Wechter was born in Turku, Southwest Finland. His parents were merchant, mayor Henric Wechter and Anna née Simolenia. The Wechters were an old Turku bourgeois family. The city fell under Russian occupation during the great wrath in 1713 and the family could not escape. Henric Wechter hid a part of his large property and could not manage to tell the location of the treasure before his death. The cache was found at an academy construction site in 1802, when Esaias Wechter had already passed away.