Will my quest to find out where the Wellmeier family and family name came from lead to anything interesting?
I can't answer that now, but I can put updates to my efforts here where you can follow along.

November 2000

This month I redesigned my website (http://home.att.net/~wellmeier/index.htm)

December 2000

I am currently in close contact with another Wellmeier in Germany, hopefully related to me.
His name is Matthias Wellmeier and I met him by searching for the Wellmeier name on
an Internet search engine in 1996. We only corresponded briefly in 1996 and up until December
of 2000, there were no further contacts. Again searching for the Wellmeier name on the
Internet, I saw that there was a German Internet site listed as www.wellmeier.de I wasn't really
surprised to find that Matthias was behind (the creator) this website as I have noticed his
presence on the Internet a few dozen times over the last few years.

There has been a lot of email between Matthias and me this month.

21 December 2000 -- Matthias Wellmeier to Brian J. Wellmeier (Subject: The name "Meier")
28 December 2000 -- Matthias Wellmeier to Brian J. Wellmeier (Subject: My visit in Laer)
The contents of the above email will kept private at this time at the request of the sender.

January 2001

I have been typing all the information from the genealogy package developed by Annie Barhorst
and Judy Russell. Currently, I have almost 400 names typed into a Family Tree Maker file. I hope to
have all the information input from this source and may contact family members for new information.

February 2001

This month I was lucky enough to have some help from two of my cousins. Mary Jo (Wellmeier)
Gerwe made a trip to Kettering, Ohio to meet me at her sister Ellen (Wellmeier) Poti's house.
Mary JO brought several photos of the Wellmeier family and some genealogy information her father
Alvin F. Wellmeier had put together. Mary JO, a special thanks for making the long trip to meet me
and thanks to Ellen for welcoming me to your home.

I tried to make several improvements to the website this month. The photo gallery is where I spent most
of my time. Anyone wanting to view photos will have to start with Edward G. Wellmeier and follow the
links of his descendants to view their photos. There are several new photos throughout the gallery. Take
the time to see them and enjoy yourself! Have any photos to add to the Wellmeier Home Page gallery?
Send me a picture through email (wellmeier@hotmail.com) and I'll get it posted in the website for you.

June 2001

During the last couple months, I have been busy helping my wife take care of our newborn daughter so
I haven't made too many changes to the website. This month I created the Wellmeier Discussion Web.
This is basically a forum to post messages to this site and gives other people a chance to reply to those
posted messages.

I'm working on an additional photo page that will list everyone's photos by alphabetical order. This will
eliminate paging through the whole Wellmeier family to get to the photo your interested in seeing.

I downloaded a video streaming encoding program from the Microsoft website. I'm able to take family
video tapes and convert scenes into Windows Media Player files. Of course I had to start with my
daughter's video:

Clarice-Baby's Got a Tough Life Video Clip (56K Modem --Windows Media Player)
Clarice-Baby's Got a Tough Life Video Clip (DSL/Cable Modem --Windows Media Player)

I'm hoping to receive video tapes from other family members so I can selectively add more video streaming
clips to the Wellmeier Home Page website.

July 2001

I was lucky enough to hear from one of my cousins this month. Her name is Bettye Whitley
from Texas and she is a direct descendant of Clemens Anton Wellmeier. She was kind enough to send me
an 1898 Wedding Photo of John Joseph Werling and Magdalena Wellmeier, daughter of Clemens Anton Wellmeier and Anna Margaret Gruber.

August 2001

I wrote a letter to my mother Doris C. (Denton) Wellmeier's first cousin, Virgina Barkley from Summerville,
Georgia. I actually didn't know that Virginia was a first cousin to my mother until we had our first
conversation on the telephone. She was able to give me many details of my mother's childhood, my mother's
parents, and also sent me several Denton and Johnson family photos I had never seen before.

