For years we’ve wondered about the identity of a pretty young woman with dark hair and a beaded necklace. The photo was an old mounted print that came from the Hanneman collection at Mauston. There were no notations on the back of the print. Nor were there any similar photos among the hundreds of prints and negatives in the collection.

A recently discovered photo of a much older woman offers a hint of the identity of the younger woman. Both appear to be Rosine Bertha Henrietta (Osterman) Hanneman, the mother of Carl F. Hanneman.

The woman at left in the image above was identified as Rosie Hanneman by one of her sons, Wilbert G. Hanneman(1899-1987). A digital copy of the photo was supplied to us by one of Wilbert’s grandsons, Tim Swanson. The shape of the face and hair pulled back show similarities to the other photograph.

The photo at left is a bit shocking, because Rosine Hanneman was just 47 when she died of diabetes in 1918. It provides visual evidence of how the disease aged and otherwise wreaked havoc on its victims before the advent of commercially produced insulin in the mid-1920s.

Rosine Osterman was born on July 8, 1870 in Four Mile Creek, Wood County, Wisconsin. Her father, John Christian Osterman, came to America from Thuringia, Germany. Her mother, Wilhelmine Dorothea Schroeder, came from Prussia. On April 2, 1891, she married Carl Frederick Christian Hanneman, a sawmill laborer. They had five children: Arthur John (1893-1965), Frank Herman Albert (1895-1947), Wilbert George (1899-1987), Carl Henry Frank (1901-1982) and C.H., who died as an infant in 1892.