| Notes |
- IMMIGRATION:
Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s Record
Name: Anton Seibert
Year: 1855
Place: Illinois
Source Publication Code: 8368
Primary Immigrant: Seibert, Anton
Annotation: Entries located in the Introduction are indicated in this index by the code I.
Source Bibliography: SHELLEY, JANE, and ELSIE M. WASSER, compilers. Naturalization
and Intentions of Madison County, Illinois: An Index 1816-1900. Edwardsville, Ill.: the compilers, 1983. 163p.
Page: 132
BIOGRAPHY: Hi Recs - pleasure hearing from you. Thanks for thinking, still, about the
Eisenhauer letters. I've been swamped, too, and gone little farther, but
am still very interested. I entered a couple quick comments yesterday, which you acknowledged below.
I have today exchanged emails with Sherry Mitchell, the source of the hard copy documents which substantiated my comments of yesterday... She tells me there is even more documentation (three later census reports) confirming the idea that Ferdinand Seibert was born in Rochester, New York
in 1851 rather than in Illinois (which information is listed in the 1870 and 1880 census reports). The confusion over whether Ferdinand was born in Illinois or in Rochester, New York, is not completely resolved in favor of Rochester, as far as I am concerned (and this is an important point for us
in attempting to determine when Jacob and Balthasar Seibert, both living in Rochester starting in 1850, may have left for Illinois). I apologize for not having begun to provide substantial the results of my
research into the descendants of Balthasar and Anton, those two brothers of Jacob Seibert (b. c. 1818 in Birkenhoerdt). I am close to beginning to provide you with my results, and will document each "claim" as thoroughly as possible for your records. Even before beginning to do so, however, I would like to put on paper a very important set of insights concerning Anton Seibert. He has for some
time been recorded in the online database of the Birkehoerdt Project as having "disappeared", essentially (no information re marriage or death was available). I think I know the answers to all these questions, and will outline these below. More importantly, the insight which allowed me to
make the identification of Anton Seibert of Birkenhoerdt as being the same Anton Seibert living in Belleville, Illinois by 1855 at the latest, is based on information known only to me, and which I think it is entirely possible no one could with certainly reproduce. For this reason, I'd like to go ahead now and give you the basis for this important "conclusion". (I'll sleep better knowing someone else knows this information, frankly.) Hardcore documentation proving beyond any doubt that the Anton Seibert
born in Birkenhoerdt and brother to Jacob and Balthasar was the same person as the Anton Seibert living in Belleville, Illinois in 1855 has not been found, even after a very diligent search effort. The evidence I have collected is nonetheless compelling for me, that the two Antons are the same person. My evidence is the following: In 1972 I traveled to Du Quoin, Illinois, to research Seibert family
history. I met by accident a man named Alvin Seibert, almost 80 years old, in Du Quoin. While he told me that he was a grandson of a man named Jacob Seibert, I did not know for sure whether he was a descendant of the "right" Jacob Seibert - of the man who was brother to my ancestor Caspar
Balthasar (& Margaretha Wegmann) Seibert. It was clearly possible that he and I were descended from different groups of Seiberts. Although neither he nor I was able to connect our two families with certainty, he told me what he knew about his ancestors and other Seiberts. Very promisingly, he
indicated that his grandfather Jacob had had a brother named "Balsy" - who might have been my ancestor "Balthasar" AKA "Balser". Unfortunately, and in fact very confusingly, he said that this "Balsy" had only had 2 sons, Louis and Leopold, and no daughters (when in fact my Balthasar Seibert had
only 3 daughters, Elizabeth, Kate, and Mary). (For this reason, 30 years went by after 1972, in which I was not at all convinced that Alvin Seibert and I were related at all.) He completed his account of his branch of the Seiberts - impressing me very much, incidentally, with the clearness of his recall of most of the information he remembered - stating even the names of most of the children of Louis and Leopold, as well as where Anton, Louis, and Leopold lived (near Mascoutah, Illinois). It was clear
he was speaking of definite people, and of relatives. Unfortunately, it seemed that his Jacob Seibert might be a different person from the one related to me. A few months ago, I made contact with Ms. Sherry Mitchell, online, who grew up in Du Quoin and is also descended from the same Jacob Seibert as Alvin Seibert - who she knows to be "my" Jacob Seibert of Birkenhoerdt. Thus she proved the connection of my Seiberts to those of Alvin Seibert - and simultaneously validated his stories about Louis and Leopold Seibert, etc. The problem for me switched from trying to determine whether Alvin
