The extensive family tree was compiled by different persons. A first overview was in Eric Forbes’s Mayer biography, which was supplemented with records from the families Wittkampf and Asmus Mayer and research results of the Marbach city archivist Albrecht Guhring. Tobias Mayer and his wife Maria Victoria are in the center of the family tree. His father and grandfather were also named Tobias Mayer. Of his 7 brothers and sisters, only one survived childhood and similarly, two of Tobias and Maria Victoria Mayer’s eight children died at a young age. It is also interesting that the Nuremberg colleague Johann Michael Franz was married to a niece of Maria Victoria Gnüge. Franz probably brought Maria Victoria to the Nuremberg publishing house where Tobias and Maria Victoria met.
The two married just days before they moved to Göttingen.
Background-Information:
Family history, childhood and early youth in Marbach.
As Tobias Mayer himself writes, his mother’s ancestors come from the Remstal, but little is known about his ancestors on his father’s side. It is striking that there were relationships and relocations of the family Mayer between the Mayer cities Esslingen and Marbach.
In 1602 the city of Esslingen sought new citizens and the great-grandfather Friedrich Mayer moved in 1610 from Weiler to Esslingen.
In 1645, grandfather Tobias Mayer was born there.
1679 Before the fire in 1693 in Marbach, they moved to Marbach. His grandfather had a house in Mittlerer Holdergasse 44 and worked as a servant and wine grower. One brother, Johannes Mayer, lived as a shoemaker and „Oberthorwart“ in Marbach, as did his widowed sister Anna Maria Rothmayer. They owned a newly built house in Mittlerer Holdergasse. Presumably, buildings and land came from her already in Marbach resident mother.
1682 The father Tobias Mayer, with the same name, was born on 13.10. In 1707 he acquired the Marbach citizenship and works as a wheelmaker and since 1717 also as fountain master in Marbach. Presumably from the proceeds of an heritage part the father bought in 1709 the „Scheurenplätzle ob the former German school“ and built in 1711 the present „Tobias Mayer House“. Despite diligent work, the family remained heavily in debt and very poor.
1723 Birth of the „immortal Tobias Mayer“ on 17 February 1723, in the evening between 5 and 6 o’clock in the „Tobias Mayer house“, probably west side 1. OG front to the road. He is baptized in the name of Tobias, not Johann Tobias, as it is still called in many reference works or on street signs in Mayer cities. The confusion with the scientifically successful son Johann Tobias Mayer later led to some auxiliary constructions such as Johann Tobias the Elder or Johann Tobias the Younger. The daughter of the author of the booklet with the story about Tobias Mayer’s wife Maria Victoria, „Love, Moon and Stars“, Mrs. Anne Wenk, a descendant of the Mayer family, had difficulty explaining to her friends the merits of her ancestor and stated dryly : „A genius should not be called Mayer!“