#Next150 Challenge – Root and Blade

Amy Johnson Crow, who created the #52Ancestors prompts, says there is no such thing as falling behind in this challenge. Anything written is something more than you had to begin with. I agree with that concept, but I am also feeling like I really am weeks behind, and my attention feels very scattered in this weird and terribly sad time of COVID-19 shutdown.

So I am going to try to work on getting something done rather than nothing. I am also sticking to the #Next150 challenge. Buying from indigenous businesses seems like the best challenge to work on right now.

Prosperity was a prompt I skipped back before the pandemic fully hit North America. I couldn’t think of anyone to write about. But then, when the lockdown started in Toronto, I started doing some tidying and found a wonderful collection of family stories by my Great Aunt Gloria. She is a fantastic writer and it was such a joy to read her work again.

Among the stories was a memoir of her Weeber grandparents, Charles Weeber and Bertha Weeber (nee Cordes). They were the parents of my rather remarkable great-grandmother, Emilie Hickey (nee Weeber), the smart and stately matriarch we always called “California Nana.” Emilie married Patrick Valentine Hickey II, a lawyer several years her senior, and their family included my grandfather, Patrick Valentine Hickey III, Charles (Charlie) Hickey and Gloria Hickey. Aunt Gloria provided some facts about the Weebers that I hadn’t really absorbed before, with a story of their booms and busts, and that got me going again on exploring the family tree.

The records are very consistent that Charles Weeber arrived in America in 1888. He was said to be living on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and working as a labourer when he met Bertha Cordes, who was also from a German immigrant family, but born in America. They married and had three children: Bertha (also called Betty and nicknamed Honey by the family), Emilie (called Millie), and Charles Ernst (called Charlie).

The Weebers in Pforzheim were apparently very prosperous. The family manufactured jewellery, Pforzheim’s specialty for several centuries. It is possible to virtually tour some of the Pforzheim Schmuckmuseum collection of jewellery on Google Arts and Culture and there are some stunning examples of work produced in the city. Despite his privileged upbringing, Charles Weeber does not seem to have been afraid of hard work.

Thanks to German Lutheran church records on Ancestry, I learned that Charles Adolf Weeber, born March 2, 1866, was baptized Karl Adolf Weeber on April 1, 1866 in Pforzheim. His parents were Ernst Adolf Weeber and Amelie Weeber – a match with the names on Charles Weeber’s New York death record. On his passport applications (one in 1903 and one in 1910), Charles Weeber says he arrived in America in April 1888 aboard the Noordland, sailing from Holland. If so, he must have returned to Europe from New Zealand somehow.

Bertha Cordes was the American-born daughter of German immigrants, with three older sisters who were all born in Bremen, and who had travelled to America with their mother Caroline Cordes as very young children, to join their father Henry in New York. The Cordes family were quite poor and lived in the bustling immigrant community of the Lower East Side, Manhattan. There, Bertha met Charles Weeber, who was recently arrived.

Bertha and Charlie married in Manhattan on May 3, 1890. Charles became a naturalized U.S. Citizen on July 12, 1894, a few months after their second daughter (my great-grandmother) was born. Their address at the time was 340 5^th Street, New York City, and he gave his occupation as Clerk. Their building still stands today, just blocks from the Tenement Museum.

The first Census record I can find the family listed in is the 1905 New York State Census. By then, they were living on East 9^th Street, close to Kings Highway, in Brooklyn. Charles Weeber had launched his career as a builder and property developer and he was very successfully erecting house after house in this new section of Brooklyn. According to my aunt’s recollections, this was initially funded by an inheritance he received after reconciling with his father (Ernst Weeber died in 1901). The death of a wealthy uncle in Baden, who was also named Ernst, apparently resulted in a further inheritance, but I still haven’t found out who this Ernst was. Charles used this money to purchase land and build nice houses taking advantage of the growing market for housing in Brooklyn. As each one was built, the family would move in and enjoy the property for a while before moving to the next newly completed house.

For about a decade, Charles A. Weeber was a leading property developer and business leader in the Kings Highway section of Brooklyn. This ad from the April 18, 1909 Brooklyn Daily Eagle shows one of his duplex buildings.

In the April 18, 1909 Sunday Edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Charles Weeber was quoted on a real estate page promoting development in Brooklyn, “Seven years ago, when I first became interested in this section, there were comparatively few houses here and one could buy lots for $350. Now, as you can see, the entire section is being built up and lots at $1,000 are pretty scarce. I was attracted to the section because of its good location, and the level character of the ground. I own several more plots in the immediate neighbourhood, and as soon as my present operation is completed, will commence the erection of a number of high class one family houses, similar to the ones just finished on the corner of Avenue P and East 9^th and East 10^th Streets. The four tracking of the Brighton Beach line was certainly a great thing for this section.”

The newspaper noted that Charles A. Weeber had four one family homes under construction on East Ninth, near Avenue P. According to the paper, he was a director of the Kings Highway Building Corporation and a member of the Kings Highway Board of Trade.

In the 1910 U.S. Census, the family was enumerated on Avenue P, pretty much at the peak of Charles Weeber’s success. He was listed that year as an American-born contractor- “Charly” Weeber – living at 106 Avenue P in Brooklyn. By then, his eldest daughter Bertha had entered the workforce as a stenographer at a diamond house. They were living well, and Charly had became known as “Champagne Charly” among his associates, according to Aunt Gloria. Unfortunately, he let the good times roll a little too much and overextended himself.

A May 3, 1913 clipping from the Brooklyn Eagle – Charly Weeber’s rise and fall happened in the span of a single decade.

