Historic Rohwedder House

While we were geocaching in Joliet we stopped to visit a house on the Joliet Historic Landmark Register.  It's the Joachim Rohwedder House and it just happens to be my great, great grandparents house.  They were named Joachim and Augusta Rohwedder and the name is spelled incorrectly on the historic marker....

The house is located at 664 N. Hickory.  A couple of years ago my parents stopped by the house and rang the bell.  The woman who now lives there answered and invited them in to tour the house.  She explained how she had renovated the house a few years earlier and had gotten it placed on the Historic Register.

This is what the house looks like now....

My mom said they used to drive to Joilet about once a year to visit.  She says she specifically remembers an old cast iron bank on a dresser in the hallway and a red window in a stairwell when she was a kid.  The red window is still there....

This is the Rohwedder family - Joachim and his wife Augusta, taken on the side of the house.  They bought the house around 1892.  Members of the family lived in the house continuously until their last daughter, Augusta (or Gussie), died in 1961.....

This is the family standing on the front porch.  That's great great aunt Gussie, the last person to live there, top row, right.  Right below her is my great grandmother Anna Berner.  Augusta and Anna were sisters.  Augusta never married.  That's my mom, as a young girl standing in the front row....

This was taken on the south side of the house where all the flowers are now.  That's my mom in front again with some of her cousins....

Here's an early photo of great, great aunt Gussie.  I think it's such a pretty picture of her....

And here's a later photo of her.....

Back in 1898, my great grandparents wedding reception was held in that house...

My mom says they took me there once when I was really small, but I don't remember that at all.  It was interesting to walk around the house and touch parts of it that my ancestors touched 120 years ago, to stand on the stairs and in the yard where they all stood to have their pictures taken.  It was fun to think about my mom playing in the house and my grandparents sitting in the yard.  I like to let my mind wander 120 years into the past and imagine how different life was back then.  But most of all, it was just really cool to see some family history.