Anna Catherina Schupp

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Anna Catherina Schupp (1699–?), an 8× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth in Hessen-Nassau, her marriage to Theiss Matthias Weber, her son Johann Jost Weber, and her later association with Broad Bay, Maine. Notable: German emigrant ancestress tied to the colonial-era Broad Bay German settlement.

Anna Catherina Schupp, born in 1699 in the village of Sinn in Hessen-Nassau, Germany, entered the world during a period of recovery and renewed migration across the German lands. The closing years of the seventeenth century had left the small principalities of Hessen weary from war and economic strain, and the early decades of the eighteenth century would witness a steady departure of Hessian families seeking more settled lives — first to the Rhine, and in time across the Atlantic. Anna Catherina was born into this world of agrarian villages, established Lutheran parish life, and quiet rural rhythm.

She was joined in marriage to Theiss Matthias Weber, and from their union came at least one son recorded in the family papers, Johann Jost Weber, born in 1720 and living until 1790. The transmission of the Weber line through Johann Jost would carry Anna Catherina's descent forward into the generations that ultimately reached the compiler.

The close of Anna Catherina's life is associated with Broad Bay, Maine, a settlement that drew German-speaking families during the mid-eighteenth century. Broad Bay — later known as Waldoboro — was promoted to Rhineland and Hessian emigrants as a place of new beginnings on the rugged Maine coast, though arriving settlers found the conditions far harsher than the promotional accounts had suggested. The presence of Anna Catherina's name among the Broad Bay associations places her family within that broader current of Hessian and Palatine migration to colonial New England, a movement that planted German Lutheran and Reformed traditions along the Atlantic seaboard.

The date of her death is not preserved in the records gathered here, and her resting place remains unrecorded. Yet her passage from the hills of Sinn to the shores of Maine, and the continuance of her line through Johann Jost Weber, mark her as a quiet but essential figure in the family's transatlantic story.

Anna Catherina was the compiler's 8× great-grandmother on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.