One of the privileges (or burdens) of being the oldest child, is you often are behind the camera and not one of the subjects featured by it. At least that was the case the day this photo was snapped of the Walter Treutel family of Vesper, Wisconsin.
Walter Treutel (1879-1948) leans on his Ford automobile. In front are his children Marvin R. Treutel (1916-2005), Nina H. (Treutel) Wilson (1914-2005), and Elaine M. (Treutel) Clark (1920-2010). The photographer that day was Ruby (Treutel) Hanneman (1904-1977).
The image was likely from 1925. That was a monumental year for the Treutel family. It opened with a tragedy: the death of Walter’s wife, Mary Helen (Ladick) Treutel, who was just 41. Mary died after undergoing surgery at a Marshfield hospital, but a postoperative infection set in, leading to her death. Later that year, Ruby married Carl F. Hanneman (1901-1982) at St. James Catholic Church in Vesper.
The other member of the Treutel family, Gordon Treutel, died of pneumonia in February 1911. He was just shy of 11 months old.
If you’ve spent much time sifting through collections of vintage photographs, no doubt you’ve seen samples of the hand-crafted art of photo colorization. For many decades, various techniques were used to colorize parts of all of a photographic image. When done well, the process created a rich, high-end look that stands the test of time. It is possible to digitally apply these effects to images today, but there’s something about these old photos that make them heirlooms.
As you will see in the gallery below, samples from our photo archive vary in sophistication. Some look almost like watercolor paintings, others like pastels and some appear to be airbrushed.
Marvin R. Treutel, circa 1938.
Helen E. Northcott
The colors used on this image are brighter than most in our collection.
Skin tones were the focus on this portrait. Pictured are Laura Mulqueen, David C. Hanneman and Joe Hanneman.
Most of this photograph of Charles F.C. Hanneman was hand tinted.
This U.S. Marine Corps portrait of Earl J. Mulqueen Jr. looks like colored pencil.
David D. Hanneman’s Boy Scouts uniform, as well as the surrounding grass, received tinting.
Lynne and Richard Hanneman, children of Wilbert G. and Irma Hanneman.
The roses in this bridal portrait of Ruby V. Hanneman were tinted. This digital restoration punched up the colors from the now-faded original from 1925.
This Hanneman family vacation portrait was somewhat clumsily done, with colors spilling onto skin and other areas. At front and center is David D. Hanneman. In the back are Donn G. Hanneman, Ruby V. Hanneman, Carl F. Hanneman and baby Lavonne M. Hanneman. Photo circa 1940.
It was one of the big mysteries in our family tree: what ever happened to Sebastian Treutel, brother to Philipp Treutel, who came to Wisconsin from Darmstadt, Germany in 1854? The only indication we had in our records was that Sebastian died around the year 1877 at age 41. We did not know a place or cause of death.
Thanks to some research done by a local historian in West Bend, Wisconsin, we have more answers about Sebastian. His name appears on a Civil War monument recently placed at Union Cemetery in West Bend, where his brothers John Treutel and Henry J. Treutel are buried. The managers of Union Cemetery confirmed that Sebastian Treutel is buried in Block 2, Lot 19 of the cemetery. There is no headstone visible. It could have been swallowed by the earth, damaged or removed sometime during the past 140 years.
A Grand Army of the Republic medallion, posted in the Treutel family block at Union Cemetery, West Bend, Wisconsin.
Information provided by the local historian says that Sebastian died on January 19, 1876. We are working to confirm this with evidence, such as a news clipping. The cemetery has no recorded death date. A 1937 obituary for Sebastian’s widow, Anna Sophia (Schultz) Treutel, listed the year of his death as 1877. It appears that Sebastian’s service in the Civil War weakened his constitution and might have played some role in his death.
Sebastian Treutel enlisted in Company A of the 26th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment on August 15, 1862. He was assigned the rank of private. Company A, commanded by Capt. William Georg, was nicknamed the “Flying Rangers.” Sebastian’s last name is misspelled as “Treudel” in regimental records. At the time, Sebastian was living in Milwaukee, probably working with one of his brothers in the blacksmith trade. His younger brother, Henry, enlisted as a corporal in Company G of the 26th Wisconsin, known as the Washington County Rifles.
