And They Lived Happily Ever After

On September 23, 1923, Miss Leona Raschka became Mrs. Fred Ewigleben, Jr.


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Hobart News, Sept. 27, 1923.

We just recently met Leona's bridesmaid, Florence Ewigleben. We've also met the best man, Walter Miller.

In all these years that I've been hearing that wonderful name, Ewigleben — it means "live forever" in German — I've never looked into the family much; I was content to know that they were a farming family from somewhere west of Hobart. Now I'd like to find out exactly where that farm was. Let's look at the 1908 Plat Map:


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Why, you may ask, should I be interested in the land owned by "C. Erigleton"? — because that land coincides with the land owned by Christ Ewigleben as shown in the 1891 Plat Book. My theory is that Erigleton is a butchered spelling of Ewigleben.

I've often wondered about that big parcel on the northwest corner of Liverpool and 49th, which seems like a throwback to the old rural days of this area, almost untouched by the development that has transformed the old Hayward farm on the east side of Liverpool Road. The farmhouse that sits on that land was built in 1890 according to the county records, so perhaps it is the old Ewigleben home.

Christ Ewigleben, the patriarch of this family, was a German immigrant. It appears that he married and had some children in the old country; I do not know what happened to his first wife. In 1865 Christ came to the U.S. (1900 Census). In Cook County, Illinois, in 1873, he married a woman named Johanna, whose surname is listed as Hillmann or Maas.[1]

The earliest I can find the Ewigleben family in Hobart Township is in the 1880 Census, on the same page with (among others) Berndts, Boldts and Mummerys, which suggests that they were in the area west of Hobart where the 1891 Plat Book places them. Christ's wife is listed as "Teressa" or some such thing, not Johanna; it's a mystery.

Their son, Frederick — the father of the groom in our 1923 story above — was born in Hobart in 1878 (Indiana Death Certificates). He married Tillie Blanchard in 1898 (Indiana Marriage Collection); and their son, Frederick, was born in 1902 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Frederick Jr. and Leona's home at 520 E. Fourth Street seems to be a bank parking lot now.

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Elsewhere on the same page of the News, above, we find Clifford O. Mize going to prison for the attempted murder of his mother-in-law back in July 1923.

We also find the Gem Theater receiving a letter demanding that it stop showing movies on Sunday evenings. Just remember how recently we Hoosiers could not buy alcohol on Sunday.

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[1] "Hillmann" per Ancestry.com, Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index, 1871-1920 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. "Maas" per Ancestry.com, Illinois, Marriage Index, 1860-1920 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.