Sunday's Obituary: Leo Steele Peight, Sr.

Leo S. Peight

Leo S. Peight, 52, a native of Freeport and a former Freeport high school football star, died at Hines hospital, Chicago, Saturday night.

Services will be held at the Tews funeral home, 2434 East 79th street, Chicago, at 1 p.m. Wednesday. Interment will be made in Greenwood cemetery, Chicago.

Mr. Peight was born in Freeport Jan. 30, 1897, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles W. Peight, Sr. He received his education here and while attending Freeport high school played fullback on the school football team. Later he attended Charthage college.

His marriage to Miss Louise Leudtke took place in 1924.

Survivors include his wife and two sons, Leo S. Peight, Jr., and John Henry Peight. A brother and a sister also survive, Charles W. Peight, Freeport, and Miss Vera Peight of Chicago.

A number of years ago Mr. Peight was special delivery carrier at the Freeport post office.

In the first world war he served with an engineering corps.

Later he was employed as a clerk in the Chicago postoffice. during the second world war he became a civilian employe of the quartermaster's department of the U.S. army and had continued that work until recently.

source: Freeport (IL) Journal-Standard, June 13, 1949

relationship to me: second cousin, twice removed.

Notes:

I was unaware of the Freeport, Illinois and Chicago lines of the Peight family until a couple weeks ago when I began corresponding with one of the descendants on Ancestry.com. It turned out that our ancestors were brothers. From sharing our information on Ancestry.com, along with the California descendants of the Pecht family, more of the fabric of our ancestry is being woven together.

Fortunately, there is a lot of information on this branch of the Peight family in the Freeport and Chicago area newspapers, so there are many newspaper articles to read, sort through and assimilate.

His son, also named Leo Steele Peight, was killed in an automobile accident less than two years later. This is an example of why all clues and documents must be reviewed. It would be very easy to confuse the two Illinois death records for this father and son.