- Born: About 1638-1640 • Lampertheim, Hesse, Germany
- Died: 1695 • Lampertheim, Hesse, Germany
- Also recorded as: Zacharias Wegerlin, Zacharias Wägeli, and possibly other spelling variants
- Wife: Anna Elisabeth Treiber, according to current family research
- Married: May 8, 1660, according to current family research
- Relationship: My eighth great-grandfather
Zacharias Wegerle is the earliest person I currently place with reasonable confidence in my direct Wegley paternal line. He lived in Lampertheim, in what is now the German state of Hesse, during the seventeenth century, but the surviving information about him is much less certain than the records available for later generations.
Older versions of my family tree gave Zacharias a precise birth year of either 1638 or 1640, depending on the source. Because those dates conflict and I have not yet located an original baptismal entry that resolves the question, I now prefer to describe his birth as occurring about 1638-1640.
The Earliest Generation I Can Currently Trace
Working this far back in the family tree is very different from researching relatives who lived in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania or twentieth-century Oklahoma. No census schedules list every household member, no death certificates name parents, and no photographs or newspaper obituaries help confirm identities.
Instead, the reconstruction depends heavily on church records from Lampertheim, later indexes of those records, and relationships built by comparing names, marriages, baptisms, and deaths. That makes it especially important not to treat a probable connection as proven fact simply because the same information appears on dozens of online family trees.
Was His Name Really Wegerle?
The family surname is already unstable by the time we reach Zacharias. Records and family trees connected with this line use forms such as Wegerle, Wegerlin, Wägeli, Weigel, Wageli, Weigle, and several other spellings.
I no longer believe there was a simple chronological progression in which the family was called one thing in the 1600s, another in the 1700s, and something else in the 1800s. Records of Johann Paul Wegerle and his children show that different versions of the surname could appear during the same person’s lifetime.
For that reason, I am using Zacharias Wegerle as the primary form on this page because Wegerle is the spelling that continues into the next firmly identified generation through Hanß Philipp Wegerle. Wegerlin and Wägeli should remain as documented or reported variants rather than being treated as entirely different family names.
Lampertheim
Zacharias lived in Lampertheim, a community in the Rhine region of what is now Hesse, Germany. His lifetime fell during a difficult period in Central European history, only a generation after the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War.
The war ended in 1648, meaning that if Zacharias was born around 1638-1640, his earliest childhood occurred while that conflict was still underway. Even after the fighting ended, communities throughout the region spent years rebuilding populations, farms, churches, homes, and local economies.
That historical background is worth including because it helps explain the world into which this family emerged. It does not tell us what happened personally to Zacharias, however, so I would avoid claiming that his family suffered a particular wartime event unless a record specifically documents it.
Anna Elisabeth Treiber
Current family research identifies Zacharias’s wife as Anna Elisabeth Treiber. She is generally listed as having been born around 1636-1638 and dying in 1720.
A marriage date of May 8, 1660, in Lampertheim is widely attached to the couple. Until I can examine or obtain a reliable transcription of the original church marriage entry, I would describe that date as strongly reported rather than absolutely proven. If the marriage date is correct, Zacharias would have been approximately twenty to twenty-two years old. Anna Elisabeth would have been of a similar age.
Their Children
This is another area where my older research became more certain than the surviving evidence justified. Some online trees attribute as many as fourteen children to Zacharias and Anna Elisabeth, while the records I have accumulated actually contain a smaller group of named children, and several entries contain obviously impossible dates.
The children currently attributed to the couple include:
| Child | Dates currently associated with the record |
|---|---|
| Hanß Philipp Wegerle | 1664-1747 |
| Anna Catharina Wegerlin | born about 1665 |
| Han Georg Wegerlin | 1667-1668 |
| Anna Maria Wegerlin | born about 1669 |
| Johann | about 1672-1678 |
| Johann Nicolaus Wegerle | 1675-1731 |
| Johann Peter Wegerle | 1678-1678 |
| Johann Heinrich Wageli | 1678-1678 |
| Johann Martin Wageli | born about 1679 |
| Johann Georg Wageli | born about 1681 |
| Paulus Wegerle | 1684-1684 |
| Euphrosina Wegerle | 1686-1686 |
I would not publish the old dates that show Johann Martin as “1679-1678” or Johann Georg as “1681-1668.” Those are chronologically impossible and clearly indicate transcription, merging, or tree-entry errors that need to be resolved against the original church records.
Likewise, I would not currently say the couple had fourteen children. A safer statement is that a number of children are attributed to Zacharias and Anna Elisabeth, with at least twelve names appearing in existing research, but the complete family group still needs verification from Lampertheim parish records.
Hanß Philipp Wegerle
The child who matters most to my direct family line is Hanß Philipp Wegerle, born in 1664. He later married Barbara Keßler in Lampertheim on June 19, 1691, and their son Johann Paul Wegerle became the immigrant ancestor who carried this branch of the family to Pennsylvania in 1732.
That connection creates the direct line I currently use:
Zacharias Wegerle → Hanß Philipp Wegerle → Johann Paul Wegerle → Philip Wagerline → Johan Frederik Weigley → Joseph William Wegley → John Wesley Wegley → Frederick Wegley → Raymond Edward Wegley
The later generations in that chain are supported by increasingly strong records. Zacharias remains the point where the documentary trail becomes much thinner, which is why I want to clearly distinguish what is established from what still needs verification.
Who Was Zacharias’s Father?
My older page identified a man named Hanß Wegerlin, sometimes rendered Han Wageli, as Zacharias’s possible father. At this point, I do not think there is enough evidence to publish that relationship as fact.
It may prove correct eventually, but repeated claims in online family trees are not sufficient evidence on their own. I would therefore remove the statement that Zacharias was the “only known child of Hana Wegerlin” unless an original or reliable parish record can be found connecting the two men.
For now, I would list Zacharias’s parents as unknown.
His Death
Zacharias is generally reported to have died in 1695 in Lampertheim, at approximately fifty-five to fifty-seven years old. That date appears consistently enough in compiled research to retain provisionally, but the underlying death or burial register would still be preferable.
A Find a Grave memorial places him at Friedhof Hüttenfeld in the Lampertheim area. Find a Grave is useful for locating clues, but it is not an original seventeenth-century burial record, so I would not use the cemetery attribution as definitive proof of where Zacharias was buried without additional evidence.
What We Actually Know
The most important improvement I can make to this page is separating the documented family line from accumulated online genealogy. Zacharias very likely belongs immediately above Hanß Philipp Wegerle in this family, and Lampertheim is consistently associated with both generations, but the evidence becomes considerably less complete once we move into the mid-seventeenth century.
The Beginning of the Known Wegley Line
For now, Zacharias Wegerle represents the earliest generation I can reasonably connect to the family that would eventually become the American Wegleys. His grandson Johann Paul would leave Lampertheim for Pennsylvania in 1732, beginning a migration that eventually carried the family from Germany through Pennsylvania and into many other parts of the United States.
Another generation may eventually appear behind Zacharias. Until original Lampertheim records prove who his parents were, however, I would rather let the documented family story begin here than attach another name to the tree simply because it appears in other people’s research.