Portraits

Paul Weigel

Paul Weigel and his older sister Marie were the first of the Weigel family to make their way from Prussia to Wisconsin. The pair left Hamburg on 16 May 1877 aboard the Suevia and arrived in New York on 31 May. At the time of their immigration, Paul was 27 years old and Marie was 28. The pair probably came to Manitowoc first before moving to the area around St Nazianz and Chilton, WI.

After their brother Josef arrived the following Spring, he and Paul moved on to Marshfield and by 1880 had bought land on the county line in an area that would come to be known as Weigelsdorf. Meanwhile, Marie had moved down to the Milwaukee area probably to work in one of the many factories there. It is possible that she went with other single women from the St Nazianz area including Paul’s future wife, Anna Franzel. Anna made a Berlin sampler to display her skill with embroidery while she was working in Milwaukee in about 1878. Her sampler still exists and can be viewed at the North Wood County Historical Society.

On 21 February 1880, Marie Weigel and Stephen Luecke were married by a Justice of the Peace in Milwaukee. They remained in Milwaukee for a few years and were hosts for Marie’s brother Herman in 1881 as he tried to find work as a cabinet maker in the city. Paul Weigel returned to St Nazianz to marry Anna Franzel in 1881 and then brought her back to his farm at Weigelsdorf.

The Luecke family moved up to Marshfield by 1882 and settled in town along Central Avenue where they operated a saloon. Herman Weigel also settled in the city of Marshfield and went to work for Upham Furiniture. He bought a farm in Weigelsdorf in 1889 next to his brother Josef and rented it out while he remained employed at Upham’s factory.

The last of the Weigel brothers to arrive was August in 1882 after he completed his military service in Prussia. It is likely that August came straight to Marshfield to join his brothers after he arrived in the US. He bought a farm across Stadt road to the east of Paul Weigel in the Weigelsdorf community. 

In 1903 Paul and Josef Weigel took a trip back to see their father Franz in Prussia, their mother Amalie having passed away in 1901. The photo of the four brothers posed together was probably taken for this occasion and Marie Weigel Luecke was not included in the sibling photograph because she had died suddenly from lung inflammation in 1894.

The overseas trip was undertaken with Father John Eisen from Marshfield and 4 other men who joined the party on the journey to the old country. The group boarded a train in Marshfield and headed to Chicago. Once in Chicago, they changed trains and boarded the Nickel Plate route to Buffalo, NY.  From Buffalo they went on to Hoboken, NJ and then to Brooklyn, NY. The train trip alone was a three-day journey. Once in New York, they boarded the steamship Deutschland and were on their way to Hamburg. They spent a week at sea and then reached Germany. The party disbanded once they reached the continent and went separate ways for the remainder of their respective trips. The brothers spent a few days with their father in their home village and then repeated the voyage in reverse arriving home three weeks after they left. Their father passed away the following year.

Paul and Anna Weigel would work their farm having 14 children during the course of their marriage. They suffered hardships – the deaths of two children, Herman and Richard, as toddlers, and in 1905 a large fire on the property that destroyed two barns where much farming equipment was stored, an area of crops, fences, and apple trees. They were fortunate to be a part of a close-knit community who rallied around each other and had a new barn up on the property less than a month later.

Paul added gradually to his acreage eventually owning a 200 acre stretch of land going north along Stadt road for a mile and a half by 1915. His goal was purchasing enough land leave his sons well set up for farms of their own. Tragically, Paul died on 16 February 1918 from surgical complications. Anna lived on in Weigelsdorf in the family home with her sons Max and Leo until her death in 1932.