The Habbens Buy A House in 1914–and a 2017 Twist

Everything happens in context.

It also pays to read more than just the immediate item of interest for additional references to the same last names and members of the same family. It also may be that newspapers across the state line from where your family lived contain valuable references. State lines are somewhat artificial and, while important, should be ignored where newspapers are concerned.

There are two references to the Habben family in this “gossip column” from Elvaston, Illinois, which appeared in Keokuk, Iowa’s The Daily Gate City on 17 September 1914.

The first is to John Habben purchasing the home of the late S. P. McGaw in Elvaston where Habbens will move “in the near future.” Elvaston was  few miles west of where the Habben farm was located and where the Habbens were living when they bought the house in town.

The second is to the marriage of George Habben and Ruby Hayes on 5 September in Keokuk. The paper adds that the newlyweds will make their home on a farm east of town.

The two events are likely connected. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

Family tradition was that John Habben retired once he had acquired enough property to establish all his sons in farming. John was my Grandmother Ufkes’ paternal grandfather and I was told the story repeatedly by my Grandmother. George was the last of John and Anke (Fecht) Habben’s four sons to marry and the last to start farming on his own. The timing of George’s marriage and the Habben purchase of their retirement home seems connected–it’s  a little too coincidental to be anything else.

I had located the property purchase deed years ago early in my research back when I did not make copies of records unless they looked interesting. The 1914 purchase of the property did not meet my definition of interesting (at that time). I was probably in high school when I originally located the deed in the land records of the County Recorder in Carthage. The McCaw name meant nothing to me at the time. I had no relationship to the family and didn’t really think too much from whom the Habbens had purchased the property. In the context of the Habbens’ life they were simply buying a retirement home near where they lived because their last son was establishing his own family.

But when I located the newspaper reference in 2017, the name McCaw jumped out at me. While I had researched my Hancock County families extensively in the interim, none of my own relatives had any connection to McCaw. In fact most of McCaw’s family left Hancock County before he died and the ones that had not left shortly after he died.

And that’s what brought about the modern connection.

I know McCaw’s 3rd great-grandson. He’s engaged to marry my daughter.