John Weaver was my Grandma Evelyn's grandfather. John occupies a very special place in my genealogy charts. Of my 16 great-great-grandparents, John is the only one whose parents I am unable to identify. On some lines, I can go back 15+ generations. But with John, I can't get to the sixth generation. Here's why. John Weaver came from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the name Weaver is extremely common. He moved to Iowa as a young man, apparently without his parents. I know a lot about his adult life - he was a farmer and a brick mason, and every one of his six sons who lived to adulthood became brick masons.
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John Weaver and five of his sons. My great-grandfather,
James Baird Weaver is standing behind John. |
Last year, when I was in Pennsylvania for a conference, I went to Lancaster where I spent some time at the library and at the Mennonite history center trying to find John's family. No luck there but I did follow up on a lead my mom sent me a couple years ago. Two Weaver families in eastern Lancaster Co. caught my attention. Isaac Weaver, head of one of the families was a brick mason, living on Swartzville Road near other tradesmen such as masons and blacksmiths. In 1850, he had a son about the same age as John. The other family, headed by Henry Weaver, lived only a few miles away, but by 1860 had moved to the same area of Iowa that John did. Perhaps Henry was an uncle or cousin of John - I'll do more research to find out. But as I drove down along the Adamstown and Swartzville Roads, where several Weavers were living in 1875, I found this cute little brick house, which reminded me that my Weavers were brick masons. The photo at the bottom shows a house my great-grandfather James Baird Weaver built for his family in Los Angeles.
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| A house on the Adamstown Road (Lancaster) in 2010 |
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One of the brick homes James Baird Weaver built for
his family in Los Angeles.
They lived here from 1921 to 1924. |
*In genealogy, a "brick wall" is a research problem that is difficult to solve.
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