Moving on through the Weiß lineage, after the vicar's and the destiller's we now arrive at the teacher's family.
Christian Gottlieb Weiß (1782-1867) and Anna Gertrud Keuert (1777-1858)
Christian Gottlieb Weiß was born 12.5. 1782 at Pferdsfeld as the sixth of the seven children of the mayor / teacher / distiller Johann Gottlieb Weiß and his wife Anna Katharina Andrae. He is the earliest born ancestor of whom we have a photo.
Like both his (older) brothers, he became a teacher. This may mean that he studied at university, which I consider likely given the abundance of vicars in his ancestry, many of whom worked as teachers before finding a church job. However it wasn't a given at the time, as there were village school teachers without academic education. He had his first teaching position in Hellenthal (Eifel). This is where he seems to have found his wife. On 13.7. 1806, he married Anna Gertraud Käuer (1777-1858; alternative spelling: Keuert) at Kirschseiffen. Her parents, Tilmanus Keuert and Regina Catherina Freischmid were from Hellenthal and her ancestry is solidly from that area.
The first two children, Karoline and Maria Magdalena, were born at Hellenthal in 1807 and 1809, respectively.
In 1809/10 the family moved to Raversbeuren (Hunsrück), where the next five children were born between 1810 and 1819 (see the list below).
The last of the eight children, Henriette, was born in 1822 at Simmern unter Dhaun, where Christian Gottlieb taught from 1819 until his retirement in 1853. This village is today known as Simmertal, renamed to avoid confusion with the main town of the region which is also called Simmern. They are both on the same little river, the Simmerbach, but Simmern unter Dhaun is close to where it joins the Nahe river (near Kirn), while the town of Simmern is upstream, on the highlands of the Hunsrück. Relative to Christian Gottlieb’s home village of Pferdsfeld, Simmern unter Dhaun is just 5 km SSE, so he may have jumped at this opportunity to work closer to his family home, after the previous jobs were much farther away.
The school at Simmern unter Dhaun can be traced back to 1563, for which year the village chronicles record that a teacher’s salary was paid. In 1824, five years into Christian Gottlieb’s tenure, the “protestant elementary school” had 126 pupils. The following year, 14 Jewish children joined them as well. In 1838, the position of a second teacher was approved, and in 1841 a Mr Schneider was hired.
The school at Simmern unter Dhaun, now a private residence. Photo by Jörg Groß.
In 1846, the school house, dating back to 1747, was extended with a second storey. Since then, it had two classrooms and two flats for teachers, plus a barn and stables. However, as these buildings were too small to get a proper farm going, the school's land was leased to local farmers. We don’t know whether either of the flats was occupied by the Weiß family (whose children were all grown up by then).
Christian Gottlieb’s earnings at that point were:
* 47 Thalers from the Fabry foundation
* free residence, firewood, small amounts of natural produce;
* as a sacristan, bell-ringer, and organist for the local church he also got 1 Thaler in cash and
* 22 Thalers worth of natural produce.
In 1851, Christian Gottlieb built a house with barn and stables where he then lived with his wife and the growing family of his daughter Henriette, who had six children with her husband Friedrich Kaiser. One of them, Johann Kaiser, moved into the house of his parents in 1913, after retiring from his job as a teacher in Cologne. The house stayed “in the family” for more than a century, until 1961.
In 1852, the government of the Kingdom of Prussia, of which the Hunsrück area was now a part, politely enquired whether Christian Gottlieb didn’t want to retire from his teaching job, as he was already 70 years old, and there had been complaints about him. He retired the following year, after 34 years as a teacher at this school. Mr Schneider took over as first teacher for a year, but in 1854 new teachers were appointed to both positions. He received a decent pension and was able to celebrate his golden wedding anniversary in 1856.
Anna Gertraud died in 1858, aged 81. Christian Gottlieb died in 1867, aged 85. The school house survives to this day, but is in residential use today.
