The Wieman Family

The Wieman family are Nancy's ancestors, her father's people.

Our earliest known Wieman ancestors lived in village of Hilter in the turn of the 18^th century. The small farming village was a part of Kurfürstentum Hannover (Electorate of Hanover), an Electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. For most of its existence, the electorate was affiliated with Great Britain and Ireland after the Prince-Elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain in 1714. It was merged into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, then was re-established as the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814, with the affiliation with the British crown lasting until 1837. It is today located in northwestern Germany, in the district of Osnabrück in the German state of Lower Saxony. It currently has a population of just over 4,200.¹

Living in a North German Village

After Charlemagne's conquest in the late 8^th century of the Saxon tribes that had settled the area, the existing settlements were awarded to his secular and religious retainers as feudal estates. While the landlords of specific settlements changed over time, that structure remained in place at the time the early Weimenns were living in Hilter. The peasants farming the land were tenants of their noble or church landlords, holding an inheritable life tenancy and paying a portion of their crops as rent. At the beginning of the 18^th century the villages were still nearly entirely based on subsistence farming, with each family expected to support itself on what it produced, and enough to pay the landlord and civil authorities.

Landholders could transfer their tenancy to heirs subject to the approval of the landlord. Generally the entire farm, including right to use the common grazing land, was transferred to one heir at his or her marriage, with an obligation to support the parents thereafter. Most commonly the heir was the youngest son, but sometimes was another son or a daughter. The other children may have gotten a settlement, hopefully to enable them to marry the heir of another farm. If they could not they remained landless, and especially in the earlier part of the period we are interested in here, often unmarried.

The “Historical Background” section of Robert Jackson's excellent article Prismeyer Family History provides a much more complete understanding of the social and economic environment the Wiemann's experienced in Hilter. While his family was in the village of Oppenwehe, it is about 40 miles north of Hilter and the two villages have a great deal in common.

The Wiemans in this Website

Our story starts with Maximilian Friderich Wiemann (1780-1829) and his wife, Anna Maria Margaretha Elisabeth Lüken (1779-aft 1852). Of their eight children, two daughters died as young children. The rest, and their mother, all immigrated to the United States and settled in Cincinnati.

We have some information on Maximilian's siblings, parents, and grandparents, but not enough to justify detailed pages for them. Most of what we have in shown in our page on the Wiemann Family in Hilter.

Standardized spelling of surnames was not seen as a virtue until fairly recent times, and that is certainly clear with this family. The surname was recorded with many variations in church registers. Wieheman is found in the earliest records, but variations including Wiman and Wieman are also found. The Wiemann spelling became common by the mid-18^th century and the immigrants generally used that spelling in Cincinnati where they lived in a heavily German community. Over time they, and especially their descendants, dropped the final "n" spelling the name Wieman. We have used only the later spelling on this page for convenience, but have used the spellings most commonly found for each generation in the individual narratives. Family members listed under the earlier spelling are also indexed under the "Wieman" spelling so they can be more easily located.

There were a number of other Wieman families in Cincinnati and elsewhere in the United States, but we have not been able to connect them to this family from Hilter.

Reading More About Them

To read this family's stories you may choose to begin with Maximilian Friderich and his wife Anna Maria. Our you may prefer to read about those about whom we have the most interesting information. They include:

• Maximilian and Anna Maria's eldest son Jobst Henrich ("Joseph" after he immigrated), who, with his three younger brothers already emigrated, moved the rest of the family to the New World
• Joseph's two sons, Henry and Frederick, who subdivided his property, creating Wieman St. for Cleaveland posterity
• August Bruck, first husband of Frederick's daughter Myrtle, who became front-page news when he became victim of a gangland murder
• Maximilian and Anna Maria's second son Henrich Friedrich ("Friedrich" after he immigrated), one of the three brothers who immigrated to Cincinnati, and who established a stone mason business with his brother Henry, and married Anna Maria Rothefeld ("Mary" after she immigrated)
• Frederich and Mary's eldest daughter Wilhelmina, who married and out-lived three husbands
• Wilhelmina's third husband, William Siekman, who moved to Kentucky to take up farming, and later married Wilhelmina as his third wife
• Frederich and Mary's third daughter Amelia Lousie, who married John William Fenker
• Amelia and William's son Howard Fenker, whose exploits in World War I remain a mystery
• His son Richard, an actuary who became an aircraft navigator in World War II, then a businessman
• Maximilian and Anna Maria's third son Johann Henrich ("Henry" after he immigrated), one of the three brothers who immigrated to Cincinnati, and who established a stone mason business with his older brother
• John Von Seggern, husband of Henry's eldest daughter Louisa, a lawyer who became a Cincinnati city councilman, an Ohio state senator, but failed to be elected to the judge of the court he created while a senator
• Louis Capelle, son of Henry's second daughter Maria, a lawyer who became an Ohio state legislator, Hamilton County Prosecutor, and for whose funeral courts in the county were closed
• Maximilian and Anna Maria's youngest son Christian Heinrich, one of the three brothers who immigrated to Cincinnati, and who worked as a stone mason for a time, then seemingly vanished from sight

If you prefer, you can look for specific people in the index on the left.

Maps and Charts

The family is outlined in the Wieman Descendants Chart, which offer links to the narratives of each of Maximilian and Anna Maria's descendants.

Many of the places mentioned in the narratives about each person contain this icon, which is a link to display that place in Google Maps. For more information about these links see the Map Links section on our main page.