December 2001

The Joseph and Theresa Home on 301 Morton St. (formerly known as Old Brown St.) was featured in the Dayton Daily News -- Rehabarama Advertising Supplement on 7 December 2001. Although a little hard to follow if you're not intimately familiar with the Wellmeier history; it was still a good historic article.

April 2002

I received two emails from people (Wellmeiers) that found my Wellmeier Home Page website. I have not received enough information from the first person or received permission to include their correspondence here. The second person, Diane Wellmeier Grant, gave me permission to post her email here. I'm not sure if either one of these latest contacts are related to me, but I list all Wellmeier information regardless of relationships.

April 2002

I was lucky enough to register the "wellmeier.com" domain in my name this month and hired a company to do my web hosting on their server. I am currently consolidating data from two other servers onto the wellmeier.com server. Please be patient while I fix all the broken links during the process.

June 2002

Well, it's been quite a while since I've worked on my site. Actually in the last few months, I've been digging into my grandmother's maiden name ancestry. Her name is Annabelle (Sortman) Wellmeier. The Sortman family name came from the family name Zartman (I'm not sure if the name was purposely changed from Zartman to Sortman or if it was done by mistake). For any inquiries into the Zartman family history, please contact me for simple questions or email Mr. I. William Zartman at zartman@sais-jhu.edu for detailed information or copies of the Zartman books. Reliable information can also be obtained from Ron and Lois Zartman at TheZartmanFamily@aol.com.

I added a link to my Wellmeier Hardware Co. picture page. This link will connect you to the Montgomery County Historical Society "Twin Towers" Page. The page gives a little history on Xenia Avenue by presenting short snippets and pictures from many of the earlier businesses on "Dutch Boulevard."

I fixed all the broken links on my website (mentioned in my April entry above) with the help of my dear cousin, Bettye Whitley. Without her help, I may have never fixed several of the links. Thanks Bettye!

I am very sorry to say that I got only two responses from all the genealogy forms I handed out at the last Wellmeier reunion (September 2001). I am still very anxious to gather more information and update the records that I've inherited. Please take the time to fill out a form and email me for my postal mailing address. The information will never go on a website or be submitted to one of the online genealogy websites. The information I'm collecting will only be passed to other "known" family members. I can't do anything without the help of others. Thanks!

September 20, 2003

I added 60 photos from the 2003 Wellmeier Family Reunion. I changed the format of the reunion photo page this year to add thumbnail photos to make it easier to find specific photos. I also added a video clip I took at the 1982 Wellmeier Family Reunion. I hope you'll enjoy both of these additions.

January 01, 2004

I typed the name Wellmeier into a search engine and saw a reference to a Louis Wellmeier at a "Wellmeier & Scott Consulting, LLC" business in California. I wrote to Louis and found that he is related to the Wellmeiers in Dayton, Ohio. His father Frazier Wellmeier is the son of Hugh George Wellmeier, who was the son of Henry Clemons Wellmeier, who was the son of Clemens Anton Wellmeyer (please see family chart for more details). Louis told me that his grandmother Helen (Frazier) Wellmeier, the wife of Hugh George Wellmeier, is still living in Piqua Ohio and could be a great source of genealogy information for our family. I wrote an email to her and will be thrilled when she writes back.

June 29, 2004

Marilyn (Wellmeier) Agnew, a very beautiful and gracious lady, was kind enough to bring several old photos for me to copy. Marilyn, you've been such a wonderful person over the years, I can't put it into words. Thank you for being you! The photos she brought me include the following:

Vera Mary Wellmeier -- March 25, 1914 to July 31, 1922

Children of Louis and Annabelle Wellmeier -- Approximately 1940

September 19, 2004

There was a great turnout for the annual Dayton-area Wellmeier Reunion held at the Wadruhe Park in Miamisburg, Ohio. I was personally thrilled to see so many people there and to see so many people I haven't seen in years or have never met at all! As usual, Carol (Wellmeier) Koehnen did a great job planning and scheduling the event as well as supervising the many activities the day of the reunion. If you missed the reunion this year or just want to review all the attractive people you saw there, please click on the following link to see nearly 100 pictures of your favorite family members. 2004 Wellmeier Reunion Pictures

I would like to see more "branches" of the Wellmeier family displayed on this website. Would you like to submit some family photos and a little information that will help me properly display your family members on this site? Do you have a memory of a loved one you would like to share?

