Carl David Weber (entrepreneur)

Carl David Weber , later Charles M. Weber (born February 18, 1814 in Steinenken , † May 4, 1881 in Stockton (California) ) was a German-American entrepreneur. He was the founder of the city of Stockton.

Life

Weber came from an old reformed pastor's family. He spent childhood and youth in Homburg , where his father became president of the local consistory and later dean. His father, Karl Gottfried Weber, was close friends with the Homburg regional commissioner Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer , who later initiated the Hambach Festival . After attending primary school in Homburg and grammar school in Zweibrück , Carl David Weber completed a commercial apprenticeship in Homburg. In the household of his teacher, the merchant Christian Scharpff, he came into contact with his son Christian Scharpff and through him with Johann Georg August Wirth , the editor and editor of the Deutsche Tribüne . In 1836 Weber emigrated to the United States with his cousin Theodor Engelmann .

After a longer stay in New Orleans - during this time he was probably fighting in the Texas War of Independence - he wanted to move to Belleville in 1841 , but on the way to St. Louis he joined the pioneer group under the direction of John Bidwell , with whom he did the beginning of November 1841 then still reached Mexican California . It was one of the first groups to cross the continent on the California Trail . In 1841/42 Weber got a job as a supervisor for Johann August Sutter , the "Emperor of California". In 1842, with a partner, William Gulnac, he set up a flour mill and other businesses in San José , including a forge, a hotel, a shop and a shoe and soap factory. In 1845 Weber acquired nearly 20,000 hectares of land that Gulnac had previously bought from the Mexican government. He served as a captain in the Mexican-American War . In 1847 he had the first residential buildings and stables built on his land in the hope of further influx of settlers. Immigration began after California was ceded to the United States (1848) and especially after the gold discoveries at Sutter's Mill . First the prosperous settlement Tuleburg called, received from Weber later after the officer Robert F. Stockton named Stockton . It developed into a center of the San Joaquin Valley.

literature

• Roland Paul : Carl David Weber - A pioneer of the West . In: Roland Paul, Karl Scherer (ed.): Palatinate in America. Palatines in America (= writings on the migration history of the Palatinate 40), Kaiserslautern 1995, pp. 196–198

Web links

• Entry for Carl David Weber in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database