was related to me or not, to figuring out how his at first contradictory stories of "Balsy with two sons" could be made to fit the real facts. At this point I made a "leap of faith" and guessed, with great luck, that Anton Seibert of Birkenhoerdt might have been the father of the Louis and Leopold Seibert mentioned by Alvin Seibert, rather than "Balsy". Starting from this hypothesis, I have since been able to convincingly substantiate this hypothesis. Online searches almost immediately turned up and 1860 and 1870 census records for Anton Seibert, living with his THREE sons Jacob, Louis, and
Leopold, and wife Katherine Nebo. I also discovered the marriage record of 1855 for one "Anthony Seibert" and "Katherine Nebo". Moreover, I discovered a reference to Anton's early death in 1873, at age 46. (I believe that it is because of Anton's very early disappearance in contrast
to his brothers, each of whom died 20 to almost 30 years later, that Alvin
Seibert had no recollection of Anton Seibert.) The above information sufficed and suffices in my mind to make a compelling case for the Anton Seibert of Belleville, father of Jacob, Louis, and Leopold, having been the same person as Anton Seibert of Birkenhoerdt. As indicated above, I have diligently sought after absolute proof of their identity - have, for instance, tried all avenues to find the birth date of the Anton Seibert who died in Belleville in 1873, with no luck. His age at the time of death, however, was 46 - which is consistent with the known date of birth for the Anton Seibert of Birkenhoerdt (1827), even though this does not suffice to PROVE the two men were the same Anton Seibert. I have gone on to fairly well trace the offspring of Anton Seibert. Anton's death record at the Mascoutah Illinois old "Holy Infant Childhood Church" shows his wife's name to have been "Katherine Newa" (note spelling, in contrast to the "Nebo" spelling in their 1855 marriage record). Son Jacob Seibert died in 1878, and is buried in the same Mascoutah Old Holy Infant Childhood Cemetery as Anton (they are the only
two Seiberts in that cemetery). Jacob is identified as having been the son of Anton Seibert and Katherine Newa (I know there are 2-3 documented appearances of the spelling "Newa", and only one of "Nebo" as in the 1855 marriage). Anton's widow Katherine Newa Seibert remarried to one August Rother in the Mascoutah area before the end of the same year that Anton died. In the census of 1880, they are listed as Katherine and August Rother, and Louis and Leopold are living with them, listed as "step-sons" of August Rother. Leopold never married. Louis married and had various children, most of
whose names I had already received, amazingly, from Alvin Seibert. And so on. I look forward to sharing with you all information I have been able to discover about Anton Seibert and his descendants, and on my line (through brother Balthasar Seibert) as well, very soon. Note additionally concerning Anton Seibert's wife, Katherine Newa, that there are other people named Newa living in the Mascoutah area in the late 1800's. I am convinced that they are of the same family, although I have no proof. I speculate that Anton and Katherine Newa lived in the Mascoutah area because of her family ties there - while Jacob and Balthasar Seibert both spent most of their lives in the Du Quoin area. (Immediate
descendants of Anton Seibert lived not only in the area of Mascoutah, which is in St. Clair County, Illinois, but in adjacent "New Baden", which is in Clinton County, Illinois.) Again, I will provide more complete information about all these folks and a lot more in the very near future. Right now, however, I am all too keenly aware, at the moment, of the very "tenuous existence" of my identification of Anton Seibert in Mascoutah as the same Anton Seibert from Birkenhoerdt. A little diversification of this knowledge, which may be uniue and unreproducible, makes me feel a little better! :)
Thank you, as before, for all the hard work you are doing. It is greatly - greatly - appreciated.
My best to you and Ursula. I hope your summer weather is beautiful. With a
lot of luck, I may have the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time in
Germany next summer. I can't wait!
All the best,
Robert Donnell
DEATH: http://www.compu-type.net/rengen/stclair/prd6.htm
N - S's PROOF OF DEATH INDEX, 1870-1880, ST. CLAIR COUNTY, ILLINOIS
SEIBERT, Anton (46y.) 22 Apr 1873 P. 148; NO. 590
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1826 - 1873 (46 years)
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