Short History of the Family

      This is an abbreviated account of the first four generations of the family, starting in Switzerland and leading through Alsace to America.  Many details such as exact dates and sources have been omitted from this account; they can be found in a genealogical report attached to the Genealogical Details page of this website, and in my public member tree at Ancestry.com.

First Generation: Wilhelm Seewer and Christina Hauswirth

   The family can be traced back to Wilhelm Seeweri and his wife Christina Hauswirth,ii  who were married in 1644 in Gsteig bei Gstaad, a small mountain village in Bern canton, Switzerland. Today Gsteig is a popular tourist destination, and its residents have a variety of occupations, but in the 1600s most of the villagers made their living from farming and seasonal Alpine herding.    Wilhelm and Christina had ten children baptized in the Gsteig Reformed Church from the 1640s through the 1660s.  At least four of their children --  sons Wilhelm, Heinrich and Martin and daughter Christina -- emigrated to Alsace by the 1690s.  They were part of a huge Swiss emigration during the second half of the seventeenth century to parts of France and Germany that were devastated during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  Wilhelm and Heinrich emigrated to the Alsatian village of Buchsweileriii  where they worked on an estate of the Geyling von Altheim family.  Martin and his sister Christina settled in the Alsatian village of Oberhoffen-sur-Moder, where Martin and Christina's husband, David Jaggi, worked on the estate of the Serminger family.

     The rest of this discussion focuses on Martin Seeber and his descendants because it was his branch of the family that emigrated to America and established the Seeber family in the Mohawk Valley. 

Second Generation: Martin Seeber (1661-1706)

    Martin Seeber was born in Gsteig in 1661, the third-youngest child of Wilhelm Seewer and his wife Christina Hauswirth.  Martin emigrated to the Alsatian town of Oberhoffen-sur-Moder before 1694, when he married Anna Elisabetha Goellner.  Her family had lived for several generations in Bischwiller, a village across the Moder River from Oberhoffen. 

Martin  was described in some records as a shoemaker, and in others as "meyer" on the Serminger family estate in Oberhoffen.     Today both Oberhoffen and Bischwiller are in the French department of Bas-Rhin, within the region of Alsace.  However, when the Seeber family lived there in the late 1600s and 1700s, Oberhoffen owed political allegiance to the counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg, and Bischwiller was ruled by the counts of Birkenfeld-Bischweiler.  Bischwiller currently has a population of almost 12,000 people, but it was much smaller when the Seebers lived there. It was a center of the wool and linen weaving industry.  Oberhoffen is a  smaller village, with a current population of over 3,000.   Both villages are between twenty and thirty kilometers north of Strasbourg, then as now the principal city in the region. 

      Between 1695 and 1706, Martin and Anna Elisabetha had eight children in Oberhoffen.  The two youngest were twins born after their father's death in 1706.  Most of their children died young, but two of their sons -- Johann Wilhelm born in 1695, and Johann Heinrich born in 1696 -- lived to adulthood, married, and had children.

    In 1716, a decade after Martin's death, his widow Anna Elisabetha was married in Bischwiller for the second time, to Johann Jacob Eberhard.  She died in Bischwiller three years later, in 1719. 

Third generation: Johann Wilhelm Seeber (1695-?)

    Johann Wilhelm Seeber was born in Oberhoffen in 1695, but later in life he moved to Bischwiller where he made his living as a woolen weaver.  In 1719 he married Maria Magdalena Morel, of an old French Bischwiller family.  They had eight children in Bischwiller, all but two of whom died without marrying or having children.  The two children of this marriage still living after 1738 were Johann Wilhelm born in 1721, and Maria Elisabetha born in 1724. The wife and mother, Maria Magdalena Morel, died in Bischwiller in 1735, and Johann Wilhelm was married again later that year to Anna Maria Weber, born in 1712.  She and her husband had two children in Bischwiller -- Johann Jacob born in 1736 and Maria Esther born in 1738.

    Except for his daughter Maria Elisabetha, who married in Bischwiller and lived there until her death in 1786, Johann Wilhelm Seeber and his family disappeared from the Oberhoffen and Bischwiller church records after 1738. As discussed on The Case for Bischwiller page of this website, circumstantial evidence indicates that they emigrated to the Mohawk Valley of New York, where Johann Wilhelm and Anna Maria had several more children beginning in 1741.  His death date is unknown, but she survived the Revolutionary War and died in or near Fort Plain, New York, in November 1789. 

Third generation: Johann Heinrich Seeber (1696-?)

     Like his older brother Wilhelm, Johann Heinrich Seeber was a woolen weaver in Bischwiller.  He married Anna Maria Studer in 1719 in Bischwiller, and they had eight children there, seven of whom died young without marrying or having children.  The only child who lived to adulthood was Johann Jacob Seeber, born in 1722.  There is strong evidence that this son, Johann Jacob, came to America with other members of the family; see The Case for Bischwiller and The Five Jacob Seebers pages for more details.

