Evelina Siebler

ELVERIA EVELINA⁴ SIEBLER (C WILLIAM³, FRIEDRICH², JOHANN WILHELM¹) was born 10 Mar 1909 in Cornlea, Nebraska, and died in1992 in Chicago. She married JIM SAVAGE. He was born in 1897 outside of Norman Oklahoma, and died 06 Aug 1964 in San Antonio, Texas.

Evelina's mother, Lena, died just days after she was born. Her father tried to raise her and the other children by himself but after a year he decided it was time to re-marry. His new bride was Hattie Hyatt from Kansas. The older girls didn't approve much of Hattie, in part because she was only 7 years older than William's oldest child.

The relationship between the older girls, their dad and new "mother" was severely tested on April 6, 1920, when Carrie and Anna, kidnapped their youngest sister, Evelina, and took her to Humphrey, Nebraska. Unable to convince his daughters to return the young girl voluntarily, William was forced to file a petition in State District Court against his own children for the return of Evelina. Finally, on April 19, 1920, The Court issued a Writ of Habeas Corpus and Evelina was returned by the sheriff to William and Hattie’s home in Aurora. You can read more about the kidnapping and see the court pleadings at The Kidnapping of Evelina.

A few years after the abduction, during her teenage years, Evelina was placed at the Girls Training School in Geneva, Nebraska. In her late teens or early 20's she attended a nursing school in Norfolk, Nebraska. While there, she lived with her brother, Herman.

As a young adult, Evelina moved from Nebraska to live and work in San Antonio, Texas where she met her husband to be, Jim Savage of Duncan, Oklahoma. They had no children. Life for Evelina was neither dull or quiet. During WWll, they moved to Monterrey, N.L., Mexico, where he erected and operated the world's most powerful radio station. But the Mexican government accused Savage of being an "opportunist" and threw him in a dungeon and seized all his property. While he was in the Mexican prison, he wrote the book "The Blonde Heathen" which was later published by the Naylor Company in San Antonio, Texas.

Somehow he managed to escape the prison, and he and Evelina fled across the Rio Grande into Texas with $70,000 of his own money and the original manuscript of his book. They lived the rest of their years in San Antonio, Texas.

After Jim died in 1964, Evelina moved to Chicago, Illinois to live with family for a while before going to live with her brother, Herman, in Ventura California. Due to conflicts with her brother’s wife she moves out on her own to Fullerton, California. Finally, when diagnosed with cancer, she moves back to Chicago where she died 1992. She is buried next to her husband in the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio, Texas.