Ida Lewin Sievert

(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Hobart Gazette 29 July 1921.

Ida Lewin's parents, Fred and Augusta, were married in 1870 in Germany, and immigrated the next year. All their children were born in the United States. In 1880 the family lived in Chicago, where Fred worked in a foundry, but sometime later the family moved to northwest Indiana and took up farming. Judging by the fact that their children were intermarrying with locals by the mid-1890s, I dare say that if the 1890 census had survived it would record them already here. By 1900 three of their four children had married; and Fred and Augusta were farming in Porter County with the help of their last single child, 16-year-old Louis.

And so in 1896 Ida Lewin had married Henry Sievert and went from farmer's daughter to farmer's wife. I have already traced their subsequent history to some extent in talking about the marriage of their daughter, Elsie. In addition to the mysterious Randhan farm, they also occupied, at various times, a farm south of Ainsworth belonging to Mike Foreman, one near "Pierce's crossing" and one near the "Pierce milk stand." (If those last two were the same farm, which sounds likely, they lived there some seven years, at least.)

Aside from their various moves, the Sieverts show up in my notes only rarely, in reports of innocent sociability or helpfulness. Their only sorrow, it seems, was the loss, mentioned in the obituary, of two children in infancy,* and the suicide of Ida's brother John in 1907.**

The News gave the immediate cause of Ida's death as "heart trouble." In addition to local mourners, her funeral drew at least ten people from Chicago, and two from Milwaukee.

We have a photo of Ida's sister, Hulda, but none of Ida herself.


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*I can document only one such loss.
**We'll get to this next.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 8 Mar. 1901; 6 Nov. 1903.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 13 Apr. 1917; 29 July 1921.
♦ "Mrs. Henry Sievert, of Near Ainsworth, Passes Away Last Saturday." Hobart News 28 July 1921.