The Weigand Family story is a truly American story, no less so where matters of faith were concerned, closely following the growth and transition that religion played in this country. Church played a central role in daily life for all branches of the family, though the denomination changes from branch to branch.

For the Weigands, hailing from Germany, as well as the LoGalbos from Sicily, Catholiscism was the faith of choice.

A good part of the family history for the Weigands of Rechtenbach came from St. Michael's Church above Lohr am Main in Rechtenbach. Family members for over 100 years were baptized and married at this church. In the late 1600s, when Konrad Weigand lived in Rechtenbach, the original St. Michael's was a small country church on the side of a mountain above the village. This building stills stands, though it is no longer in common use and a much larger church in the town replaced it in the 18th Century. Most of Bavaria's inhabitants in this southernmost part of Germany were, and still are, Roman Catholic. Roughly 70% of the Bavarian population belonged to the Catholic Church. While Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation swept much of Europe in the 1500s, Bavaria remained staunchly Catholic, with many of Luther's most vocal
opponents living there.

The first Catholic settlers arrived in Reading, Ohio in 1848, around the same time Johannes Weigand arrived in the U.S. It is likely the Schmidt family moved to Ohio around this time also. Religious services at first were held in private homes.  The laying of the first Reading church cornerstone occurred in 1850, and it was dedicated in 1851. It was named the Church of the Fourteen Martyrs.  In 1860, the Church of the Fourteen Martyrs was destroyed by a cyclone.  The new church, built on the same site, was much larger than the old one and was renamed after the Apostles, Peter and Paul, primarily because it was easier to celebrate the feast day of two saints than it was fourteen. The new church was dedicated in 1881 and it was here that Frank Weigand was baptized in 1886. He and all his siblings made their First Communions here and were also married in this church. In 1880, twenty acres were purchased on Reading Road for a new cemetery of the same name, and it is here that Joseph & Mary Schmidt Weigand are buried.

Flava Dudley's side of the family took a very different direction, as they were primarily Quakers, and later, Methodists.

While the early Dudleys of Virginia probably followed the traditional Church of England Anglican faith, later they, as well as all the families they allied themselves to as early American pioneers, were Quakers. The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, began in England as a nonconformist breakaway movement from English Puritanism. The Quaker form of worship, with its emphasis on silence & reflection, was alien to the accepted religious ceremonies of 17th-century England. The Quakers did not believe in special sacraments, since to them all life was sacramental. They also professed a staunch pacifism and refused to swear allegiance to any secular authority. These beliefs and practices were heresy to the Church of England. The ruling class in England felt that if The Friends believedt there was no necessity for appointed leaders in religion, they may apply the same principle to government. Quakers were branded as anarchists because of their beliefs and they were persecuted, imprisoned, publicly punished, and often banished in both England and Ireland. Like other Puritans, they came to the New World to escape from this persecution and to freely put their beliefs into practice. The State of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a British Quaker, specifically as a haven in support of religious freedom for all faiths.

Many Quakers were also anti-slavery as well as pacificists, and some Thornburg family members, allied to the Dudleys & Clevengers, worked as agents for the Underground Railroad in Indiana. Flava Dudley often told her children that “her people were Quakers when they first came to America.” Flava herself was a Methodist, a religion which gained great favor with early Ohio & Indiana pioneers, and which most of her family later converted to.

The Blackwoods, on Flava's mother's side, were Scottish or Scots-Irish, originally from Scotland. The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots name, The Kirk, is the national church of Scotland, but is not an established church and is independent of state control in matters of spirit.  It traces its roots back to the beginnings of Christianity in Scotland, but its identity is principally Presbyterian, shaped by Luther's Reformation in the 16th Century.

Presbyterianism as practiced by the Scots was a hard, unyielding faith. It was deeply suspicious of Christmas, and abominated graven images such as the crucifix. It did not recognise Easter as a celebration. King James insisted that his divine authority came before the Kirk's civil jurisdiction. This conflict between two uncompromising factions was to strongly influence this whole period of Scottish history.  Scotland was in an almost constant state of civil unrest because people refused to accept the royal decree that King James, and later his son, Charles, was head of the church. Those who refused to accept this signed a Covenant which stated that only Jesus Christ could command such a position, and they were effectively signing their own death warrant. This was a grim period of religious persecution which witnessed the bloodiest crimes of the nation's history, committed by Scots against Scots.

