Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

Alma Murphy Halff was Weichmann's niece who sold his manuscript and other documents to Floyd Risvold in 1975. She was about 84 years old at the time and living in LA. A friend of hers contacted Risvold. Her mother was Elizabeth Wiechmann who married Joseph Murphy from New York. The 1880 census show them living in Springfield, Ill, where two of their three (at that time) children were born. I couldn't find the 1890 census for them, but in 1900 the family was living in Danville, Illinois, about 88 miles east and 119 miles west of Anderson Indiana where Louis and several of his family lived. Alma's age is listed as 10.

Alma was an actress and she has an IMDB as Alma Murphy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1574061/. One of her performances in The Munsters can be seen on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNIecqJqRNs

By 1910 Alma, who was 19, her sister Annie and her parents were living in LA. According to a bio written by her daughter-in-law, Alma was a "bohemian free spirit" who joined the David Belasco acting troupe and travelled all over the country performing, until she married Abraham Halff and settled down in LA.

Two of her brothers, Louis and Alford, are listed in the 1900 census as living with their uncle Father Fred Wiechmann in Gas City, Indiana which I think is where he lived when Louis died in 1902 in Anderson. Fred Wiechmann died in 1905 in that location. A week before they were in the 1900 census in Illinois with their family. It's interesting that Alma's family lived in Springfield, Ill., and she was an actress married to an Abraham.

One of Alma's cookie recipes can be found in the book Sugar, Sugar, Every Recipe Has a Story.

I was intrigued by the journey Weichmann's manuscript took before it came into Risvold's collection in Minnesota. (Thank goodness fathers Mulcahy or Conroy didn't get their mitts on it.) There are still a lot of questions, but based on this info, there was a close family connection between Elizabeth's family and the Indiana Wiechmanns.