Anna Elizabeth Weber

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Anna Elizabeth Weber (1751–1847), a 6× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth in the German principality of Hessen-Nassau, her parentage, her marriage to Charles Ludwig Kaler, her son William Henry 'Jost' Caler, and her long life concluding in the German settlement at Waldoboro, Maine.

Anna Elizabeth Weber was born on the 13th of August, 1751, in Herborn, Hessen-Nassau, in what was then a patchwork of small German states under the Holy Roman Empire. She was the daughter of Johann Jost Weber (1720–1790) and Anna Margaretha Mueller (1706–1780), and she came into the world during a period when the Rhine and Lahn valleys of Hesse were sending a steady stream of emigrants across the Atlantic in search of land and religious liberty. The mid-eighteenth century in the German principalities was marked by recurring war, heavy taxation, and the appeals of overseas recruiters — conditions which moved many Hessian and Palatine families toward the British North American colonies.

Anna Elizabeth was united in marriage to Charles Ludwig Kaler, a union which bound her household to the broader community of German-speaking settlers along the New England coast. Of this marriage there is recorded a son, William Henry 'Jost' Caler, born in 1777 and living until 1867 — a lifespan of ninety years that itself bore witness to the founding and early growth of the American republic. The retention of the name 'Jost,' carried from her own father, marked the continuity of German naming custom across the ocean.

Anna Elizabeth's later years were spent in Waldoboro, in Lincoln County, Maine — a town founded in the 1740s by Samuel Waldo as a colony for German Protestant immigrants, and one which long preserved the German language, Lutheran worship, and old-country customs of its first families. There she died on the 30th of March, 1847, having attained the remarkable age of ninety-five years. Her life spanned the reign of Frederick the Great, the American Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the early industrial age.

Anna Elizabeth Weber was a 6× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.