The term Scots-Irish refers to inhabitants of the United States who are of Ulster Scottish descent. The majority of these immigrants were descended from Scottish and northern English families who were transplanted to Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s. Beginning about 1615, a systematic relocation of mostly Lowland Scots settlers to Ireland was undertaken by Britain. Many of these settlers were tough, hardscrabble, subsistence farmers barely able to support their families. The Plantation was seen as a way to eliminate the problem of the Border Reivers, raiders and cattle-thieves who were causing instability along the Scottish-English frontier, and who were a potential problem for James VI of Scotland, who had recently also become King of England. He felt that transporting reiver families to Ireland would bring peace to the Anglo-Scot border country, and also provide fighting men who could suppress the native Irish Catholics. This was essentially the basis for the religious wars that plagued the Ulster region of northern Ireland into modern times.

During the course of the 17th century, the number of settlers belonging to Calvinist dissenting sects, such as Scottish Presbyterians, English Baptists, and French Huguenots, became the majority among the Protestant settlers in Ulster. However, the Presbyterians and other dissenters, along with Catholics, were not members of the established Church of England and were legally disadvantaged by Penal Laws, which gave full rights only to members of the English Church. So just a few generations after arriving in Ulster, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots emigrated to the North American colonies to escape this religious persecution. Between 1717 and 1770 alone, about 250,000 settled in the British Colonies of America and became known as Scots-Irish.

The first known Blackwood descendant in the United States, William Blackwood, was born about 1735, though we are not sure if he was born here or overseas. Either way, he may have come as part of the influx of Scots from Ireland. It is believed he first lived in Maryland, later moving to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. While there is no record of William's faith, each of his three sons seems to have followed different Protestant sects. His son James was a Baptist and son Thomas belonged to the Evangelical Reformed Church of Christ. Thomas son, Richard, who Victory Belle and Flava are descended from, joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, probably before moving to Missouri. It's possible his wife, who was born in Maryland, belonged to this faith.

The Methodist Episcopal Church in America was officially formed at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784. Circuit riders traveled by horseback to preach the gospel and establish churches until there was scarcely any crossroad community in America without a Methodist expression of Christianity. Disputes over slavery placed the church in difficulty in the first half of the 1800s. Free Methodists were staunch abolitionists, and very active in the Underground Railroad, especially in Kentucky & Ohio. Finally in 1845 at Louisville, the church split when the churches of slaveholding states left the Methodist Episcopal Church.

We don't have much data on Victory Belle’s religious affiliations in Missouri, but it's safe to assume she was a Methodist. Belle’s daughter, Flava, was raised as Methodist by her father and she later became a Sunday School teacher for the church in Muncie. When Flava met and fell in love with Frank, who’s family was Catholic, she was faced with a dilemma, as the Catholic Church requires children of such unions to be raised Catholic. Flava & Frank were married in SS. Peter & Paul Catholic Church in Reading. She later told her daughters “When I got married I promised that I would raise my children Catholic and I never go back on a promise.” She did indeed raise all of her children as Catholic, and with little help from husband, Frank. She made sure all nine of her children went to Catholic grade schools, though Flava herself remained a Methodist much of her adult life. She often volunteered to help the nuns at the school with chores, such as washing curtains. As the years went by, she learned a lot by helping her kids with their catechism lessons, and she finally converted at Sacred Heart Church in Melrose Park because she was afraid she would not otherwise be allowed to be buried with her family in a Catholic Cemetery.

Though eventually St. Gertrude's Church in Franklin Park loomed large in family life, Flava's children did not always attend St. Gertrude School.  They moved to Melrose Park about a year after Bob was born, and Ray was born there as well.  In Melrose Park the family attended Sacred Heart school and church. Ireta graduated from there and then went to St. Catherine High School in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.  She took the Lake St. streetcar to school, which was only a block from their house.  Tuition was $5 a month and she earned it by working. Ireta was in her second year at St. Catherine's and Evelyn was in 8th grade, looking forward to graduating, when the family moved to Joliet in February, just as the last semester was starting.  Liberty Fireworks, where Frank worked, moved to Wilmington, in the Kankakee River Valley, so despite the bad timing the family had no choice but to go. This was not long before the market crash of 1929. In Joliet, the kids all went to St. Mary's School, where Evelyn finished. Ireta and Evelyn went to Providence High School there. Tuition was $3 a month. They had just one year there before moving back to Franklin Park, with the younger children going to St. Gertrude's and the older ones to (East) Leyden High School.

