The Case for Bischwiller

• •  Anna Maria Weber, his stepmother, was baptized on 2 October 1712 according to her baptism record in the Bischwiller German Reformed Church (see below).  This points to a date of birth in late September or early October, 1712.  When Anna Maria Seeber died in 1789, in or near Ft. Plain, New York, her death/burial record in the Ft. Plain Reformed Church said that she was born on 1 November 1712. There is a one-month discrepancy in these dates, but that is understandable given that the death/burial record was created many years after her birth by people who had no first-hand knowledge of her birth and no access to the written record of her baptism. 

• All of the Seebers who disappeared from Bischwiller can be accounted for in the Mohawk Valley, in the sense that there were individuals living in the Mohawk Valley after 1741 with the same names and approximate ages who were clearly related to each other.  See the Short History of the Family page of this website for a listing of people, in the third and fourth generations, whose records are found in both locations.       

• A few members of the Seeber family remained in Bischwiller after 1738.  One of them was Maria Elisabetha Seeber, born in 1724, the daughter of Johann Wilhelm Seeber and his first wife, Maria Magdalena Morel.  When Maria Elisabetha was married in Bischwiller in 1746, her father, Johann Wilhelm Seeber, was described in the marriage record (see below) as the "former" ("ehemahlig") woolen weaver in Bischwiller.   This indicates that he was still living but had emigrated or left the town.  Had he been deceased, the record would have used the German word "weiland" or "weyland."

• Bischwiller was a hotbed of emigration to America in the 1700s. Patricia Law Hatcher, in a series of articles in volume 44 of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, chronicles several families that left Bischwiller and settled in Pennsylvania.  She mentions that at least forty families had left the town.

• The Mohawk Valley Seebers had close ties over a long period of time with Isaac Paris, who was also born in Bischwiller.  In 1765, Isaac Paris served as baptismal sponsor of, and gave his name to, a son born to William Seeber and his wife, Elisabeth Schnerr. A decade later, Isaac Paris served with Johann Wilhelm Seeber on the Tryon Committee of Safety.  Like several members of the Seeber family, he fought in the Battle of Oriskany, where he was taken captive and later killed.

• One William Seeber and two Jacob Seebers were naturalized in New York in 1761 in New York.  These match the men in the group who disappeared from the Bischwiller records after 1738.

• Given names provide important hints that the Bischwiller and Mohawk Valley Seebers were related:

  1. The name Esther appears in both families.  Esther was a very common name for women in Bischwiller, but not in other areas. Therefore, it is significant that one of the Seeber siblings in the Mohawk Valley was named Maria Esther; it suggests strongly that she was the same person as Maria Esther Seeber who disappeared from the Bischwiller records.

  2. Three of the Seeber brothers in the Mohawk Valley -- Johann Wilhelm, Henry, and Severinus/Saffrenes -- named their first son William.  It was customary for men of that period to name their first son after their own father.  This supports the conclusion that the three brothers were all sons of Johann Wilhelm Seeber, born 1695 in Bischwiller. 

  3. Johann Wilhelm Seeber born 1721 named his first daughter Maria Magdalena, and Maria Esther (Seeber) Wabel named one of her daughters Anna Maria.  This supports the conclusion that Johann Wilhelm was the son of Maria Magdalena Morel, and Maria Esther was the daughter of Anna Maria Weber -- the first and second wives, respectively, of Johann Wilhelm Seeber born 1695.

  4. Given names in the Seeber Bischwiller family frequently reappear in the Mohawk Valley family, including William, Henry, Jacob, Isaac, Esther, Anna Maria, Elisabeth and Magdalena. 

• In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a family tradition among some Seeber descendants that the original Seebers had come from Alsace.  The research notes of Edward D. Seeber, deposited in the Montgomery County Archives in Fonda, list a half-dozen descendants who identified Alsace as the Seeber town of origin.  (Two of them mentioned a specific Alsatian town, "Havre Hill," which does not appear in any of the gazetteers or maps that I have consulted.)

    Conclusion: Viewed as a whole, the evidence summarized above is persuasive that the Seeber family migrated from Bischwiller to America between 1738 and 1741.  Meanwhile, the search continues for a record that will conclusively link the Alsatian and Mohawk Valley families.