The 26th Wisconsin fought a critical battle in April and May 1863 at Chancellorsville, Virginia. According to the History of the 26th Wisconsin Infantry,Union forces at Chancellorsville were not prepared for the Confederate assault on their right flank. The 26th Wisconsin and the 58th New York tried to make a stand at Hawkins Farm. They could not hold, but fought bravely enough to give the Union time to evacuate supplies and forces. Sadly, newspapers in New York and Milwaukee unfairly tagged the men of the 26th as cowards, inaccurately claiming they dropped their weapons and ran. the Union suffered 14,000 casualties in the battle, but the Confederates lost their commanding lieutenant general, Thomas Stonewall Jackson.
Battle of Chancellorsville, etching by W.H. Shelton. (Library of Congress collection)
According to West Bend historian Bev Hetzel, Sebastian Treutel became ill during the Chancellorsville battle. The illness led to heart problems and Treutel was discharged from the war on August 18, 1863. The reason listed was disability.
On November 18, 1867, Sebastian married the former Anna Schultz in a justice of the peace ceremony in the town of Addison, Washington County, Wisconsin. The marriage record says Sebastian was a carpenter. Witnesses to the wedding were Henry Schultz and John Russo. Parents of the groom were listed as Adam Treutel and Catharina Treutel. Parents of the bride were listed as Henry and Anna Schultz. The presider was Justice of the Peace Francis Forster, a farmer from the town of Addison.
Sebastian was listed on the 1870 U.S. Census as a carpenter in Addison, Washington County. Later in the 1870s, he worked as a U.S. mail carrier, working the route from West Bend in Washington County to Theresa in Dodge County. Postal service records show his contract was annulled as of July 31, 1875. Given the suggested death date, perhaps he was ailing at the time.
Sebastian and Anna Treutel had four children:
Margaretha Maria, born January 3, 1870. She married Louis Emil Dettmann in 1890. We do not know Maggie’s death date.
Ida Magdalena, born February 22, 1872. She married Edward H. Grundmann. Ida died in 1944.
Herman Sebastian Ludwig, born May 6, 1874. He married Dorothea Treutel (maiden name unknown). Herman died in 1912.
Christina Henrietta, born April 24, 1876. She married Emil Joseph Weiner. Tena died in 1960.
Anna Treutel remarried in 1880. New husband Carl Frederick Bohlmann was 48, while Anna was 29. They had one child, Clara (Bohlmann) Laisy (1881-1964). Mr. Bohlmann died in 1917. Anna died on August 5, 1937 in Milwaukee.
Note: The Treutel family headed by Johann Adam Treutel and Elizabetha Katharina (Geier) Treutel emigrated from Koenigstadten in the Hesse-Darmstadt region of Germany in 1854. Read more about that here. Our connection to the family goes this way: Johann Adam Treutel (1800-1859) >> Philipp Treutel (1833-1891) >> Walter Treutel (1879-1948) >> Ruby (Treutel) Hanneman (1904-1977) >> David D. Hanneman (1933-2007).
This photo from 1948 or 1949 has a classic sports-pose look to it. The varsity basketball squad from Mauston High School looking eagerly at Coach Bob Erickson, who cradles the ball like it’s made of gold. It’s so much more interesting than the stereotypical team photo with athletes lined up in rows.
My father, David D. Hanneman, was a multi-sport, multi-year letter winner at Mauston High School from 1947-1951. It was very common to have multi-sport athletes at small-town high schools. A core of the young men in this photo played basketball together in grade school before moving on to high school junior varsity and varsity play. These same fellows came together with classmates for Mauston High School reunions for more than 55 years. That’s teamwork!
The Mauston High School Bluegold basketball team, circa 1949, coached by Bob Erickson. Back row: Almeron Freeman, Bill Cowan, Erhard Merk, Tom Rowe and Gaylord Nichols. Front row: Bob Beck, Dave Hanneman, Bob Jagoe, unknown and Bob Randall.
