This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme is Sister. For this theme, I am focusing on my 3 times great grandmother Louisa Gerbing Schuttler’s immigrant sisters Dora and Marie.
Marie was the youngest daughter of Martha Nicolai and Johann Friedrich Gerbing. She was born in Vieselbach, Germany in 1846 and baptized as Maria Ernestina. When she was just 5 years old, she came to the United States with the rest of her family to settle in Chicago. At the age of 10, her father passed away. I found Marie on the 1860 Census in Chicago living with her mother Martha. The census taker did not record a profession for either of them. Martha passed away in 1869.
On the 1870 and 1880 censuses for Chicago, Marie was living with her sister Dora and her brother-in-law Johann Schieferstien, and was working as a dressmaker.
In 1896, Marie married German immigrant Louis Eberhardt Weick, a widower, and a building contractor, who was in 1866, the secretary of Chicago’s German Masons and Bricklayers Aid Society. Louis was born in Wurttemberg, Germany in 1832. Unfortunately, I have not found the names of his parents.
I located a newspaper article stating Louis was in charge of the 48 bricklayers that were commissioned to build Chicago’s federal building in 1876. Marie was a stepmother to his youngest son, Walter Phillip Weick, who was the son of Louis’s first wife Catharine Miller. Marie left no biological descendants. She passed away in 1922 and is buried in Graceland Cemetery. Louis passed away in 1926, while Walter, who had worked in his father’s contracting business, passed away in 1947.
Dora was born in 1839 in Vieselbach, Germany and was baptized Dorothea Elisabetha Mathilde. When she was 14 she came to the United States with the rest of her family. Around 1866, she married German immigrant and shoemaker Johann Schieferstien. Johann was the son of Franz and Elisabetha. Dora and Johann have many descendants today. The following are their children:
Mary (1867-1899) unmarried;
Emma (1869-1884) died at age 14;
Anna (1871-1899), married the son of German immigrants Otto Matthei and had two sons named Richard and Theodore;
Amanda (1873-1935), married Charles Washington Blackwell and they had a son and daughter, who both recently passed on (and for that reason I withhold their names);
John Walter (1876-1951), a traveling salesman, married Helen Belle Morris. They had two children named Louis Elmer and Walter and divorced. John Walter’s children took the surname of Helen’s second husband Sigmund Mayer;
Fredericka (Freida) Louise (1879-1957), married German immigrant Johann Carl Martin. They had 5 children. Her husband worked at a furniture store. Freida and Johann seemed to separate at some point. On the 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses for Tacoma, Washington, she was listed as a Pastor of the Apostolic Church, while Johann was working at a furniture store in California. I know there is an obituary somewhere for her. Unfortunately I cannot find it on newspapers.com!
Garfield (1881-1932), married Mildred Brinckerhoff and had one daughter named Dorothy after Garfield’s mother. He was a machinist at one point in his career. A newspaper article from 1932 stated Garfield was found dead with a note that he had taken his life to escape alimony payments to his wife.
Dora’s husband passed away in 1889 in Chicago. She passed away in 1899. A voided probate record on Ancestry.com listed the estates of Dora and her daughter Anna together. I wonder why. How I wish I would have found obituaries for the sisters of my 3 times great grandmother Marie and Dora.
Do you have any additions, corrections, questions about my sources, or comments? Please email me – cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net
Cinziarosa's Descendants (c) 