GEORGE MICHAEL CONRADT
THE STORY AS I KNOW IT
George Michael Conradt was born in 1754 in Germany. There is an IGI listing at the LDS library that he was born Sept 30, 1754 of the Evangelish, Frudental, Neckarkreis in Wuerttemberg. I'll order the film which is available. The right area and the right time. Needs documentation. There is a family document that shows he married Regina and they lived Saxony Wurttemberg, Germany. The family tradition is that they feared Napoleon's army would swept through and take all their sons, so they immigrated to the United States about 1810. They settled in Fredericktown, in Frederick County, Maryland.
I have a handwritten genealogy of the Conradt family in America. The only clue to the author is the statement that the oldest son of George Michael and Regina was "my great grand-father". The Conradt Genealogy states that the couple came from Wurttemberg-Saxony with five children. He built a carpet-weaving factory there. At the time the genealogy was written the gray stone building was still standing. Wurttemberg and Saxony are not connected. The newspaper noted below states that he came from Wurttemberg.
I have a news article cut from an unidentified newspaper.
The byline
is New York Sun. There is no date. The headline is "FIRST
CARPETS MADE
IN STATE". Therefore, I believe it to be from a Baltimore
paper. The
article starts out with " Carpet weaving in the United
States harks
back to a certain George
Conradt,
of Wurttemberg who early in the
nineteenth century came to America and settled in
Frederick county,
Maryland. Made at first by a handloom on a drum studded
with pegs,
looking not unlike an overgrown old-fashioned music box,
his ingrain
carpets later became a mill product. To him goes the
credit for
establishing the first ingrain carpet mill in what was to
become the
United States of America." This is quoted directly from A
Century
of Carpet and Rug Making in America 1825 – 1925
published by the
Bigelow-Hartford Carpet Company of New York.
There were a number of articles about Geroge M. Conradt in
the Maryland Herald:
This implies
that he
was an important manufacturer in the textile industry of
Maryland.
March
14, 1806 about
Blue
and black Dying
Jan
22, 1812 about
printing
and printers
Jan
26, 1813
about fulling, dying and dressing
and one re Jacob
Conradt
about a woolen cloth factory, carding and spinning.
The known children of George Michael Conradt and Regina
were:
1. Christian Gottlieb Conradt
born 1796
wed Emily Mills Hughes of Hagerstown,
Md.
2. Ernest Theophilus Fredrick Conradt wed Eunice
Morgan
daughter of Peter and Eunice Morgan of Hartford
CT.
3. Jacob Conradt - He was a concert pianist and
was credited
with bringing the first piano to this country. His wife's
name is
unknown.
4. George Michael Conradt - his wife's name was
not listed on
the family genealogy, but The Fredrick County Court
Marriage
records state that George Michael Conradt Jr. wed Margaret
Fessler.
He
was a music professor in Baltimore
5. Christina - "known for her violent temper" she
never married.
I have two small portraits of George Michael Conradt and Christina Conradt. The Swiss artist David Bowdin of Geneva Switzerland did them. On the back is a note stating that they were painted February 10, 1813 in Funkstown Washington County state of Maryland.
George Michael Conradt
Sr.
died March 15, 1836. It is not known where he is
buried.
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Date Last Edited: 11/25/2011