In the 1950-51 basketball season, Mauston advanced to the sub-regional level of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) tournament on March 1 in Tomah. In the first game, Mauston rallied with a 23-point third quarter to defeat Richland Center, 55-53. Tom Rowe led Mauston scorers with 15 points.
In the sub-regional championship game March 2, Mauston ran into a buzzsaw called La Crosse Logan High School. The Bluegold lost big, 72-36. After trailing 8-1 early in the game, Mauston pulled to within five at the end of the firsts period. In the second period, Mauston got as close as three points, 20-17, but then the game got out of hand.
The Mauston High School varsity basketball team (circa 1947-48), coached by Bob Erickson. Dave Hanneman is first on the bench at left.
Logan led 29-19 at halftime, according to the game recap in the La Crosse Tribune. At the start of the final quarter, Mauston trailed 50-24. Five Mauston players fouled out of the game. The leading Mauston scorer was Roger Quick with 8 points, while Tom Rowe, Bob Jagoe, Bob Randall and Dave Hanneman each had 5 points. La Crosse Logan made it to the regional tournament finals before losing to Onalaska, 58-56.
One of the best games of that 1950-51 season came on December 19, a 61-42 decision over conference rival Westby. “Big Dave Hanneman had himself a field night for MHS as he hoisted in eight buckets and added four free throws for scoring honors,” read the game recap in The Mauston Star. “Jagoe collected 15 points and Randall had 9 — he scored the first 9 points of the game for MHS.”
Coach Erickson was still fairly new during my Dad’s time at Mauston High School, but he went on to become a legend as a coach and teacher. A 12-time letter winner at Platteville State Teachers College (now UW-Platteville), Erickson was named to the UW-Platteville athletic hall of fame in 1980. He came to Mauston in 1947 after serving in World War II, starting a 13-year tenure at Mauston High School. Erickson coached boxing, basketball, football and baseball. He also served as Mauston’s athletic director. He died in July 2003 at age 82.
For most of his adult life, Carl F. Hanneman said he studied pharmacy at Marquette University in Milwaukee, securing the academic knowledge required to pass the state of Wisconsin pharmacy board exam. Even his obituary in the May 30, 1982 issue of the Wisconsin State Journal stated, “He was a graduate pharmacist of Marquette University.”
Now, more than 90 years after Hanneman’s days of youth in Milwaukee, a question has been raised about where he studied to prepare for his nearly 60-year career as a pharmacist. As The Hanneman Archive was preparing to donate Carl’s student notebooks, study guides and formulary books from his days at Marquette, staff at the university’s archives said they could not find him in an initial search of the graduate database.
Carl F. Hanneman at Solomon Juneau Park in Milwaukee in 1924.
The College of Pharmacy at Marquette was disbanded in 1918, as World War I decimated the ranks of students and faculty alike. The plan was to re-establish the pharmacy program after the war, but those plans were never realized and Marquette never again had a pharmacy degree program. So what to make of Carl’s story and his history? We can assume he did not fabricate it, since he was licensed in Wisconsin for 57 years. So, what to do when presented with a mystery? We dug into it.
Some facts in our favorite pharmacist’s story are well-established. Carl Henry Frank Hanneman was born on October 28, 1901 in Grand Rapids, Wood County, Wisconsin (the city’s name was changed to Wisconsin Rapids in 1920). He was the youngest of five children of Charles and Rosine (Osterman) Hanneman. (We related elsewhere on this sitesome of the confusion surrounding his birth when he sought a copy of his original birth certificate in 1946).
Charles Hanneman emigrated from Pomerania to Wisconsin in November 1882.
His father Charles, whose full name is Carl Frederick Christian Hanneman, emigrated to Wisconsin in November 1882 from county Regenwalde in the Baltic Duchy of Pomerania (now in Poland and Germany). His mother was native to Wood County, Wisconsin. The senior Hanneman toiled at manual labor. He started as a saw mill worker and later became a farm hand for his brother William at the dawn of the 20th century. Charles worked on the 1908 construction of the sewer system in Grand Rapids, earning 17.5 cents per hour. He later worked in a paper mill. Young Carl had a good role model for hard work.
