Karrasch family
Biography
Hermann Karrasch immigrated at age 16 to the United States from Germany with his mother, father, brother, and three sisters in 1895. He married Clara Horkenbach in 1903. At about this time he was the caretaker of the Central Rowing Club clubhouse at the foot of Angelica Street, near the railroad tracks at the Mississippi River. They began raising a family, which included their extant children, donor of this gift Eleanor Hoefle and her brother, Harry, Jr. The children were walked to their attendance at nearby Ames School by their mother, Clara. Hermann died October 17, 1949; Clara died in 2003.
The Karrasch family purchased another river property at Elsberry, Missouri in 1960. There, they fished, swam, and boated in the sloughs and backwaters of the Mississippi near Kickapoo Island. The property was flooded several times, however, by the installation of successively higher levees placed nearby, and the family therefore sold the property in 1995 or 1996.
Eleanor Hoefle said in June, 2017: “I spent most of my life in the river. I was in the Mississippi River most of my life and now [in retirement] look out on the Missouri River.”
Sources: “The Life of Hermann Karrasch,” a two-page description by Eleanor Hoefle; personal conversations between Eleanor Hoefle and David Lobbig; curatorial research.