Wendel and Katharina (Mueller)Wassmer

The Wassmer brothers, Wendel and Marcus, were born in the Black Forest, called Schwarzwald, in Germany. It was the beginning of the nineteenth century. Around 1830 the two set out for America and landed in Canada. Their story will unfold on the following pages. Here is the couple that produced the Wassmers living mainly in Southern Indiana, Wendel and Katharina Wassmer. I have two stories about Katharina. As you may notice, she looks like a very stern person. She was. My dad said that when she came to visit, the children grabbed anything that looked like a switch and hid it, because their Grandma, Katharina, would grab the first switch she saw, and the first child she saw, and spank them. And when they said they hadn't done anything, she replied that the spanking was for the times they did something wrong and didn't get spanked. When she visited, and the children wanted some butter and jelly bread, they tried to get their mother, Lena, and not Grandmother Katharina, to get it for them, because their mother spread the butter and jelly all the way to the edges of the bread, but Katharina only put it in the middle!

I am the youngest of the great-grandchildren of Wendel, and am recording these things for posterity, to save this history from being forgotten. Some of these are recollections of mine, told by my dad, Charles Henry Wassmer, who died in 1962 at the age of 79. He was proud of his heritage, and told me some of these stories over and over again.

There are also recollections of other Wassmers. Many of the pictures, and some of the stories are by Bill Wassmer, son of Clem, son of Andrew, son of Marcus, son of Wendel. Bill worked on the Wassmer family tree several years ago, and did a magnificent job of it. Some of the quotes are from his book which he published and distributed to the family. Without his work and his book, this web would not be possible.