Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022
Mary “Polly” Schroeder was born in 1793 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Her neighbor in Oley was Samuel DeTurk Weiser.
Lenni-Lenape, of the Delaware tribe, called this area Olink, means kettle, which is roughly the shape of the valley. Oley was an important meeting place for Native Americans. The Sacred Oak, which is located about one mile from Main Street, is a more-than-500-year-old oak tree at which the Lenape made treaties and settled differences according to Wikipedia.
The first European settler-colonists arrived in the Oley Valley in the early 1700s. When they arrived, they found prosperous Lenape villages and fields of corn. The settlers were primarily German along with French Huguenots and Swiss seeking religious freedom. Pennsylvania Dutch was still the primary language of the settler-colonists until World War I.
Samuel DeTurk Weiser was born on November 5, 1783, in Oley, Pennsylvania, son of David Weiser, Jr. and Maria DeTurk. Samuel’s grandfather was David Jayner Weiser, Sr., who was born in Worms, Stadtkreis Worms, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany and came to America on Loyal Judith from Rotterdam, arriving on September 3, 1739. He came to America because his brother, Peter, had arrived earlier. Peter was a laborer, and in 1738 he wrote a will that said he was “very sick and weack in Body, but of perfect Mind and Memory. Thanks her given into God therefore, calling into Mind ye Mortality of my Body, and knowing that it is appointed me each amen once to Dye, do macke and ordain the my Last Will and Testament.” Peter died at 24 years old.
So, David Weiser, Sr. headed to America, married Maria Catherina Weidner in 1740, and acquired land as a settler-colonist, which was passed on to his son, David, Jr., and then his grandson, Samuel DeTurk Weiser, according to Ancestry.com.
Mary Polly married Samuel DeTurk Weiser on January 22, 1815, in Reading. Polly and Samuel had seven children: Esther, 1816; Christian, 1824; Theresa, 1828; William Frank, 1830; Dr. Josiah Schroeder, 1832; Joel Schroeder, 1834; and Annette Marie, 1839.
Samuel, a miller, was in failing health. When talking to their son and daughter-in-law Joel and Louisa after their marriage in May of 1854, Mary Polly and Samuel decided to give up their comfortable place in the east and cast their lot with Joel, Louisa, and the other two boys who now lived in Shakapee City, Minnesota Territory, according to Curt Eriksmoen’s column “Assassination in central ND likely was the spark that ignited the Dakota War” in Did You Know That.
The group immediately started for the west, via Niagara Falls, the Ohio and upper Mississippi rivers. However, before they reached St. Paul, Samuel died on May 17, 1854, on the boat, leaving Mary a widow before she reached her new home.
Mary Polly prevailed upon the kindly captain to allow her to bring the body to her destination where she buried him in St. Paul’s oldest cemetery, at the age of 68.
Mary Polly lived with her son, Joel, and his wife, Louisa Cleaver Weiser in Shakopee, where she enjoyed the grandchildren who were living in Shakopee.
Soon after the start of the Civil War in 1862, Polly’s son, William (wives were Mary E. Allen and Catherine McCallum) enlisted in Company I Ninth Regiment, Minnesota Infantry. Her next son, Joel (wife was Louisa Cleaver) also enlisted in the Company I Ninth Regiment, Minnesota Infantry and was at once ordered to Memphis to engage in fighting the Confederate forces. And Mary Polly’s other son, Dr. Josiah S. Weiser (wife was Eliza Victoria Hunt), joined the Company S First Minnesota Calvary Mounted Rangers commanded by General Henry Hastings Sibley, to pursue the Dakota Indians in the Dakota Territory.
Dr. Josiah S. Weiser was killed on July 24, 1864. Polly’s other two sons, Joel and William, returned to Shakopee in the fall of 1865.
Joel returned to his work as a mason in Shakopee until 1870, when he was offered a contract to do construction work in St. Paul. With the completion of his contract in 1874, he relocated 12 miles east of St. Paul to work on a farm. Polly and Louisa and children moved with Joel.
After working as a mason and farmer in eastern Minnesota for over twenty years, Joel and his family packed up their belongings and traveled by train to Worthington, a railroad stop located sixty miles west of Fargo, in northern Dakota Territory, not too far from where Dr. Josiah Weiser had been killed 14 years earlier. Joel filed a homestead and tree claim of 320 acres, four miles northeast of the railroad stop, and built a log cabin in Worthington, which was the second house built there. Polly moved there with the family. Joel would later change the name of Worthington to Valley City, according to a column written by Curt Eriksmoe.
Mary Polly made her home with her son Joel and family until the end of her life.
She passed away at the age of 84, in Valley City, Dakota Territory on December 11, 1879. She had the distinction of being the first white woman to be buried there, according to Find a Grave.
Bibliography
Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/178055336/recent.
BluMoKitty. “Mary ‘Polly’ Schroeder Weiser.” Find a Grave, 3 June 2013. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111756168/mary-weiser.
Eriksmoen, Curt. “Assassination in central ND likely was the spark that ignited the Dakota War.” Did You Know That, 29 May 2020. https://www.inforum.com/lifestyle/eriksmoen-assassination-in-central-nd-likely-was-the-spark-that-ignited-the-dakota-war.
“Oley Valley.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oley_Valley.