Weber family in both photos, they are the same outfits. I am tickled by the expression of the little boy in the front on the Weber side of the photo. He’s paying about as much attention to the photographer as Charles is in the first photo.
Charles was also the brother of Amalia (Weber) Buenger, the wife of Dr. E.E. Buenger of Altenburg. Another place to find a biography of Charles Weber can be found by clicking on this link which will take you to an article included in the publication, Goodspeed’s History of Southeast Missouri.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sarankin/goodspeed/weber_ca.html
Apparently, Charles died not long after this photo was taken. He died on November 7, 1906. Martha died in 1923. They are both buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Perryville.
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Now on to the second Charles Weber. Rev. Charles W. Weber died this past Tuesday in Perryville. Rev. Weber was the pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Altenburg, Missouri from 1993-2005. Although his obituary states that he was born in Geneva, Nebraska, Pastor Weber had his roots here in Perry County. In fact, he could include himself in a large group of descendants who came out of the Weber couple that was described in the post, As For Me and My House….. Here is a photo of Rev. Charles Weber.
His obituary can be found by clicking on this link.
http://www.youngandsonsfuneral.com/obituary/rev-charles-weber
His funeral will take place at Immanuel Lutheran here in Altenburg this Saturday, August 26th. He will be dearly missed by not only members of his family, but also many people in this community.
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