Family Album – Kleist

This is a photo of the three children of my 3rd-great-grandparents, Anna Maria Gerber (1813-1861) and Philipp Jakob Kleist (1811-1868):

Catherine Kleist-Weinert was born 31 July 1846 at Ludwigshöhe, Rheinhessen, and was baptized 2 August at St. Vitus Catholic Church. She apparently came to the U.S. in the early 1870s, and married Peter Weinert (1844-1927) about 1876. They lived at McKeesport, Pennsylvania, where they had five children: Frank (b. 1878 and died before his mother), a daughter who became Sister Mary Aegidia (about 1881 – 1957), John Joseph (1883-1959), William Alois (1887-1951), and Lena Weinert Coleman (1889-1949). Catherine was a founding member of St. Mary German Catholic Church in McKeesport. She died at McKeesport, 7 April 1926.

Jakob Kleist was born 9 April 1849 at Ludwigshöhe, and was baptized 11 April. Jakob stayed in Germany, and I don’t know anything else about him except that he apparently kept in touch with his siblings. They had this photo of him, after all. Jakob was eleven when his mother died, nineteen when his father died, and in his early twenties when his brother and sister emigrated to America. I wonder whether he ever felt abandoned. A Jakob Kleist married Sabina Kunz at Mombach, Rheinhessen, on 10 October 1886. I don’t know whether this was our Jakob, but Mombach (now part of the city of Mainz) was about 20 kilometers from Ludwigshöhe.

Adam Kleist was born 8 November 1843 at Ludwigshöhe, and was baptized 12 November. Adam was my great-great-grandfather. Like his sister, Adam seems to have come to the U.S. in the early 1870s. He settled in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, where he worked as a tanner. Adam had relatives nearby. His mother’s three half-brothers had come to the U.S. between 1855 and 1858, the last of them bringing their widowed mother, Anna, with him. (Anna was the third wife of Adam’s maternal grandfather, Jakob Gerber; Adam’s grandmother, Agnes, had been the first.) The three Gerber brothers, Adam’s uncles, were farmers in Town Rhine, Sheboygan County. It may have been on a visit to his uncles that Adam met his future wife, Barbara Urban (1854-1926). Barbara’s parents, German immigrants who married in Sheboygan, also farmed in Town Rhine.

Barbara was an Evangelical Lutheran, and remained so after her marriage to Adam, but she agreed that their children be brought up Catholic. There were eight of them: Herman (1876-1958), Mary Kleist Grande (1877-1943), Anna Kleist Kubel (1879-1974), William (1882-1941), Jacob (1885-1962), Edward (1890-1970), Edna Kleist Herman (1892-1963), and Hilda Kleist Eisold (1895-1989). Most of them became Protestants later in life.

Adam worked for Roenitz Tannery for 34 years, according to his obituary. He celebrated his thirtieth anniversary of employment at the tannery in April 1902. My grandmother and my great-grandmother said that he was laid off from the tannery at the age of 62 because he was nearing eligibility for his pension. He went to work at Dillingham Manufacturing Company, a furniture factory, for seven years, finally retiring about 1912, at the age of 69. When my grandmother was a little girl, she used to take his lunch to him at Dillingham, and sit out in the yard with him while he ate.

Adam was a member of the Arbeiter Verein (Worker’s Club), a social and fraternal organization that also leaned pretty strongly toward Socialism. I enjoy the thought that my great-great-grandfather was probably a Socialist. Adam was also a proud German, and my grandmother said she wasn’t allowed to speak English in her grandparents’ house. Unlike my grandmother’s other grandfather, Adam was never naturalized as an American citizen. He died at Sheboygan on 28 April 1917 after a long illness. I don’t know whether the U.S. declaration of war against Germany three weeks earlier did anything to push him over the edge or not.

The 1910 Census shows Catherine’s son William Weinert living with Adam and Barbara Kleist in Sheboygan. I don’t know what moved William to leave McKeesport for Sheboygan, but he must have liked it, because he stayed for the rest of his life. In March 1913, his engagement to Getrude Schaefer was announced, and they were married on 31 July of that year.

John Weinert was his brother’s best man, and his mother accompanied him to Sheboygan for the wedding. This photo was made during her visit there. It was the first time Adam and Catherine had met for many years ― probably their first meeting in over forty years. They commemorated the occasion with this photo, and for good measure they had a photo of their brother Jakob superimposed between them, creating a portrait of all three siblings. I also have a photo of Adam with his son William (my great-grandfather) and John Weinert. John, and presumably his mother, left Sheboygan to return to McKeesport on 7 August ― 95 years ago today.

There’s no indication that Catherine saw any of her Gerber uncles during this trip. John Gerber had died in 1910, and while William Gerber was still living, aged 83, in Town Rhine, he may have been too infirm to travel to Sheboygan. He was dead less than five months after the wedding. The youngest brother, Adam Gerber, was 77 and living in Manitowoc County. Adam and Barbara threw a party for Catherine and John Weinert two days before William Weinert’s wedding, and the only out-of-town guests listed were relatives of Barbara’s.

I’ve always liked the way Catherine and Adam laid their hands out before them for this photo. My eyes have always been drawn to those hands.

As far as I know, Adam never traveled to McKeesport, and Catherine never again traveled to Sheboygan. This, their first meeting after many years, was almost certainly their last, and I imagine they knew it would be.

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