Carl attended public schools, graduating from Lincoln High School in 1921. He was a smart young man, with equal talents at science and art. Shortly after high school, he began work as an apprentice at the well-known Sam Church drug store. A spark was lit. Carl felt a calling. Carl’s apprenticeship at the Church drug store lasted nearly five years. We believe the person who told Carl about Marquette University was Mark C. Whitrock, a 1913 Marquette pharmacy graduate and pharmacist at Sam Church. Nearly 10 years Carl’s senior, Whitrock was also a member of the Wisconsin Rapids city council.
Carl Hanneman studies in the mid-1920s.
Among Carl’s Marquette papers is a pharmacy course notebook originally belonging to Whitrock. It is from a theoretical pharmacy course taught by Dr. Hugh C. Russell, a physician and professor in Marquette’s College of Pharmacy. Whitrock gave the book to Carl to help him prepare to study for work as a druggist. What to do, since the pharmacy degree program at Marquette was no more? With some help from the Marquette University Archives and Carl’s own writings, we found the answer.
Marquette’s short course in pharmacy proved popular in the mid-1920s.
In 1923, Marquette began offering a “short course” in pharmacy under the auspices of the College of Dentistry. The school newspaper, the Marquette Tribune,said the course was “not part of the regular curriculum of the university.” What? The courses in chemistry, organic chemistry, pharmacy, pharmacognosy, toxicology and drug identification were rigorous. They were taught by the aforementioned Dr. Russell and Professor Frederick C. Mayer, both former deans of the Marquette College of Pharmacy. The two-semester program was designed for young men and women with pharmacy experience, in preparation to pass the state exams.
Carl studied under two former deans of the Marquette College of Pharmacy.
Carl enrolled in the pharmacy short course in the winter of 1924. We know he paid tuition (he referenced in later writings having to save before enrolling at Marquette). He lived in the 700 block of 37th Street in Milwaukee, just west of the Marquette campus. We have a number of photos of his fiancee, Ruby Treutel, visiting him at Solomon Juneau Park in Milwaukee in 1924.
The books Carl left behind contain hundreds of pages of meticulous notes on chemistry, pharmacy and related subjects. Two of the books have Marquette pennant stickers on the front. Carl’s pocket-size copy of the Guide to the Organic Drugs of the United States Pharmacopœia has a Marquette University seal on the cover. His exam book shows he scored an 82 percent on one test in 1924. The test was corrected by someone identified only as “A. Mankowski.” So far, we have not identified that person further.
Carl’s organic drugs guide from his days at Marquette University.
It seems odd that Marquette would offer such a program but not count it as official curriculum. The university offered certification programs in other subjects. We have no paper certificate or other document showing Carl matriculated from the pharmacy short course, but we will ask Marquette to check its records thoroughly. Otherwise, Carl and many others like him from the 1920s would be Marquette orphans, educated by the university but not claimed as students or course graduates.
Carl traveled to Madison on January 24, 1925 for the state Board of Pharmacy examination. He was one of 105 applicants seeking licensure as either a registered pharmacist or assistant registered pharmacist. Carl was among 76 people who passed the exam that day. On January 30, the Wisconsin State Board of Pharmacy issued him certificate No. 3252 as a registered assistant pharmacist. With his credentials in hand, he returned home to Wisconsin Rapids. Mark Whitrock hired him as a druggist for the brand new Whitrock & Wolt pharmacy on Grand Avenue.
Carl Hanneman’s graduation and first job made front-page news in Wisconsin Rapids. The newspaper got his middle initial wrong.
Six months later in nearby Vesper, Carl married his longtime sweetheart, Ruby Viola Treutel. After working at the Whitrock pharmacy much of 1925, Carl and Ruby moved to Janesville. Carl took a druggist job with the McCue & Buss Drug Co. in downtown Janesville. After about six months, Carl and his now-pregnant wife moved to Fond du Lac, where Carl started work for Fred Staeben at the Staeben Drug Co. Just weeks later, they welcomed their first child, Donn Gene Hanneman.
