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The Family Bible and Album

George and Mary’s family Bible survives, kept with a German Luther Bible and an English-language family register. An illuminated page records their wedding. Ruled pages headed Marriages, Births, Deaths and Memorandum hold the family’s own entries in more than one hand.

The Births page gives each of the six children’s birth with the day of the week and the address. The Marriages page records five weddings from 1929 to 1948: “Ruth Esther Wesemann to Nicholas Ritter” on 27 July 1929 at Zion Lutheran Church, by Pastor Bela Shetlock; George Foster to Ida Lauterwasser on 27 January 1935; Elmer F. to Pearl Branchide on 22 June 1940; Emma Knoll to “Louie” Kulscher on 16 September 1942; and Naomi C. to Paul May on 9 July 1948. The Deaths page, apparently in Mary’s own hand, holds two entries: “Our little son, Ellwood George Wesemann, died May 26, 1915, 4 years & 10 months old, 3016 N. Germantown Ave.,” and “My husband, George Washington Wesemann, died April 12th, 1949, 73 yrs., in Philadelphia General Hospital”. The Memorandum page, headed “Grandchildren, date of birth,” records eleven births over more than two decades, from Ruth Esther Reitter on 2 May 1930 to a grandson born on 8 April 1953.

The family’s photograph album dates moments the records leave out. Mary appears in 1905 among about ten young women holding rackets. Ruth and Nick Reitter are pictured together in 1928, the year before their wedding (“Nick + I 1928”). Naomi, Ruth and Foster appear about 1920, Naomi again in June 1929, and Emma in 1927 and February 1937. George and Mary are captioned together “about 1942” and as “Mother & Father” in July 1943, and one page shows George with his sister Sophia Detwiler and Mary. Other photographs show Mary at her engagement, captioned “Wesemann, Mary M 1907 22 yrs,” and with Emma in 1939, and an unlabeled photograph of 1943 shows a woman holding an infant, plausibly Mary with a grandchild, possibly Emma’s first daughter.