   Johann Heinrich's wife, Anna Maria Studer, died in 1749 in Bischwiller, and he was married again the following year to a widow, Barbara Baer.  Heinrich and Barbara did not have any children in Bischwiller, and no record has been found of their deaths.  They may have emigrated to America, or some place in Europe, but at the current time nothing is known about their life following their marriage in 1750. 

Fourth generation: Children of Johann Wilhelm Seeber (1695-?) (this list does not include children who died young in Bischwiller)

• • Johann Wilhelm Seeber was born in 1721 in Bischwiller, the son of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Maria Magdalena Morel.  He married Maria Catharina Ecker in Schoharie in 1746, with whom he had six children.  After her death, he married Maria Elisabetha Goebel in 1756, with whom he had six more children.  Along with several relatives and neighbors, he was naturalized in 1761 by act of the New York colonial legislature. He was appointed 2nd lieutenant in Capt. Peter Waggoner's company of Albany County militia at Canajoharie in 1762, at the end of the French and Indian War.  During the Revolutionary War, he served as a member of the Tryon County Committee of Safety and a high-ranking officer in the Tryon County militia.  He died in 1777 of wounds suffered at the Battle of Oriskany.

  • Maria Elisabetha Seeber was born in 1724 in Bischwiller, the daughter of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Maria Magdalena Morel.  She married Johann Friederich Kaeppler in 1745 in Bischwiller, with whom she had several children.  She died in 1786 in Bischwiller.

  • Johann Jacob Seeber was born in 1736 in Bischwiller to Johann Wilhelm Seeber and his second wife, Anna Maria Weber.  He married Maria Esther --?-- before 1760, had a son Jacob in 1760, and a daughter Elisabeth who claimed a half-pay pension after the Revolutionary War.  He was naturalized in 1761.  He served as captain in the Tryon County militia and the Continental army, and he died in August 1777 of wounds suffered at the Battle of Oriskany.

  • Maria Esther Seeber was born in 1738 in Bischwiller, the daughter of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Anna Maria Weber.  She married George Wabel/Waffle before 1757 in the Mohawk Valley, and had eight children with him.  She died after 1792.

  • Heinrich Seeber was born in 1741 in the Mohawk Valley, the son of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Anna Maria Weber. He married Veronica Barlet in 1767, with whom he had at least five children.  He served in the Albany County militia during the French and Indian War, and in the Tryon County militia during the Revolutionary War.  He was wounded at the Battle of Oriskany and died in 1845 in Herkimer County, New York.

  • Severinus (Suffrenes) Seeber was born in the 1740s in the Mohawk Valley to Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Anna Maria Weber.  He married Catharina Yates, with whom he had at least two children.  He was a private in the French and Indian War, and a lieutenant in the Tryon County militia during the Revolutionary War.  He was killed in the Battle of Oriskany in August 1777.

  • James Seeber  was born in the 1740s in the Mohawk Valley, the son of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Anna Maria Weber.  It is  not known if he married and had children.  He served in the Tryon County militia and died in the Battle of Oriskany in August 1777.

  • Johannes Seeber was born in the 1740s in the Mohawk Valley to Johann Wilhelm Seeber and Anna Maria Weber.  He married Maria Wohlgemuth in 1767 and had at least one child, a son Johannes.  He was a private in the Albany County militia during the French and Indian War, and he served in the Tryon County militia during the Revolutionary War. He died before 1795.

Fourth generation: Child of Johann Heinrich Seeber (1696-?) (children who died young in Bischwiller are not listed here)

• • Johann Jacob Seeber was born in 1722 in Bischwiller, the son of Johann Heinrich Seeber and Anna Maria Studer. He married an unknown wife, probably in the Mohawk Valley, and had a son Jacob and daughters Maria Elisabetha and Maria Catharina, all of whom were probably born in the 1740s.  He was naturalized in 1761 by act of the New York colonial legislature.  His date and place of death are unknown.

Footnotes:

i In the Swiss records, the surname is consistently spelled “Seewer,” and in the Alsatian records it is usually spelled “Seeber” but sometimes “Seber.” All three variations of the name sound similar in the Germanic languages spoken by the family in Switzerland and Alsace.

ii There were two Wilhelm Seewers, and several Christina Hauswirths, born and baptized in Gsteig in the early 1600s. Either of the two Wilhelms, and any of the Christinas, could have been the groom and bride who married in 1644; the marriage record does not identify their parents.

iii There are four communities in Alsace and Lorraine that are known in German as Buchsweiler – Bouxwiller and Busweiler in the Bas-Rhin department, Bouxwiller in the Haut-Rhin department, and Boussewiller in the Moselle department. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Busweiler was a possession of the Gayling von Altheim family (also spelled Geyling, Gailing and Geiling), who had a castle there. This was probably the town in which Heinrich and Wilhelm Seeber resided.