By Christmas 1927, the Hannemans moved back to Wisconsin Rapids. Carl became a druggist for his old employer, Sam Church. He stayed in that job for five years. In March 1933, the family welcomed another son, David Dion. Carl then left the pharmacy world for a sales job with the Consolidated Water Power & Paper Co. That assignment lasted for several years.
Longtime pharmacist Sam Church hired Carl Hanneman as an apprentice in the early 1920s, then as a druggist in 1927.
Pharmacy was his calling, so Carl looked for a chance to retake his place behind the druggist’s counter. In February 1936, Carl was hired by Dr. J. Samuel Hess Jr. to be an assistant pharmacist at the Mauston Drug Store, which was attached to the Hess Memorial Hospital in Mauston.
We wrote elsewhere on this site of Carl’s heartfelt September 1937 plea for assistance obtaining a full registered pharmacist license. He wrote to Orland S. Loomis, a well-known Mauston attorney and former state senator who was then Wisconsin’s attorney general. Carl regretted not taking the full registered pharmacist exam in 1925. At the time, he was six months short of the five years of apprentice experience required to become a registered pharmacist. Now 12 years later, lacking that higher license, he could not officially manage the Mauston Drug Store because of a quirk in state law regarding small-town pharmacies. The better license would mean better salary, something that became crucial in August 1937 with the birth of the Hannemans’ third child, daughter Lavonne Marie.
We don’t know if Loomis wrote back or helped Carl with his license issues. (Loomis became governor-elect of Wisconsin in 1942, but died before taking office. As a correspondent for the Wisconsin State Journal, Carl photographed Loomis at the Loomis home in Mauston on election eve in November 1942). Carl became a full registered pharmacist on July 12, 1944. He was among nine people issued new licenses that Wednesday in Madison. He was issued certificate No. 5598 by the Wisconsin State Board of Pharmacy. The certificate was signed by Oscar Rennebohm, a well-known Madison pharmacist who later became Wisconsin’s 32nd governor.
Carl earned his full registered pharmacist license in 1944.
So the mystery is solved. Carl Hanneman did enroll in and complete a short course in pharmacy at Marquette University in 1924. It remains to be seen if Marquette will claim him and his many colleagues who studied in the pharmacy short course in the 1920s. His class notes, study guides and other materials from that time will be donated to the Marquette University Archives later this summer.
A sample from one of Carl Hanneman’s pharmacy notebooks.
Carl’s notebooks contained meticulous notes on chemistry and other subjects.
Professor Frederick C. Mayer was one of at least two faculty who taught the pharmacy short course.
Carl earned his registered assistant pharmacist license in January 1925.
Carl F. Hanneman taking his suits to the cleaner at Janesville, Wis., on April 5, 1926. Carl and his wife, Ruby V. Hanneman, were on their way to dinner. Carl was a druggist at McCue & Buss Drug Co. at the time.
Carl F. Hanneman served as an apprentice at the Sam Church drug store (shown at right) in Wisconsin Rapids. He was later hired as an assistant pharmacist after completing his education and working at three other pharmacies.
In 1926 and 1927, Carl F. Hanneman worked for the Staeben Drug Co. in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
The Mauston Drug Store, circa 1930. Image courtesy of the Juneau County Historical Society.
I always loved this photo of five young men posing next to a Ford Model T. But the original scan I made of this late 1920s image was covered in little circular stains. I wrote of the efforts to clean the image over at the Treasured Lives blog.
With the photo scrubbed of its imperfections, it can now join the growing online Hanneman photo library. The young man in the center of the photo is my great uncle, Marvin R. Treutel, baby brother of my grandmother, Ruby V. (Treutel) Hanneman. I presume the automobile that serves as the backdrop belonged to Marvin’s father, Walter Treutel. Unfortunately, I don’t have IDs on the other young men.
Marvin Treutel with sisters Nina Wilson (left) and Ruby V. Hanneman in July 1975.
Marvin Raphael Treutel was born on April 13, 1916 in Vesper, a tiny village in Wood County, Wisconsin. He was the second son of Walter and Mary (Ladick) Treutel. (Baby Gordon Treutel died of pneumonia in February 1911.) Marvin attended Lincoln High School in Wisconsin Rapids, where he played in the band and sang in the boys glee club.
