MY GERMAN HERITAGE
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| Mathias Otto Opdenweyer was born July 25, 1837, in Willich, Krefeld, Dusseldorf, Rhineland, Prussia. He came to America about 1842 with his mother, Maria Catharina Diepes Opdenweyer and 4 siblings. His father came to America in 1838. He was Johann Joachim Opdenweyer, born in Amern, Rhineland, Prussia on May 12, 1802. Both of his parents were master carpenters! His father was a cabinet maker in New Orleans until about 1859. Otto switched his two names and grew up in the Crescent City. He served the Confederacy in the Civil War. He was a POW for 4 months. He was married twice, first to Doris Bohne who died in 1866, then to Alzada Bowman, who died in 1915. Otto died in Galveston, Texas, of tuberculosis at age 39. His father Joachim was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1846 in Jefferson Parish, LA. His mother died in Algiers, LA, in 1872. |  |
In looking for clues to my great-grandfather's Opdenweyer background, I discovered that some members of his family are buried in the Felder Cemetery in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. They were the children of his older brother. According to the IGI records at Family History Center, there were Opdenweyers in the Rhineland (near Holland) as early as 1643. The records go to 1794. This region was a part of Prussia then. Apparently, Otto was married at least twice. His first wife, Doris Bohne, died on Nov. 21, 1866, at the age of either 21 or 22. Carl Wilhelm Opdenweyer was born in May 1835 in Willich, and later changed his name to William Charles. He died July 14, 1883 at age 49. William was the industrious builder of several logging businesses in Livingston and Ascension parishes before his premature death. There are records that his widow, Mary Catherine Wugely, and their children took over the business the year of William's death. William appears in the Livingston Parish, LA, census for 1870 and 1880. There are no Opdenweyers in the census indexes before 1870. Mary Catherine Wugely was born in Alsace-Lorraine. Her father was Jean Wugely and her mother was Elizabeth Wessbecker, both from France. She spoke with a heavy German accent, say those who remember her. Known as "Little Grandma," she died at 79 on March 26, 1924, in Pasadena, Calif. A Livingston Parish history buff and lumber mill researcher named Clark Forrest provided information about the Opdenweyers and their lumbering concerns: William, who was residing in Brazoria County, Texas, on June 20, 1875, bought a lumber mill in Livingston Parish from a broker in New Orleans. After William's death in 1883, Mary became head of the company. On March 5, 1905, a company was incorporated called the Opdenweyer Cypress Lumber Co., Ltd. Stockholders were Mary, president; son Frank M. Opdenweyer, vice president; son John W. Opdenweyer, secretary-treasurer; son William H. Opdenweyer, daughter Sophie E. Opdenweyer, daughter Louise M. Opdenweyer Heap, son-in-law James McG Heap. In 1912, a son of William named, William H. Opdenweyer moved to Portland, Oregon, and went into the lumber business there. Then in 1998, I found his descendants, including a son, Albert Opdenweyer. He knows very little about his family in Louisiana. Opdenweyer is a Dutch name, meaning "up the water." I found it interesting that my materal grandparents had Dutch backgrounds even though Oma used German traditions. Oma's mother, Alzada Jane Bowman, could have been descended from Germans, also. We have not found out who the parents of Calvin D. Bowman were. He came to Louisiana in the 1830s from either Kentucky or Pennsylvania. Beyond his birth in 1816, nothing substantive is known. His first wife and my ancestor, Julia Ann Wills, was born in Louisiana. |
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My childhood memories of my maternal grandmother are of her home in Dallas, Texas, where I was always impressed with how they lived. She was called "Oma ," and her husband was "Popee". |
Their home was a sprawling three-bedroom ranch with some nice accoutrements, such as a wide sunporch, large dining room, pool room, and chickens in a pen behind the house! Off to the side was a large garden. Oma's traditions were decidedly German as her father was named Otto Opdenweyer (above). Oma was a delightful lady who loved to read murder mysteries, yet was a charming hostess, collected perfume bottles, and despite the loss of an eye in her youth, was an accomplished pianist. Just incidentally she was the mother of six children who cut a wide swath across the planet just as her husband had done as a precedent-setting Methodist minister for 40 years. One son won a Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting; one son was a highly respected pediatrician in Dallas; one son was a PhD in literature, and one daughter was "Tante," a red-haired globetrotter who entertained the rich and famous in her modest home in Texas, and one daughter was a fine pianist in her own right and knew her way with words, too. She was my mother. Sadly, when Oma died in 1956, her obituary failed to mention very much about HER. It just extolled the virtues of her husband and listed her children as survivors. Oma came into the world as Julia Catherine somewhere around a curious-sounding place in swampy Louisiana called Barbary Bayou, on July 20, 1868. She was the only child of Alzada Jane Bowman and Otto M. Opdenweyer, who had married a short time before. Their union linked two sawmill families in Livingston Parish. Julia Opdenweyer was 7 years old when her father died. Later she had a stepfather who also died young, then was raised by her mother, a very remarkable woman for the time. Oma said she lost the sight of one eye while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico with her Dad. She was cutting fishing line and the knife jerked back into one eye. Her Dad was a cotton broker in Galveston, Texas, when he died. His burial site is still unknown. Despite this handicap, the young girl became a pianist, like her mother. It was while serving as an organist in a Methodist church in San Antonio, Texas, that Julia met her future husband, Hubert Delancy Knickerbocker.
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