Louis Weichmann

[L Verge]

(02-12-2015 01:08 PM)Pamela Wrote:  It just occurred to me--was Chris Ritter executed?

Weichmann's sister said that a man with a gun followed him home from work one night and Lou was saved by a woman who gestured for him to come into her house. She was the one who saw a man with a gun. Also, a man dressed as a woman came to his door and Lou's father refused to call Lou down as requested by the stranger. Lou's father followed the man/woman down the street and saw him get into a carriage with some other men. The family believed he would have tried to kill Lou. I can't remember if Lou mentioned other incidences in his book, but he did say that he believed if he was not in prison just before and during the trial, someone would have killed him.

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I didn't see his name on a list of condemned and executed in Indiana since 1900. Maybe his Booth neck carbuncle came back with a vengeance.

In an article for the Surratt Courier in 1993, Weichmann historian Erich Ewald had Chris Ritter leaving Anderson in the summer of 1897, and was reported to have gone to Kokomo, then Muncie. After that, Erich said, "Ritter dropped from history as quickly as he had come into it."

Skimming through the rest of that article, Erich seems to have found claims by Ritter to have been from Germany, Brazil, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Eminence, Kentucky. He also claimed to have lived in the Ohio River town of Aurora, Indiana, and Erich did find him in the 1880 Dearborn County census. In that census, Ritter was listed as a butcher, living with his wife, Mary (a grocer) and a 9-year-old son named Joshua, Ritter's place of origin was listed as Wurtemberg, with his wife's as Bavaria. According to the census, Joshua was born in Kentucky. Erich speculated that the reference to Brazil may have referred to Ritter being interested in emigrating to that country along with the numbers of Confederadoes who set colonies there after the war.

Ritter created quite a stir in Anderson, Indiana, and (probably in relief) the Anderson Bulletin announced on August 4, 1897, that "Chris Ritter...Story Teller" had left town.

There are also stories about Weichmann being harassed by members of the Surratt family who lived in and near Anderson. They were distant relatives of "our" Surratts - descended from Samuel Surratt, who had left Maryland and headed for North Carolina in the mid-1700s. The Ritters' butcher shop and grocery was only blocks away from a grocery run by Spencer Locker Surratt.