Nannette was born Marie Anne Jacober in the town of Wittersdorf in France's Alsace region. She was the 7th of 9 children born of her parents and eventually came to this country in 1889 with her husband, Mathias Burgmeyer, and two sons, Michèl Rene and Georges Mathias. She had lost a child a few years before coming to the US and after coming here and settling in Newark, she and her husband welcomed another son (their 4th), Joseph Louis. 

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Family legend states that Nannette was a very industrious woman and started her own business by selling coffee at the local train station. Selling coffee led to a need for milk and that led to a need for cows, which then led to a need to get the milk back and forth which led to a need for horses. From horses, the business morphed into a trucking company that was run out of an office on Ferry Street in Newark which eventually took the name 'Burgmeyer Bros Trucking' which was run by Nannette's sons and was run by several members of the family until the 1960's when it was sold for several million dollars to a group that moved the company -- which retained the Burgmeyer Bros name -- to a terminal in Newburgh, NY. 

 

The attached pictures both feature Nannette. The first shows her with her grandchildren, George Burgmeyer (Nanny's dad), Joseph, and Mary, whom she raised. Nannette raised these three children because she didn't like the way they were being raised by their father and step-mother so she stepped in and took care of them, which is why George eventually named his daughter (Nanny) Nannette. The second photo, which I love, shows Nannette outside her summer home on Curtis Avenue in Belmar, NJ, a home which is still standing and we've seen it in person. There were 5 homes that were owned by different members of the Burgmeyer family and one is still owned by a relative (Ann Burgmeyer) to this day.