Portrait of Christian Gottlieb Weiß taken in 1866, at which point he was retired, widowed, and a little bit forgetful, but otherwise fine, I guess.
Christian Gottlieb and Anna Gertraud had eight children and at least 20 grandchildren. The fifth, and to some extent also the second child will be of interest for further developments, while the seventh is the author of the Weiß chronicles.
1. Karoline (Kornelia) Weiß, 1807-1877, married farm labourer and coachman (Georg) Philipp Fuchs, at Simmern unter Dhaun. Reportedly, there have been troubles related to alcoholism and tuberculosis in that family, but they still managed to have 11 children, born 1829-1851.
2. Maria Magdalena Weiß, 1809-1885, married Peter Schmidt from Hahnenbach. They had one daughter, (Caroline) Wilhelmine Schmidt, * 1848, who married Ferdinand Weirich, and from whom the Weirichs and Giloys at Hahnenbach are descended, who who kept the village inn until the late 20th century.
3. Johannetha Weiß, 1809-1879, married Friedrich Dick from Monzingen, reported to have set sail for America with “a stable full of children.” (Possibly because of the famine of 1845/46 triggered by potato blight.)
4. Karl Weiß, a railways man at Hamm (Westfalen), married Wilhelmine Schmidt from Hamm, had one daughter.
5. Katharina Sophia Weis * 25. 3.1815 Raversbeuren + 8. 1.1862 Simmern, married the shoemaker Mathias Kauer in Simmern, at which point our lineage becomes the Kauer clan. All their descendants are listed here.
6. (Regina) Wilhelmine Weiß, 1817-1865, did not marry. (the birth and death year are from the residents book of Simmern unter Dhaun, suggesting she lived to 47 or 48. Johanna Kauer wrote that Regina died at age 20. Not sure who is right.
7. Christian Gottlieb Weiß, born ca. 1821, in 1844 married a widow, Maria Katharina Kessel (1810-1880), had two sons and two daughters. He is the author of the Weiß Chronicles written in Eckweiler in 1891. His daughter Sophie Weiß married Franz Philipp Kehrein at Eckweiler in 1875. Their son Karl Kehrein (1880-1942) married Lina Martin. According to Johanna's version of the Weiss Chronicles, she was his second cousin also a great-grandchild of the teacher C. G. Weiß (via his 5th child, Sophie, see here), but the Kehrein descendants have a different Lina Martin. Given that Johanna knew both Karl and Lina personally and talked about family history with them, I tend to stick with her version. Anyhow, through Karl Kehrein, who was a baker at Kirn and knew my great-great aunt Johanna Kauer, the Weiß chronicles came to our knowledge. Sadly, however, Karl Kehrein’s descendants don’t know what happened to the original.
8. Henriette Weiß, 1822-1895, married Friedrich Kaiser, had 6 children: Karl, Fritz (2 children), August (3 children), Johann, Hermann ...
Note that Christian Gottlieb is the last academically educated ancestor in my lineage, after ten generations with lots of vicars and teachers (often connected matrilinearly). After him we have three less than academic generations ending with Helene who wanted to be a teacher but wasn't allowed to study - for economic reasons mainly. She made sure that all her three children (including two daughters) got the opportunity she missed out on. Helene's lifespan did not overlap with that of her great-grandfather Christian Gottlieb, but she would have known that he was a teacher, and others in the extended family were teachers as well, including her uncle, the pioneering special needs teacher Friedrich Kauer. Friedrich is a grandson of Christian Gottlieb via his 5th child, Katharina Sophia Weiß.
Also, thanks to Anna Gertrud Keuert, I have 1/64 of Eifel ancestry, which I should subtract when I say that 3/16 of my ancestry is from the Hunsrück. Together with 1/64 from Idstein, this is the biggest outside influx absorbed into the Hunsrück family tree, leaving me with 5/32.)
My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events
