Eva Katharina Weick 1843 to 1916

Eva Katharina Weick 1843 to 1916 is my great-aunt, and she was born on February 14, 1843, in Katholisch, Ketsch, Mannheim, Baden, Germany. Her parents were Jacob Weik and Gertraud Huber.

Her siblings were Eduard Albert, Franz Wilhelm (Frank), Otto, Ludovikus, Louis, Verena Susanna, John Edward (my great-grandfather), and Richard Weik.

Eva Katharina Weick probably came to America at the same time her parents came to the US around 1854. She would have been around eleven years old. Freeport, Stephenson, Illinois seemed to be their city of choice to start their lives as Americans. Although, her father had a farm that he worked in Cedarville just outside Freeport.

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As the family got older, they ventured out to other places but some of them stayed in the area their whole lives. I think my great-grandfather John Edward was the farthest away in Kansas.

Eva meant and married another German, Charles Strohacker about 1867 in Stephenson County, Illinois. He was born about 1830 and arrived in America in 1848 when he was around eighteen years old.

They had two sons, Charles H, and  William Frank. Charles H was born August 20, 1868, in Illinois and married Annie Madison (1873-1945) in Muscatine,Muscatine, Iowa on June 17, 1891. He was twenty-two and Annie was eighteen. Charles H died March 27, 1892; he was twenty-three they had been married less than a year. There were no children born to this marriage that I could find at the time of this writing. It is not known what he died of at such an early age. Annie went on to marry for a second time to Edward W Mullen, Sr., and had two children, Frederick Donald Mullen and Edward W Mullen, Jr.

William Frank Strohacker was born on October 10, 1872, in Freeport, Illinois. He married Matilda Neberman in 1897 and to this union, two children were born, Edward F 1898-1935 and Margaret F Strohacker 1904-1982. Edward F married Lillian Bloom in 1912 and Margaret married Ralph Snyder in 1938. William died October 22, 1938, he was sixty-three and Matilda died July 21, 1935, at the age of sixty-two. Both are buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Freeport.

Charles Strohacker died on June 4, 1894, at the age of sixty-four. Eva Katharina Weick Strohacker died on December 25, 1916, at the age of seventy-three.

The Weick surname has several spellings, as well as the Strohacker surname. So, when doing research, one must consider all the different spellings. In my case my name was Weik, I did not know any other spellings until I started my research into my family tree. I do however remember as a child and young adult I always had to spell my last name because people would interpret it as White or Wike most of the time. I finally started to introduce myself and always spelled out my last name. It became easier for people to correctly spell my name especially on documents.

Thank you for reading this blog post and if anyone has more information please contact me.