I am always trying to update the Wellmeier genealogy information I received from both Annie Barhorst and Judy Russell. I don't display the genealogy information on the Internet to protect everyone's privacy. I do think we should have a centralized database to collect and preserve any important family information, so I'm asking everyone to take the time to fill out genealogy sheets and submit them to me for inclusion in the database. Please download the form(s) from this website and email me for an address to mail them to. Also, if you have any questions or request genealogy information regarding the Wellmeier genealogy files, please send your inquiry to me and I'll answer you just as soon as I can. You can find the blank forms by going to:

http://www.wellmeier.com/helpfullinks.htm

I hope to see you all again in September of 2005!

Take care,

Brian

July 27, 2005

-- Message from Sister Nancy Wellmeier regarding the death of Anny Wellmeyer in Germany

----- Original Message ----- From: Wellmeier@aol.com To: bwellmeier@woh.rr.com Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:38 AM Subject: News from Germany Dear Brian, Here is a bit of news for the website. Hope the Wellmeier reunion was a nice event. Sorry to have missed it. I returned to Rome this week from some weeks away and found a letter from Roswitha Wellmeyer, sister-in-law of Anny Wellmeyer, who visited Dayton and the family some years ago and with whom Herb stayed when he went to Bad Laer. The letter was to inform me that Anny died on June 16 of advanced cancer. They asked that I inform the rest of the family. I had never met Anny, since I was in Arizona when she visited Dayton, but some of you may remember her. Thanks, Brian. Blessings on you and your family. Love, Nancy

************************************************************end of message*********************************************

For those of you who don't know who Anny Wellmeyer is, she is the woman from Germany who searched records of our family and drew charts of our family who came from Bad Laer, Germany. Although no family relation could be drawn between "our" Wellmeier family and Anny's Wellmeyer family, she was instrumental in proving our origin of Bad Laer, Germany. Please look at this link to get further information on Anny and our family charts she drew: http://www.wellmeier.com/genealogydocs/anniewellmeyerdocs/anniewellmeyerdocs.htm

August 5, 2005

Although I was looking for a break like this, I wasn't really expecting it! I received an email on 5 August 2005 from a woman named Maria Wellmeyer from Germany. She is a cousin of Anny Wellmeier who I mentioned in the above entry. Maria wrote the following email to me:

Maria and I exchanged several more emails during the next two months and we passed known family history back and forth to see if we could find common ancestors. This was a special time for Maria's family as they were having a family reunion celebrating 500 years of Wellmeyers in Germany. Maria told me that after the 11 September family meeting was past, she would then send pictures of the event as well as a Wellmeyer genealogy book that outlined family history back to the year 1500. She did keep her promise by sending the family genealogy book, a group photo from the event and was also considerate enough to send some brochures and literature about Bad Laer, Germany; this is the source of my family's genealogical beginnings (at least since the records were kept or preserved). The most important news from this exchange is that Maria's family and the Dayton Wellmeiers (descendents from Caspar Wellmeyer from Bad Laer Germany...Joseph Heinrich, Bernard Heinrich and Clemens Anton whow immigrated to Dayton from Germany in the 1860's. We should have a great time looking this material over at the next Wellmeier reunion in 2006. See you there.

December 21, 2005

The new Wellmeyer-Wellmeier Discussion Forum was launched on the Wellmeier Home Page today to give our family members a little space on the web to get together and share genealogy information, stories, pictures and anything else that comes to mind. It also serves as a way to catch people's attention who are surfing the net and typing in the names Wellmeyer or Wellmeier. The Wellmeier Home Page website is not only a place to share information but also a beacon that will draw other family members in to see what family is out there and shed some light on how the family developed in the U.S. after a few ancestors left Germany and established roots here. Please register in the Wellmeyer-Wellmeier Discussion Forum and check in time to time to see what's going on with your cousins. There are several hundred if not thousands of family members here in the states. We want to here from each and every one of you so "get in there" and post your personal hello just as soon as you can!