As one of the younger siblings, Raymond went to St. Gertrude School when the family moved back to Franklin Park during the depression. The nuns of St. Gertrude were Franciscans, dating back to St. Clare of Assisi, one of the first followers of St. Francis. The Poor Clare Sisters lived by the Rule of St. Clare of 1253 and are a contemplative order of nuns dedicated to an austere lifestyle of poverty and prayer. He recalls one teacher in particular, Sister Ephrem. A stern disciplinarian, Sr. Ephrem was known for rapping what she considered to be unruly children across the knuckles with a wooden ruler. Years later, Barbara, Ray's daughter, who also went to St. Gertrude School, also encountered Sr. Ephrem, though now she was the Mother Superior and school principal. Like Sr. Aloysious from the Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Doubt”, everyone was terrified of getting called to Sr. Ephrem's office. By the late 1960s, she had disgarded the ruler, but her stern manner was no less intimidating, as she doled out “penances”, often small monetary fines, for everything from forgetting your uniform beret to talking at daily Mass or in the school hallway.

St. Gertrude Church,  founded in Franklin Park in 1901 about 10 years after the town itself, played a pivotal role in Weigand Family life there. Not only did most of Frank & Flava's children attend school at “St. Gert's” at some point, they were very involved with the Parish as young adults. In fact, if not for the church’s Young People’s Club in the 1940s, Bob & Ray Weigand may never have met their future spouses, Mary & Connie LoGalbo, two Italian sisters who were also members of the Club. The LoGalbo family moved to Franklin Park from the city of Chicago in the mid-1940s, when they also joined the church. Mary, Connie and their brother, Carm, were members of the choir then, and Mary remained a devoted choir member to the end of her life. The choir she was so devoted to for her adult life sang beautifully at her funeral service.

The St. Gertrude's Young People's Club was lead by Father Quinlan and later by Father Donald Ahearn, who joined the Parish upon his ordination in 1951. Father Ahearn instantly won the hearts of the children and young people of the parish with his friendliness and wit. He remained a life long friend to the Weigand family, returning to the Parish again and again, even long after leaving for greener pastures and greater roles, to conduct wedding ceremonies and funerals for the family. Pastor Ahearn officiated at the wedding of Barbara Weigand & Bill Syniar at his own St. Julianna's Parish in Chicago in 1980 and returned to St. Gertrudes' as guest officiant for the Funeral Mass of Mary Weigand in 1996. Fr. Ahearn remained in contact with the family even after his retirement from active priestly service.

Both Weigand brothers were married to LoGalbo sisters within a year of each other at St. Gertrude's, in the old church which shared building space with the school. A new church was later built in the early 50s at the corner of Rose & Schiller Sts., and the school took over the entire old building with rapid enrollment growth from the post-war era. All the young women in the family, as well as Flava, worked with the St. Gertrude's Altar & Rosary Sodality, which was dedicated to the blessed Mother and whose mission was to promote Catholic family life. Duties included reciting the Rosary, supplying the needs of the church sanctuary, conducting prayers at wakes and funerals and organizing social functions. The Weigand women were regularly called upon to provide dishes for these events, each supplying their own special dish, such as potato salad or baked beans.

Though a number of Frank & Flava's grandchildren attended public schools, all the children of Ray & Mary Weigand attended St. Gertrude's. Rick was an altar boy there, as was Bob’s son, Ray, and Barbara sang in the school choir and played organ for Sunday Mass services. Not all of the nuns there were as strict as Sr. Ephrem, and one in particular is fondly recalled by the family. Sr. Evelyn, who taught Barbara in 6th grade, was a catalyst for her pursuit of the arts, and later while in retirement, she volunteered to provide speech therapy for younger brother Chuck, upon hearing his rather pronounced speech impediment. She is also fondly recalled for her propensity for throwing erasers across the classroom, with remarkable accuracy, at the head of any student not paying attention in her class. While this didn't hurt anyone, the resulting chalk dust on the head of the offender left a lasting impression.

Frank & Flava Weigand celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary at St. Gertrude's, arriving for Mass in a Model T, to the delight of the many family members in attendance. Frank & Flava are buried together at St. Joseph's Cemetary in River Grove. In the end, Flava got her wish.