As happy and flourishing as McLean County life was often represented in the Pantagraph, there were also the extremely sad and tragic suicides that were regularly reported. One such was Minnie Nieman, the wife of a German musician. She kept the house, and he was a violinist in the German beer garden in the city. They lived at the southernmost end of Madison Street in 1873. The day before her death Mr. and Mrs. Nieman were busy removing bugs from their potato plants. Afterward, Mrs. Nieman suggested that her husband should clean the pig sty, which was dirty. He declined, saying another day would do just as well. This was understandable, because he was 60 years old and Minnie had told her neighbor that her husband was becoming somewhat feeble. But upon his deferring this work, Minnie got up and began cleaning the pig sty herself, which was out of character for her.
Earlier that week, their neighbor Mr. Westfall had purchased a load of firewood and had it stacked up against the fence between the two properties. Minnie said to him that he had placed it there, and stacked it so high, so as to tempt her and her husband to steal the firewood. This statement shocked Mr. Westfall because it was so unlike Minnie to speak this way.
The morning after the pig sty was cleaned, Mr. Nieman woke in their bed and found that Minnie was not there. His slippers had been placed beside the bed by his wife so that he might easily find them, so he put them on and called out for Minnie through the house. Outside the house he met Mr. Westfall, who gave him the sad news and showed him where Minnie had hung herself with a small rope at the back of the yard. Her desperation to end her life could be seen in the posture of the body, which was drawn up from touching the ground where she could easily have saved herself.
The Niemans had enjoyed a quiet, peaceful life, with no arguments to mar the peace of the neighborhood. She had recently told Mr. Westfall that they planned to return to Germany for Mr. Nieman's old age. She was just 45 years old, the second wife of a poor man with no children of her own.
This report says much about life in McLean County in 1873 -- the close relations of the neighbors, the self sufficiency of the people and the picture of domestic comforts and work that show the partnership of this married couple. (June 30, 1873)