Feature Story
November 2009
Johnnie
Heim and wife Margaret (Heim) Heim
Johnnie Heim and wife Margaret (Heim) Heim came to
Dawson in May 1881, bringing their family of six children.
All were natives of Pennsylvania.
There were relatives of the Jacob G. Heim family and lived
with them for a time until they found and bought the farm they
wanted. They had
shipped a car load of possessions from their former home to this new
home in the “west,”
Thomas Fenton owned the land joining Dawson on the
northwest. This was
near the other Heim families and was good soil for farming so
Johnnie and Margaret chose this farm and bought it from Mr. Fenton.
Part of this land went all the way south to the Nemaha River
and later became part of Dawson in the “Heim Addition” to the
town. Also part it was
land used for the United Evangelical Church building in 1882 and
another part of this piece of land was bought by the Cemetery
Association for the Heim Cemetery.
The home quarter section of the Johnnie Heim farm was
passed on to a grandson of his Dr. Harlan S. Heim and Golda
(Mountain) Heim, and is now owned by Dr. Heim's daughter and
husband, Donna and Lloyd Epley of Choralville, Iowa.
The children of Johnnie Heim and Margaret (Heim) Heim
were as follows – Rosa (married Joseph G. Heim), Regina (married
Henry W. Heim), Jonas A. (married Ida Emerson, daughter of
Dawson”s Dr. Emerson), Charles
F. (married Ada Barlow, he became a Minister in the Evangelical
Conference), Linda (married Delbert B. Judd, They were the parents
of the Drs. J. Hewitt and Delbert K. Judd), Alma (married Will
James, a teacher in the Dawson school and later in Lincoln.)
All are now deceased.
Margaret told her grandchildren how the women used to
combine work with pleasure in the early days in Pennsylvania. Since spinning was one the ever present tasks, she
would carry her spinning wheel on her back and go calling on her
neighbors, and together they spent the afternoon spinning and
visiting. Margaret's spinning wheel is now a prized possession of her
great granddaughter Irene (Belden) Irwin of Oklahoma City, who is
passed away and hopefully still in that family.
(Editors
note: It is on this
land that the Henry Heim house is still standing and the home of the
Pennsylvania Colony Historical Society Museum.
The land around the 4 acres of the museum is currently owned
by Donna Heim Epley and her husband Lloyd of Choralville, Iowa. It
is thru their generosity that this house and museum is made
possible.)
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