Marv married Mabel Martha Neuenfeldt on July 3, 1937. They are mentioned elsewhere on this site, most especially for the Rochester root beer stand the family ran in Nekoosa between 1947 and 1951. The couple had six children. Marv spent more than 25 years working for Nekoosa Papers Inc. before retiring in 1978. Mabel passed away in January 1995. Marvin died in April 2005.
Nestled within the two dozen photo collections in the Library of Congress American Memory project is an image of grain threshing on a Hanneman farm in central Nebraska in the opening years of the 20th century.
Work on the grain threshing stopped just long enough for the farm laborers to pose for a photograph taken by Solomon D. Butcher. The caption reads: “Threshing crew on farm of E.F. Hanneman, Watertown, Buffalo County, Nebraska.” The year was 1903. The image was submitted to the Library of Congress by the Nebraska State Historical Society.
A cropped section of the Library of Congress photo. It might be Ernest Hanneman at center.
The glass-plate negative photo is interesting for several reasons. One is the hand-drawn accents, such as the smoke coming from the steam engine and the straw pouring from the chute of the thresher. In the age of Adobe Photoshop and digital photo manipulation, these details might cause a chuckle. The “smoke” hardly looks real. But these details are charming nonetheless, a look at how photographers created detail and motion in photographs of that era.
Another detail section of the Library of Congress image. Note the hand-drawn grain coming from the thresher chute.
The photo is not only of a Hanneman family farm, but it also has ties to Wisconsin. The “E.F. Hanneman” mentioned in the caption refers to Edward F. Hanneman, who lived much of his life in Buffalo County, Nebraska. Edward was born in Wisconsin in October 1880, presumably in Columbia County north of Madison. His family lived there for a time before moving west to Nebraska.
Ernest and Maria Hanneman photo from FindAGrave.com (submitted by Charmaine Becker).
Edward’s father, Ernest Ludwig Friedrich Hanneman, was born in Pomerania in 1843. He came to America in 1861. Ernest’s parents, Dietrich and Maria Hanneman, settled in Columbia County, but had both died by 1880. Dietrich and Maria are buried in Hillside Cemetery in Columbus, Wis. By the time of the 1900 U.S. Census, the Ernest Hanneman family had settled in Amanda Township in Buffalo County, Nebraska.
We’ve noted on these pages before that Columbia County, Wisconsin, was one of the Wisconsin Hanneman enclaves in the late 1800s. There were others in Dane, Fond du Lac, Dodge, Marathon, Wood, Portage, Racine, Winnebago and Outagamie counties. My Hanneman line settled in Portage and Wood counties, starting in 1861. There could be a connection between the Dietrich Hanneman line and my line (Matthias Hanneman, 1794-1879). More research is needed.
Many, if not most, of the Hannemans who settled the U.S. Midwest in the 1800s came from the Duchy of Pomerania, a long-ago Baltic state which is now part of Poland and Germany. My family line goes back to at least 1550 in Kreis (county) Regenwalde, Pomerania. Some of the Marathon County Hannemans moved west and settled in Lake County, South Dakota. Some Hannemans who emigrated to Wisconsin later settled in Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska.
The American Memory project was one of the Library of Congress’ early efforts to digitize some 5 million images from its trove of priceless photographs. It invited submissions from libraries and historical societies around the nation. The Edward F. Hanneman farm photo was part of the collection “Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters.”
By any standard, it was a pretty smooth sales job. In early December 1920, little Nina Treutel of Vesper, Wisconsin, was writing one of her regular letters to her Aunt Emma (Treutel) Carlin. After some regular business, the 6-year-old slipped in a postscript in hopes it would help her obtain a treasured toy doll.
“Oh! Yes Aunt Emma I have 23¢ cents all saved up ready for that dolly,” Nina wrote. (A cute aside: the cents sign was written backwards.) “Just think Aunt Emma, Uncle Oscar said I could have it for $1.50¢.” (Backwards dollar and cents signs.)
