The Nutley cousin reunion trip has inspired me to record the family history.

The Webers

We visited our grandmother and grandfather in Nutley at the Calico Lane house in the 1950s and 1960s. Our grandmother was Katherine Ruth Weber Schaefer. She was known as Ruth to everyone. She was born in Brooklyn in 1889 and died in 1970. Her father was Lawrence A. Weber and her mother Helen Williams. She had 7 siblings who made it to adulthood. We all knew Eva the oldest daughter, and I met Eugene who was 11 years younger than Ruth. Lawrence A owned a coal yard in Brooklyn called Weber & Quinn. His father Lawrence (no A) started the business sometime in the 1870s. Although Lawrence A had sold out of the business by 1930, records indicate that Weber & Quinn existed as an operating entity (heating fuel in the later years) until at least 1964.

We know more about Lawrence senior than about his son because my father passed on to me the log of a voyage he undertook beginning in 1856. The voyage to Peru from London (we don't know how he got to London) on the Ebba Brake lasted over 2 years. The 1860 census shows him living in Buffalo again with his wife Barbara Meyer and their 6 month old daughter Ida. His occupation was recorded as "sailor". In 1870 he was still in Buffalo with Barbara and his 8 year old son Lawrence A. Ida died in 1865. His occupation was now US Inspector.

All the evidence indicates that the Webers, Meyers, and Williams were all originally based in Buffalo. How Lawrence came to move to Brooklyn in the 1870s is unknown.

By 1880 he was in Brooklyn with an occupation recorded as "coal yard". Also living with him other than Barbara and 18 year old Lawrence A was his 72 year old mother Elizabeth. The census records from Buffalo indicate that her husband's name (Lawrence the sailor's late father) was also Lawrence and that he was 18 years older than Elizabeth. He is recorded in 1860 as being born in France in 1791 and spelled Weber as Webber. We also see this spelling with the other Webers until 1880.

So Lawrence the sailor was one of at least four children of Lawrence from France and Elizabeth. The other younger sons were named Theodore and Lambert. There may also have been a Lewis and there was at least one daughter. Lawrence the sailor and Barbara had only one surviving child in Lawrence A who in his marriage to Helen Williams had 11 children of whom 8 survived to adulthood. I have mentioned Eva and Eugene and, of course, my grandmother Ruth.

We also heard about Hortense, a younger sister of Ruth who married Lester Marcelis. They lived (or may still live) in the Lake George area. My dad used to talk about taking a trip to see them (and especially their daughter Betsy Marcelis born in 1926), but we never did. She did phone me a few times for no particular reason after my dad died. Hortense's other daughter Barbara married Samuel Johnson and I have met their youngest son Bill Johnson, who is now the custodian of the Weber family plot in Green-wood Cemetery - Brooklyn.

 

The other branch I heard talk about was Paul Weber's family. Paul was the youngest child of Lawrence A and Helen (who my father used to refer to as Nellie). He had a son Lawrence (another Lawrence!) who in turn had a son Scott Lawrence born in 1972. I am going to try to find him.

I will edit this as I find out more but will move on to the Schaefers next

 

 

For those of you like Svein in Norway, Pat in Escondido, or Selby in Houston who occasionally check my mostly inactive blog, the most recent video posting must have been confusing. To make a long story short, I have four first cousins on my father's side. As children, we used to congregate on the holidays at our grandparents house in Nutley New Jersey. My good cousin Marta organized a reunion over Memorial Day weekend for all (or most) of us. We had not been back to Nutley since the early 90's and the Calico Lane house (the grounds of which we toured) had been sold out of the family in the early 70's. We had probably not been all together in Nutley since the late 60's.

We had a great time. It was good to see everyone, and with the exception of a Starbucks on Main Ave in Nutley, time had stood still. The Calico Lane House was much the same (sans swimming pool), the adjacent town park was just as it had been, and the food at Rutt's Hut in nearby Clifton (where the video was filmed) remained cheap and barely edible.

The five cousins have had five children. The second wife of my father (and the last of his generation) also attended. We had 14 in total. Here are some more pictures.