I stumbled across this article entirely by accident while looking for something else.

My Habben families have been pretty well-researched in Hancock County, Illinois–particularly before World War II and there’s little about them that I don’t already know, particularly if it was a matter of public record.

Then I located this little gem while searching the digital newspapers on the website for the Quincy, Illinois, public library. My search was unsophisticated as I was searching for any reference to the word “habben.”

The newspaper does not indicate where or when the accident took place. Given that the estate of Barlow was involved, it likely was at least several months after the actual accident. I’m reasonably certain that the Lewis Habben is my great-grandfather’s brother of the same name, even though the this clipping provides no geographic details. There was only one man named Lewis Habben in the vicinity of Quincy, Illinois, so there’s little doubt it was the Lewis Habben who lived west of Carthage, Illinois.

According to the item, Lewis Habben was driving a car which turned in front of Barlow’s car. This November 1925 reference does not provide any more specifics of the accident.

Why didn’t I locate this before? I’m not exactly certain, but here are some likely reasons:

• While I had searched newspapers manually for various Habben family events, I did not have the date for this one. That makes manual searching of newspapers difficult.
• The newspaper indicated that the estate of Joseph Barlow was suing the insurance company Habben had. That means Habben would not be the defendant. Since I don’t yet know where the accident took place, it could be that the suit was in a county in which I had never looked for records on the Habben family. My search for them has concentrated on Hancock County, Illinois, since virtually every member of the family was a farmer who pretty much tended to stay put.
• This is one of those stories that doesn’t always get passed down. That reality is aggravated by the fact that living members of the Habben family whom I knew were born in the 1920s and after–too late to remember this incident personally.

We’ll have an update. I’ve located additional information while doing a little groundwork for this post.