The Haumann Sisters: Lost in the Sandhills

The girls stand beside the marker in bronze. Linda Egle, who ranches and casts bronzes at her Yellow Calf Studio just west of Thedford, made the life-size pair after hearing the town wanted a way to remember them, and it was unveiled in 2016, the 125th year after the search. Egle, born in California and raised in Arizona, came to Nebraska with friends after high school and has worked in bronze since 1982. She builds a figure from a wire armature and clay, molds it, casts a hollow wax, and pours the metal into a shell formed around it.

What the plaque says

The Haumann Sisters: Lost in the Sandhills On May 10, 1891, eight-year-old Matilda (Tillie) Haumann and her four-year-old sister, Anna Henrietta (Retta), became lost in the Sandhills while returning home from visiting their sister who was helping a neighbor. Their parents, Carl and Henrietta Haumann, were German immigrants who moved from Illinois to Thomas County, Nebraska, in March 1891 and homesteaded approximately five miles north of Thedford. The parents reported the girls missing on May 11 and search parties were organized. Three days later, searchers found Retta alive some twenty-five miles east of her parents' house. Although suffering from dehydration and exposure, she recovered. Joined by scores of area residents, the search for Tillie continued until her lifeless body was discovered some seven miles from Dunning on Sunday, May 17. The child walked an estimated seventy-five miles before her death. She is buried in the Thedford Cemetery. This tragedy reveals how neighbors and strangers can join together in times of need and validates the challenges new settlers faced in adapting to life in the treeless, roadless, and sparsely-settled Nebraska Sandhills. Thomas County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society, 2016 Thomas County Citizens and Businesses

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska National Forest, Bessey Ranger District — 15 mi
  A pine forest planted by hand on the Sandhills from 1902 to prove a botanist's theory, still raising seedlings at its nursery and still recovering from the Bovee Fire of 2022.

More markers nearby

• The Sandhills — 1.9 mi
• Village of Halsey — 16 mi