One can just imagine in that little girl’s mind, Aunt Emma was just waiting to learn of the 23 cents to seal the whole deal. Maybe even in time for Christmas 1920! It reminds me of the 1983 film, A Christmas Story,in which a young boy works on his own marketing pitch to obtain a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Set in the 1940s in small-town Indiana, much of the plot revolves around little Ralphie’s efforts to get that rifle for Christmas only to be told by various adults, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”
Nina Treutel (right) with brother Marvin (left), baby sister Elaine and older sister Ruby, circa 1922.
In the film, Ralphie gets his rifle, but we don’t know if Nina ever got that cherished dolly. It’s logical to assume she not only wrote her letter of suggestion, but perhaps augmented it with some face-to-face discussion with dear Aunt Emma and her brother, Uncle Oscar Treutel. You will get good odds if, like me, you believe Nina got her dolly.
Aunt Emma Carlin was a favorite of all the children in the Treutel/Hanneman families. She was the second-youngest child of Philipp and Henrietta Treuel. Her family moved to Vesper in 1900 after the death of her father. Emma was a prolific letter writer and kept a detailed scrapbook from which this letter came.
Nina Treutel grew up and married Lawrence Wilson. They spent most of their married life in Waukegan, Illinois, for a time operating a small grocery store detailed elsewhere on this blog. She was one of the younger sisters of my grandmother, Ruby (Treutel) Hanneman. Nina died in 2005 in Arizona.
Perhaps the most charming part of that 1920 letter came before the sales pitch for the dolly. “Why didn’t you come down Sunday?” she wrote. “Well I must shut up because pa wants to close his letter with love from mama.”
I’m generally not a fan of social media page “likes” or shares or fan praise. While it is one metric of success in the online world, it also can set us up for easy disappointment. That being said, I was quite pleased to see my grandparents’ wedding photo draw such nice comments on an Instagram page dedicated to preserving the stories behind photos.
Saving Family Photos featured this 1925 wedding portrait today, along with the newspaper story published shortly after the marriage of Carl F. Hanneman and Ruby V. Treutel. As of this writing (less than one full day on display), the photo has 1,016 likes. A sampling of the viewer comments:
“I have a similar picture of my grandparents. You’ve inspired me to frame it.”
“Wow! Beautiful picture!”
“A true treasure.”
“Stunning photo. Love every detail. A gift for you to have this.”
“Can’t love this enough…still looking for photos of my grandparents weddings.”
“That is now may favorite wedding photo! What a treasure!”
I submitted the photo to Saving Family Photos from Treasured Lives, our sister site. If you are on Instagram, find them @savefamilyphotos. You can also see the gallery on their web site.
Doing research on family history is an exciting journey. That is the whole idea behind Treasured Lives, a small business dedicated to helping you map out and progress on your history journey. We invite all of the readers of the Hanneman Archive to visit and follow Treasured Lives.
There are lots of online databases and services out there dedicated to genealogy and history. If that all seems overwhelming to you, Treasured Lives is a good place to start. If you’ve started your research and need a boost from a professional researcher, Treasured Lives is also for you. Even if you’re an expert and want to put some more brawn behind your projects, we can help.
We not only offer a full-range of services, but we will also deliver interesting, useful content on our blog. We specialize in:
Genealogy Research
Biographical Writing
Photo Restoration & Retouching
Tribute Videos
Oral History
Gravestone Preservation
Collections Care
Photography
Treasured Lives grew out of a love for history. Joe Hanneman, our chief researcher and owner, has been doing genealogy research for more than a decade. He runs the popular Hanneman Archive web site, and has been a professional writer and communicator for more than 30 years. In 2010, he published his first book, The Journey Home: My Father’s Story of Cancer, Faith and Life-Changing Miracles. His first history project was helping his father start piecing together his family roots from Germany and Pomerania. That grew into a major undertaking. The Hanneman Archive holds more than 15,000 images and thousands of historic documents.
History is a journey and an ever-changing destination. As we like to say, every story deserves a voice, and a champion. We are here to be your partner in history.
The Hanneman Archive 