Today I’m taking a look at Elmwood, Illinois, a city of about 2040 people in Peoria County. According to Wikipedia, Elmwood was platted in 1852 and named for a grove of elm trees near the home of the first postmaster.
Our family connection to the town began in 1916. In that year my great-great-grandparents, George John and Maria Elizabeth (Rusch) Hunkler moved to Elmwood from Crugar in Woodford County. At that time George was 54 and Maria was 57; both natives of Switzerland, they had been married for 30 years. Maria had given birth to five children: Bertha Elizabeth (b. 1887); Matilda “Tillie” (b. 1888); John George (b. 1891); Lena Agnes (my great-grandmother, b. 1892); and Hulda Catherine (b. 1896). All five children had already married by the time their parents moved to Elmwood. George and Marie were enumerated there in January 1920. No occupation is listed for either of them, but the census notes that both became naturalized citizens in 1892.
My grandmother, Lena’s daughter, was born in 1917 in Francesville, Indiana. When she was two years old (apparently shortly after the 1920 census enumeration), Grandma moved with her parents and her older brother Roy to Elmwood where they lived for two years with George and Maria on their farm. On Grandma’s fourth birthday her immediate family moved again, away from her grandparents’ Elmwood farm to Forrest, Illinois, about 88 miles east.
George and Maria, however, remained in Elmwood. In 1930 they were enumerated again, still in Elmwood and now living on Lilac Street, though no house number was listed. They were listed as owning their own home, valued at $1400.
George died four years later; his death record notes that his death on 2 December 1934 took place in Elmwood and that he was buried 3 days later in Washington, Illinois’s Glendale Cemetery. Though three years older, Maria outlived her husband by almost 14 years. She was enumerated in the 1940 census in Elmwood, living alone at 80 years old. On 27 September 1948, she died in El Paso, Illinois, at the Dowell Nursing Home. Her death certificate notes she had been at the nursing home for 9 days before her death from acute cardiac failure due to arteriosclerosis. She was buried beside her husband in Glendale Cemetery.
