From the Rhineland to Buffalo
The Weppners had lived at Westhofen, a wine village near Worms, for generations. Johannes Balthasar Weppner was born there in 1696. His son Johann Adam, born in 1742, married Maria Anna Sabina Albert of Bürstadt, across the Rhine, in 1762, and they had at least thirteen children, several of whom died young. Their daughter Eva Magdalena married Johann Philipp Born in 1791 and stayed in Westhofen, but her son Philip Born and her granddaughter Emma Lambert would both marry Weppners in Buffalo. Their son Arnold settled in Mainz and died in 1840.
Augustus Weppner, the youngest, was baptized Carolus Augustinus at Westhofen on 7 December 1783. His first marriage, in Mainz in 1811, ended the next year with the death of his young wife, Maria Margaretha Winter. Around 1817 he married Barbara Stumpf at Zell, in the Palatinate, which Bavaria ruled at the time and called Rhine-Bavaria. He worked there as a butcher, and five of their children were baptized there. In 1829 the family moved to Pfeddersheim, just outside Worms, where their daughter Barbara was born and their son Mathaeus died in 1832, at nine.
In the spring of 1834 Augustus sold his farm at Pfeddersheim to the town’s newly founded Jewish congregation, which meant to build its synagogue there. The family sailed from Le Havre on the François I and landed at New York on 23 August. The passenger list calls Augustus a 49-year-old farmer from Bavaria. They reached Buffalo on 18 September 1834 and settled at the corner of Chippewa and Ellicott streets.
It was a hard year to arrive. Cholera had come back that summer to the young city of nearly 15,000, and people who could afford to leave did. In 1836 Augustus moved to Genesee and Ash streets and opened a butcher business, with his sons working for him. Two of them stayed in the trade, and so did one of his grandsons, which makes three generations of Weppner butchers in Buffalo.
Barbara died on 17 September 1858. Augustus lived until 14 March 1869. They share a headstone in the United German & French Cemetery, now Mount Calvary.
“Augustus Weppner, died Mar. 14, 1869, aged 84 y’s 3 mo. His wife Barbara Weppner, died Sept. 17, 1858, aged 60 y’s 9 mo.”
Their headstone, Mount Calvary Cemetery, Cheektowaga
Family who stayed in Germany