Weber, Henry J.–(1841-1915)–Nursery, Missouri (now called Affton)–son of Carl Christian Weber, was born Jonas Heinrich Weber, but abandoned his German name and always went by Henry J. Weber.  Prior to his father’s death, he began growing fruit trees for sale on six acres of the family farm.  This was the beginning of H. J. Weber and Sons Nursery.  In his youth, he worked on several St. Louis nurseries, before managing his father’s farm.  He married Emelia Christine Sutter on January 31, 1867, and later considered that to be the founding year of the nursery.  The 1870 federal census listed him as a nurseryman.   In 1877, Henry’s siblings sold him their parcels of the family farm.  Weber had eight children, all of the six surviving children worked in the nursery, with the four sons becoming their father’s partners in the nursery.  The nursery eventually became a large-scale commercial operation.  In 1899, Weber purchased 123 acres of Hardscrabble, the original farm of Ulysses S. Grant.  The firm was incorporated in 1903 as H. J. Weber and Sons Nursery, with Henry as president and his sons officials of the firm.  The firm had displays at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.  Their first catalog was published before 1892.  In 1925, a fire destroyed the family home and six other nursery buildings.  From 1935 until 1940, the nursery piled up deficits of more than twenty-five thousand dollars annually.  The nursery closed in 1940, a victim of the Great Depression.
Sources:  MHR