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The 13 children were born in 3 different houses.
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Edna (1898) was born at the "Eby
Farm" where Wm Carl and Mary lived for a
year or two.
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Carl (1900), Leo (1902), Lester
(1905), Hilda (1906) and Mildred (1908) at the "Albright
Farm" where they lived for
about 10 years.
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Helma
(1910), Arthur (1912), Marie (1914), Wm Frank
(1917), Helen (1919)and Wilma (1922) at 8861 Dixon Road which Wm Carl bought
in 1909. Norma (1927) was the only child born in
a hospital.
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All 13,
however, spent part of their lives on this
farm.
The
Heiden Family Reunion was held
here in 1922, 1930,
1936 and 1985.
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Grandma and
Grandpa Heiden's home was always a welcoming
place. By our count,
31 members of William Carl and Mary Heiden's
extended family including 13 children,
11 grandchildren, 1 great grandchild and 4 in-laws
lived for some period of time in the house at
8861 Dixon Road.
The property was owned by
members of the Heiden family for over 107 years,
having been purchased in 1909 by Wm Carl Heiden and sold after
the
2016 death of Helen (Henning) Heiden, wife of Wm
Frank Heiden.
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Leo and Lucille (Smith) Heiden and their children Mary Lou and David briefly
lived at 8861 with Leo's parents. David, Sr. was
born while they were sharing the house with
Wm Carl and Mary. After that, they moved to
8201
South Custer Road where their final son, Roger, Sr.
was born in 1939.
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I
don't remember much before school but was told
we lived in several places because of the
Great Depression. Dad worked for different farmers and
didn't have steady work. When I was six we lived
on the west side of Grandma and Grandpa's house
on Dixon Road and lived there until William got
married and needed the house because he worked
the farm so we moved to
S. Custer Road
behind the grocery store.
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After Wm Carl and
Mary's daughter, Mildred (Heiden) Eipperle died in
1938 at the age of 30, her husband, John and their
daughter Sally lived with them from 1939 to 1946. Later Sally lived here again
for a few years after
her son, Bruce, was born. They were there
from 1957 to 1959. |
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John
Eipperle |
Sally (Eipperle)
Guy |
Bruce |
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William Carl and Mary had a large home
with many rooms on two floors and a large basement. It would be
needed since it had to accommodate them and their 13 children
along with some of
those children's families who came home to
live with Ma and Pa for a while as they made their way through
the adult world during and after the Great Depression.
William Carl's
father, August (left), was a brick mason by trade when he came
from Germany in 1873 and the story is that he did the brick work
when the house was built or, perhaps, when it was upgraded after
William Carl purchased it on his 35th birthday, April 1, 1909. A man
named John M. Meyer owned the farm previously and we have to assume that he
had a house there before that date.
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 One memory that almost everyone
who frequented the home of
William
Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden has is of card games being
played around the dining room table. Euchre or cribbage
games kept everyone busy having fun.
From Left to Right above,
Bill Bicking
(husband of Wilma Heiden),
Art Heiden,
Mary (Rambow) Heiden,
Carl Heiden
and Wm Carl Heiden enjoy a game of Euchre. According to the calendar
on the wall, the game is taking place in January of 1960 when Wm
Carl
would have been 86 and Mary was 82.
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You
can see Grandpa's ever present corncob pipe in the ash tray
between him and Bill. Arthur was my father.
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This is the old smokehouse behind
the family home where meat was cured. One of the favorites was
a German sausage called mettwurst. You can see the structure's location on
the aerial photo at the top of this page.
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 Like
a lot of pieces of family history, we do not know how
August Heiden (left), who had immigrated from Germany in 1873,
was able to purchase
two properties with over 90 acres of land in
Michigan by 1890. He was a "mason" i.e.
brick layer and a carpenter so we assume he was good
at his craft and many houses at this time were built
of bricks.
One source said that he built the house
where the
Rambow
family lived. With the help of his then teenage
son, William Carl, he put the brickwork on the
house at
8861 Dixon Road which was then owned by Mr.
Meyers. Later after William Carl bought that farm
in 1909, August
helped build an addition to the house.
  Not only did August seem to prosper but his two
sons,
Heinrich (right) and
Ernst (left), who accompanied him from Germany also
bought farms during these years.
Heinrich's was at
8420 Dixon Road while Ernst's place was at
8925 South Custer Road, next door
to August's house at
8700 South Custer.
 William Carl
(left), who was born in the U.S. in 1874
purchased a
small farm in the late 1890s and
then bought a larger property at
8861 Dixon Road in 1909 on his 35th
birthday. He worked as a carpenter as well as
farming and helped build a township hall in the
community of
Grape in 1891.
In family stories, he always seemed to
drive a big car and the farm house always had
extra family members coming back to live for a while
during their times of need.
All this while raising 13 children! |
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 In
1952, in honor of their 55th wedding anniversary, D.N. Roberts, known as
The County Visitor, interviewed Wm Carl and Mary for an article which
appeared in the
Monroe Evening News. The following paragraph appeared in that
article and it helped us find the four places they lived as a married
couple starting after their marriage in 1897 and lasting until Wm Carl's death in 1967.
"Mr and Mrs.
Heiden rented a farm just east of their
present home on the same road. The farm is
known now as the Albert Adler farm. [8420
Dixon Road]. Here they farmed for one
year, then moved to a farm John Eby now owns
on South Custer Rd. [6130
South Custer] They bought the place next
to it, where August Albright now lives [6003
South Custer], and
when they sold that farm, they bought and moved to
their present location [8861
Dixon Rd], where they have lived for the
last 43 years."
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That
is 8861 Dixon Road in the background.
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It
is 3.0 miles from #3 to #4
