Ida
![[Ida 1971]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/941KsaP1gYMwPe-MieXcXxHr4wHRiQ9LJBaDmLvVblmfaOBBIVd5db2-1ZGrTCIBxW8wjA=w1280)
IDA - second child of August Hein and Annie Graf
Ida May was born in the nineteenth century in outback Queensland, at Sleepy Creek near Roma, on the 18th of May 1897, 22 months after her sister Gertrude. Her family moved from Queensland to South Australia (Mt Gambier) when she was 3. She went to the Glenburnie Primary school when the family lived at The Ridge (near Glenburnie) and went to the OB Flat school when the family relocated in 1904 or 1905.
As a teenager Ida worked at Carlsruhe – a large property in the OB Flat area - as a domestic (house help/maid) and at or before age 18 she and the owner (Carl Spehr)’s son, Oscar (Ossie), commenced a ‘romance’ and their first child (Arthur Allan SPEHR) was born in 1916, a few days before her 19th birthday. Oscar was 28.
The child was born in Enfield (there was a ‘girls reformatory’ in Enfield – for unmarried girls - its speculation that she was sent there to be out of sight) - both Ida and Oscar’s parents lived in OB Flat. The couple were married (on an unknown date) in late 1917 in a civil ceremony in Victoria sometime before the birth of their second son Noel Irvine SPEHR - born in 1918. They had two more children - Morvan Leon SPEHR, born 1920 (known as ‘Jimmy’ - he died aged 10), and Alister Hayden SPEHR born 1922.
Oscar was a successful businessman and provided a good lifestyle for his wife and children. He established his own business, ‘O.F. Spehr Potato and Onion Merchants’ and occupied premises on the ground floor of the Producers Club Hotel in Grenfell Street.
When they first married Ida and Ossie lived at Muddy Lane in Mt Gambier and later in Ferres Street. By 1924 they had moved to 31 Grandview Grove in Toorak Gardens, an affluent suburb of Adelaide. This grand home on a large block of land has gone and the site is now occupied by two smaller courtyard-style homes.
Sadly Oscar (“Ossie”) died in 1943, aged 55, leaving Ida a widow at age 48. He is buried in West Terrace Cemetery and his son Jimmy (Morvan Leon) is buried in the same location.
Ida went on to marry a much younger man, Walter Alan Windsor – born in 1917 as Walter Kaiser; his father died when he was 2 and his mother remarried (John Windsor) and had a daughter when Walter was 10, but the girl died at one-day-old. His mother died four years later when Walter was 14.
It is not known what year Walter and Ida married but she died 12 years before him and is buried alongside her first husband (Oscar Spehr) in the West Terrace cemetery under the name Ida May Windsor. Ida spent her final years in a rest home in Glengowrie and died in 1989, aged 92. Walter died in 2001 (aged 84) and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery with his mother, Lucy Windsor, who died in 1932 at the age of 46.
Ida ‘Dick’ May HEIN, b. 1897, Roma, QLD, m. 1917 Oscar Felix SPEHR, (1887-1943 (55)) in Victoria, d. 1989 (92).
Four children.
Arthur Allan (“Merle”) SPEHR: b. 1916, m. Esme Jean Gustafson, d. 1997 (81).
Martin Allan SPEHR b. 1955, m. Kathryn Janssan (b. 1956), 1 child.
Noel Ervine SPEHR: b. 1918, m. Doreen Gladys Whyatt, d. 1972 (54).
Barry Ervine SPEHR: b. 1945, m. Faye Emerson (b. 1950) – 1 child.
Morvan ("Jimmy") Leon SPEHR, b. 1920, d. 1931 (died age 10).
Alister Haydn ("Sos") SPEHR, b. 1922, m. Thelma Miriam Brand, d. 2002 (82).
Alan ("Leon") SPEHR, b. 1943, m(1). Mary Josephine Scally (b. 1943), 3 children, m(2). Merralyn Kaye Vidura (b. 1949), 1 child.
Kathleen Leonee SPEHR, b. 1945, m(1). Robert Burns (1945-1968), no children, m(2). Ronald Lancelot Gavin (b. 1935), 2 children.
Ida, left, with younger sister Grace in 1917.