August 22, 2006

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a package from Roland Wellmeyer, one of our cousins from Germany. He sent what I would call a treasure of information, including a CD that contains the latest version of our family history. It is called the Wellmeyer Chronicles and has several entries and pictures that have not been included in previous files and books provided by our German cousins. The CD that he sent includes the "Wellmeyer Chronicles", basically an Adobe PDF book file that contains the German Wellmeyer genealogy files and the U.S. Wellmeier genealogy files. It also contains a current GEDCOM file (universal genealogy database file) of the Wellmeyer family in Germany, a separate GEDCOM file of the U.S. family data, and a separate GEDCOM file combining both of the Wellmeyer (Germany) and Wellmeier (U.S.) genealogy databases into a single database. Roland included a slide show of more than 200 recent photographs including photos of the towns of Bad Laer (where the Wellmeyer germ started according to Maria Wellmeyer), Bad Iburg, Rhine River/town of Boppard and much more. I want to personally thank Roland for all the time, effort and money he's dedicated to the Wellmeyer Chronicle project and for sending a copy of all the media that I'll now be able to share with everyone living in the U.S. who has an interest in the Wellmeyer/Wellmeier family genealogy. There are several other family members who have contributed to the German and US genealogy projects over the years and I would like to thank everyone who has done so. Every time someone provides data to us, we shall preserve that data and make it available to other family members, ensuring the information doesn't get broadcast to the Internet, thus providing a reasonable amount of attention to everyone's personal privacy. I should have a limited amount of copies of this new media for distribution to our family members at the next Wellmeier reunion sceduled for 10 September, 2006.

September 10, 2006

The annual Wellmeier Reunion (Dayton area Wellmeiers) was held on 10 September, 2006 at the Wadruhe Park in Miamisburg, Ohio. We were blessed with perfect weather that led to a great turnout. This year was a little different and special as we were treated to some genealogy information including pictures and family chart books from our cousins in Germany. Maria Wellmeyer from Lengerich, Germany and her cousin Roland Wellmeyer from Diez/Lahn, Germany have been communicating with me regulary since August 2005 and they have sent several documents, letters, pictures, etc. giving the Wellmeiers here in the U.S. a path back to our homeland. I also brought some pictures and artifacts from some of the U.S. Wellmeier business ventures. We also had two new attendees; Ms. Karen (Wellmeier) Bartley and Mrs. Norma Jean (Wellmeier) Collins from the Lawrence F. Wellmeier family line. Norma and Karen, thank you for taking the time to come join us, we were thrilled to see you there!

As usual, Carol (Wellmeier) Koehnen scheduled the event and brought games and goodies for the both adults and children who attended. Aunt Carol, thank you for keeping the family together for all these years and for putting the extra effort in making the reunion a lot of fun.

To all of those people who brought their children to the family reunion, bless you for giving your children the sense of family identity that will be important for our family unity in future generations.

Wheter you had a chance to make it to the reunion or not, please take a few minutes to go through the pictures I posted from the event.

I hope to see you all there at next year's reunion.

February 7, 2007

I'm always glad to get hits on the family website but I was extremely happy to get a hit from 14 year-old Brian Wellmeier (real name Michael Brian Wellmeier -- goes by Brian). He is a descendant from the Clemens Anton Wellmeyer line of the family which I rarely here from. Maybe Brian will be a good partner in gathering family information. Brian is living in Winterville, Georgia with his parents William Jr. and Elizabeth Wellmeier. Is there any more descendants from the Clemens Anton Wellmeyer line out there? If so, I would be very glad to hear from all of you!

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