This photo was taken sometime around 1910, when their daughter, Emma, and her husband, Charlie Krieser, were living in their lovely old Victorian home in Marion.  That’s the house they’re standing in front of in this photo.  Johanna beams her usual huge smile for the camera.  She was the daughter of Friedrich Heinrich Christian Rohloff and Caroline Christine Dorotthea Detman, who both died in Varchentin, her hometown, in Germany.  But some of her Rohloff cousins also came to America and settled in Appleton.  They all stayed in close contact and became an important link to her daughter, Emma.  Emma stayed with her Uncle Jochim (Joe) and Aunt Fredrika (Rika Wichmann) Rohloff for several years.  Aunt Rika taught Emma beautiful needlework skills that she practiced the rest of her life.

Here are  Mutter and Vater Leverenz in their later years.  That’s German for Mother and Father, and that’s what their whole family called them.  But the way they pronounced it, it sounded more like Mudda and Fudda Leverenz, with the “u” sounding like in the word “put”.  So if you want to sound authentic, that’s what I’d call them.  In fact, that’s what I do call them.  There’s a story in their history about how Mudda’s feather-tick skirt caught on fire as they were clearing the land and burning the brush one winter, and Fudda managed to put the fire out, but he burned his hands badly in doing it.  He suffered for years with those burned hands.  They had a strong love for each other all through their lives.  They died within about three years of each other:  Mudda went first on January 29, 1932 and Fudda followed her on March 7, 1936.  What a beautiful couple.