Alan Spier
Address: Glastonbury (a suburb of Hartford), Connecticut, USA Fechter ancestors: Alice Fechter (paternal grandmother) was born in Conway, Massachusetts on 31 July 1868 and died in New Haven, Connecticut on 12 May 1924. She was the daughter of Henry Albert Fechter who was born on 5 October 1845 in Southbridge, Massachusetts and died on 23 September 1909 in Durham, Connecticut. Henry's father was John Fechter, born in Germany.My grandmother, Alice, also had a brother, Charles, whom I believe to have been born in 1874.
In 1888
or so Henry Fechter began marketing a patent medicine claimed to cure most
cases of baldness. It was called "Fechter's Famous Fairicon" and was
manufactured by Henry's company, The Fechter Remedy Company, in New Haven,
Connecticut, where Henry lived. The bottle in which Fairicon was packaged is
now a collector's item and has earned an entry in Richard Fike's "The Bottle
Book". New Haven also was the home base about the same time for the notorious
Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company which earned a chapter of its own in Richard
Holbrook's book, "The Golden Age of Quackery". The New Haven City Directory
reveals, not surprisingly, that in 1895 Henry was employed as a traveling
salesman for the Kickapoo.
Besides enjoying an appetite for peddling medicinal nostrums, Henry was
musical. A death notice in the Middletown (Connecticut) Penny Press reports
that Henry was 'a member of numerous well known musical organizations', and,
cryptically, that '[h]e was the senior member of the well known Fechter
family, who for several years traveled extensively, giving entertainments in
many states of the union.'
Henry's wife, Alice Edgerton Fechter, nee Alice G. Edgerton, and presumably a
member of Fechter family entertainers, seems to be a direct descendant of one
Richard Edgerton, the first Edgerton in America, who emigrated from England to
Connecticut in the mid-1600’s and became one of the original proprietors of
Norwich, Connecticut. He has an enormous number of descendants whose lineage
is elaborately documented on the comprehensive Richard Edgerton Geneaology
Database elsewhere on the web.
This musical theme continued on for another generation as the daughter of
Alice and Henry (my grandmother, also named Alice) was musical and met my
grandfather at the time both were members of a choral group in New Haven.
My paternal grandparent was a Spier. My great grandfather (Siegwart Spier - or possibly spelled Spear before he arrived in the USA) emigrated in the 1850's to Connecticut from Kassel, Germany. Siegwart's father's name was Asher Spier and his mother's, Peschen Fleischhacker. Apparently, Asher was the superintendent of an orphanage in Kassel, Germany.
Siegwart made the trip alone at age 13 and stayed with a cousin in Norwich,
Connecticut. He attended the Norwich Free Academy (a distinguished
secondary school in Norwich, Connecticut) and then went on to Yale Law School
(an undergraduate major in those days).
It was an incredible feat for a young Jewish, German-speaking boy in 1845, requiring much courage and initiative. Unfortunately, the stories and lore that accompanied his adventures are lost and I only know a bit more about him because of the excellent alumni records at Yale.
Any information anyone may have about these people would be greatly appreciated.
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