Generation III1852to 1969

The oldest meat market in Buffalo

Arnold and Blandina's first children, twin girls, were born in 1852. Six of their fifteen children died young, but the other nine grew up and stayed in Buffalo. Their son August F. Weppner, born on 11 August 1854, kept the family trade going. An 1898 county history called his shop “the oldest and leading meat market in Buffalo.” It said his father had established it in 1845, that August had run it at its current location since 1878, and that he was “a man of strict integrity.”

By 1900 the city directory shows how far the trade had spread. Arnold's sons Frank, Charles and William ran Arnold Weppner's Sons, beef and pork packers on Guilford Street, with stands at the Washington Market. Francis owned the Weppner Provision Co. on Perry Street, and August sold meats and poultry at the Ellicott Square Market. Edward Albert took another path, into banking.

The twins Frank Arnold and Charles were born on 3 April 1862 and grew up to run the family firm together. Edward Albert Weppner, born on 15 March 1867, went to work in a bank at sixteen and was an assistant cashier at twenty-one. In 1891 he married Delia E. Kraus, a Main Street dry-goods merchant’s daughter. Their eldest son, Elmer Kraus Weppner, carries this line forward.

In 1904 Edward was cashier of the German-American Bank when a Boston promoter, Arthur E. Appleyard, bought control of it and of the German Bank and began lending their money to his own trolley ventures. Edward forced the loans to be repaid, with the help of the state superintendent of banks, and then resigned. On 1 December depositors ran on the German-American and took out about $400,000 in a day. The Buffalo clearing house found the bank sound and backed it, Appleyard’s men were pushed out, and on 11 December the directors, at the depositors’ insistence, voted unanimously to bring Edward back. The German Bank failed. Edward stayed on as cashier, and later as a director, until he died of cancer in January 1914, at forty-six.

“By honesty and faithfulness to duty he won for himself the undying gratitude of the thousands of bank depositors and the admiration of a city.”
The Buffalo Times, 29 January 1914

On the other branch, Francis and Catherine raised six sons, Augustus F., Frank C., Albert M., Arnold H., Alexander J. and Eugene B., and two daughters, Catherine Louisa, known as Nina, who lived to ninety-nine, and Emma, who married Richard L. Huehne. John’s son John F. very likely ran the Weppner meat stand at the Washington Market. Albert moved west and died in Omaha, Nebraska, and Alexander became a cashier in the city's Treasury Department.