Hanged in the Corn Crib

Another instance of hanging oneself in a farm outbuilding was the sad case of Christian Carbein.

He was then 76 years old. He had been born in Germany, and there he married and started a family. In 1873 he and his wife, Lena, came to the United States, bringing their two small children and eventually settling at Deep River. They would have a total of eight children, six of whom survived them. The family doesn't seem to have been very prosperous. Christian described himself to census takers as a "laborer" or "day laborer," and although by 1900 he was a homeowner, he had not owned enough land to appear on the 1891 Plat Book.

In 1907 Lena died. Christian left the Deep River home and moved in with his daughter, Emma, and her second husband, John Hooseline, who farmed rented land in southeast Ross Township. They had three sons at home. Christian should have finished out his years pleasantly there, resting from his labors, playing with the littlest grandson (born in 1906) and going fishing with the older boys.

But his health grew worse. He suffered some kind of partial paralysis as well as crippling neuralgia. He couldn't do any more than the lightest work around the farm, and he couldn't enjoy being idle. He sank into depression. Sometimes he would say that he felt useless, a burden to Emma and her family, and even that he would be better off dead.

On the morning of September 19, 1912, Christian left the house to go out to the barnyard, as he did every morning. Emma thought nothing of it until she happened to step into his room, where she noticed that his best suit of clothes was missing. That he would go and get all dressed up before heading out to the barnyard struck her as so odd that she sent one of her sons to find him, to make sure he was all right.

He wasn't all right, of course. They found him in the corn crib, dead. He had tied a rope to one of the rafters and strung it around his neck, and then — because the rafter was too low to allow for jumping — he had simply bent his knees so the rope could do its work.

And to put on his best suit for the task! Did he want to look nice when he met Lena?


Christian and Lena are buried side by side in Woodvale Cemetery.


(Click on image to enlarge)



Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Christian Carbine, Aged 76, Commits Suicide by Hanging." Hobart News 26 Sept. 1912.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 27 Sept. 1912.