Joachim "Joseph" Ebert

Joachim "Joseph" Ebert was born August 25, 1859 in Klein Breesen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

His parents were Gustav Ebert and Sophia Lange Ebert. He was the youngest of seven children, with older siblings Adolph Ebert, Dorothea Ebert Langhoff, Friedericke Ebert Koepke, Johann Ebert, Heinrich Ebert, and Carl Ebert. All were born in Germany. The family immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s.

Family Life

Joseph married Katharina Schairen, a fellow German immigrant in Illinois. They had four children: Maud Ebert (adopted), Hulda Ebert, Wanda Ebert, and Walter Ebert. Maud was adopted due to the couple's initial belief that they could not conceive. Hulda and Wanda both remained at home, never married. Walter became an electrician for the University of Illinois, based in Urbana. Maud married and moved a few towns north.

Joseph and Katharina's children were initially sent to Lutheran school but were pulled out to learn to "speak American." After the outbreak of World War I, the previously bilingual family spoke only English, even at home.

The family lived on West Clark Street in Urbana, Champaign County, Illinois, "in a two-story frame house with a big porch."

Professional Life

According to grandson Roger Ebert, Joseph was a machinist for the Peoria & Eastern Railway, known as the "Big Four."

Roger Ebert recounted this story of Joseph and his legacy:

Daddy [Walter Ebert] would take me out to the Roundhouse on the north side of town to watch the big turntables turning steam engines around. In our kitchen, he always used a knife "your grandfather made from a single piece of steel."
I never met my grandparents, and that knife is the only thing of theirs I own. Once when I was visiting my parents' graves, I wandered over to my grandparents' graves, where we'd often left flowers on Memorial Day. I realized consciously for the first time, although I must have been told, that my grandfather was named Joseph. My middle name.

Death

Joseph died in Urbana in 1932 at the age of 72. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Urbana.

• http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/03/my_old_man.html