Background
He was born Antonius Wewer in 1836 in Harsewinkel, in the Prussian state of Westphalia, and as a teenager was trained as a carpenter.
He was born Antonius Wewer in 1836 in Harsewinkel, in the Prussian state of Westphalia, and as a teenager was trained as a carpenter.
He primarily worked in the Neo-Gothic style of architecture then popular. In 1858 he was admitted to the novitiate of the Friars Minor of the Province of the Holy Cross located in Warendorf in the Kingdom of Saxony, at which time he was given his religious name of Adrian. That same year the friars received a request from Henry Damian Juncker, the Bishop of Alton in Illinois, to help to care for the large German Catholic population which had settled in the region.
The first Friars Minor arrived that same year, and settled in Teutopolis, Illinois.
Wewer was one of a group of five friars who arrived in November 1862 to assist with projects of the friars in Illinois and Missouri. He was initially based at Saint Anthony of Padua Parish in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he designed the church built 1864-1869, after he had built his first church in Trowbridge, Illinois, in Shelby County, in 1864.
He also participated in the design of the interior altars and furnishings of the first Saint Francis Solanus Church in Quincy, Illinois. Wewer"s most notable structures are the Conception Abbey in Conception, Missouri and Francis Hall at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois.
Wewer"s work was so prolific and well appreciated, that, on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee as a member of the Order in 1908, he received a personal letter of appreciation from Pope Pius X. He was later sent to San Francisco, where he died in 1914.