By the 1915 New York State Census, the family’s time of prosperity had come to an end. Charles, Bertha, Emilie and Charles Jr. were living in an apartment at 325 Jay Street, in Brooklyn, with both Emilie and Charles Jr. working in offices. Betty had married John Lucas. She and her husband moved to Minneapolis, where her family would soon join them. The Weebers were a tight knit family who supported each other through good times and bad, and seem to have been very resilient and resourceful throughout it all.

It was while working in Minneapolis that Emilie converted to Catholicism, and then also agreed to marry Patrick Valentine Hickey, a Brooklyn lawyer and civil servant she had dated in New York. Their marriage took place at her church in Minneapolis on June 6, 1917, after which they returned to Brooklyn to live. They had a very compatible marriage and were blessed with three children.

Charles and Bertha Weeber later followed Betty and John Lucas further west to California, but would return to Brooklyn regularly to visit the Hickeys. They were at the Hickeys’ house at 241 Van Sicklen Street at the time the 1930 Census was taken, staying in the neighbourhood that Charles Weeber had originally helped build. And they were there again when Charles Weeber died of cancer on November 8, 1936. Charles Weeber became a Catholic at the end of his life, and he is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn. His obituary in the Brooklyn Times Union, under the headline “Charles A. Weeber, Builder, Is Dead: Had been prominent in development of Kings Hwy. area,” was published November 9, 1936. It highlighted two things, his building career and his family:

“Mr. Weeber built several rows of homes in the Kings Highway section, about 25 years ago, at Avenue P and East 19^th st. In 1915 he went to Minneapolis, Minn., to engage in railroading. Five years ago he retired, moving to San Diego, Calif., where he lived for some time.

“Surviving are his wife, the former Bertha Cordes; two daughters Mrs. Hickey and Mrs. Bertha Lucas, a son, Charles E. Weeber; five grandchildren, two great grandchildren, and in Germany two sisters.”

“Fresh Start” is the first writing prompt for the 2020 #52Ancestors challenge. Now that I’m trying to actually write, this does feel like a challenge! But I think it will be a productive and interesting year.

I hope to use this blog to write about individual ancestors and share some things I have collected and learned about them, but I can only think of one thing when I think of “fresh start”. As a person with North American colonizer roots, everyone I am descended from made a fresh start by coming here from Europe and the British Isles. In so doing, they, as a matter of course, displaced and devastated the people who already lived here, laying waste to their communities and taking their lands. In some cases in my family’s history, this was direct and immediate. Then it was ongoing. I have only recently become aware of the extent to which I am still involved in this today in Canada.

If I have a chance at a fresh start in 2020, it is this: As I learn more about my family history, I will at the same time work to learn more about many things that I am ashamed to be ignorant of. I will not look away from or gloss over the past and what I can find out about my ancestors, if I can help it. So along with #52Ancestors, I have also signed up for the #Next150 challenge.

On the website right now, Senator Murray Sinclair — Mizanay (Mizhana) Gheezhik, meaning “The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky” — of Peguis First Nation, issues the challenge: “My challenge is for you to read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and to share one of the calls that has significance for you. Whether you’ve read them before or not, take the time to read them now and think about how you can affect change in your own life to make this country stronger.” I will progress to Senator Murray’s challenge, but will start learning more with his call for me personally to change in my mind.

2020 is the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing. As one of the estimated 35 million living people descended from that tiny colony, I am hugely grateful to be alive and living in Canada. I am thankful for my gifted genealogy-whiz cousin who made the connection to the Mayflower for us all. I appreciate many of the things that many of Richard and Elizabeth Warren‘s descendants have accomplished — great poetry, famous novels, films, music, some good governance. Some of them have done great good — some fought to end slavery and others have served the poor. I also appreciate that the Pilgrims sought religious freedom in the face of persecution, but deplore that they then felt entitled to harshly visit that same persecution on many, many others.

Literally none of this would be possible without the Wampanoag Nation, who helped the colonizers survive, despite themselves having been almost wiped out by a plague borne by European black rats just before the Mayflower arrived. Despite the fact that one surviving English speaker among the Wampanoag people at the time had been among a group previously kidnapped and enslaved by a British slave trader. This slavery was not an isolated event — today, for example, there are Wampanoag and other Indigenous peoples still living in Bermuda, hundreds of years after their ancestors were relocated by force as slaves. (Some recent stories can be read here.) Their motivations for this at the time are a topic of discussion but it’s impossible not to be humbled that they chose to help the Plymouth colony at all.

According to an article Wamsutta (Frank B.) James’s “Who are the Wampanoag” by Nancy Eldredge — Nauset Wampanoag and Penobscot — there are an estimated four to five thousand Wampanoag people living in New England today. Their language is only now being revived by the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project after being lost for over 150 years. The numbers speak for themselves.

When I was a baby, the 350th Anniversary of the Mayflower landing was celebrated. For the commemoration in 1970, the invited Wampanoag speaker, Wamsutta (Frank B.) James, was censored, and then uninvited from the observances, for telling the truth about what happened when the Pilgrims arrived. This event helped spark the National Day of Mourning held on American Thanksgiving each year for the past 50 years. The full text of Wamsutta (Frank B.) James’s banned speech can be read online. This year it will be spoken out loud and heard as part of the 400th Anniversary, along with the other commemorations. It is essential to listen. Fifty years have already passed since Wamsutta James was silenced in his call for a new beginning:

“We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

“You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

“There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks. We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We’re being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians. We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.”

This is the part of being a Mayflower descendent that I intend to pay attention to this year, and beyond. Happy New Year!