(Click on images to enlarge)
Photos courtesy of Marilyn Duran.
The extended and in-law Bruebach family at this time included an Abel as well as Manteuffels,[1] and probably other family names that I don't know about.
If this is the Bruebach farm, that must be the farmhouse in the background, and a very nice farmhouse it is. I can't match it up to anything still standing today; more's the pity.[2]
Only four people in this photo are identified, and here Marilyn has pulled them out to form their own little family group:
Clockwise from the top: Frank Abel, Jr. (b. 1880); his wife, Johanna (Bruebach, b. 1882); their son, Lester (b. 1911); and their daughter, Audis (b. 1907).
What strikes me is how unhappy both Frank and Audis look. Maybe they just didn't like having their picture taken; but then again, they might not have felt entirely comfortable among the Bruebachs. Unfortunately, Frank and Johanna's marriage was troubled. Later in the 1910s, their private drama would become public as the social columns of the local newspapers reported separations, reconciliations, and Johanna's filing of a divorce suit. Frank's death certificate (January 1919) describes him as divorced.
By then Johanna had taken the children and moved to Chicago. Marking the anniversaries of Frank's death through 1922, the local newspapers carried notices like this one:
Hobart News, January 22, 1920.
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[1] Elise Manteuffel married George Bruebach, Sr., in 1887 in Chicago (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index), thus beginning what would become the Bruebach family of Hobart.
[2] Assuming some remodeling, it looks a bit like 10 N. Hobart Road, which was built in 1899 per the county records and is not on the former Bruebach property.
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