Family tragedy: Thiele in Polk Co

THIELE

Posted By: Laurie Keller (email)
Date: 3/15/2004 at 06:36:08

My great grandparents, Gustav or Gustave and Ida THIELE, emigrated to the US in 1893 from Germany and settled with their six children in Clarenda, Polk Co., IA, where they appear in the 1895 Iowa census. In about 1895 during a family argument (the two parents having by then split up), Gustav shot and killed Ida in front of their three daughters, one of them being my grandmother Anna. (A photograph of the mother and her three daughters not long before the killing was taken in a studio in Ames, IA.)

My queries are: When did this event occur? Where is Ida THIELE buried? Gustav was found guilty of murder and lived out the rest of his life in the Iowa State Penitentiary, where he died in 1917. Was there any contemporary report in the press about this? The six children were split up: two were adopted by different families (William who would have been about 15, and Hilda who would have been about 11). I do not have adoptive names for these, but William was adopted by a family whose name begins with "B", Hilda by a different family. I knew all my great aunts and uncles, but none except my grandmother (Anna, aged then about 12) ever spoke of what happened to them in the immediate aftermath. Others were Arno (aged then about 13), Fritz (later known as Fred, aged then about 10) and Emma (aged then about 8). All of these children in adulthood lived in South Dakota, so there may be some SD connection. My grandmother ended up living with very distant cousins in southern Minnesota, who treated her as an unpaid servant. Any information about what happened to any of these children in their childhood would be helpful.

I would be very grateful for any information. This has been a deep, dark family secret and I was only told this by my own mother in her old age. For the sake of other family members for whom it remains such a puzzle, I'd like to get better information.