We'll start with some family history, garnered from facts, stories and accounts told to the four living grandchildren of Andrew and Emma Weimar, with the gaps filled in by internet searches.
Basically, the known history begins in Wurttemburg near Stuttgart, Germany, in the 1860s.
Jakob Andreas Weimar, a baker and an Anabaptist, was accustomed to holding secret prayer meetings at his house...secret because his brand of religion was deemed illegal by the State, the official faith being Lutheran.
He persisted and was arrested and put in jail. After continuing encounters with the "thought police" as we'd call them today, he made the decision to emigrate to America with his wife, Christina (Flohr) Weimar and five young children, two from his first marriage.
One of Jakob and Christina's children was our grandfather, Andrew Weimar, born Andreas. He was not quite five when they embarked from Bremen on the steamship OHIO and sailed to Baltimore, arriving on Sept. 27, 1869.
Christina was pregnant with William (imagine that voyage!) He was the first of the children to be born in the New World.
Four other children from Jakob's first marriage (to Frederika Eckstein who died in 1861), ranging in age from 16 to 26, preceded the family on August 28th, 1869 on the steamship BERLIN. (Click here for account) (NEXT)
