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 after visiting their sister, who was helping a neighbor. Their parents, Carl and Henrietta Haumann, were German immigrants who had moved from Illinois to Thomas County, Nebraska, in March 1891 and homesteaded about five miles north of Thedford. After the girls were reported missing on May 11, search parties were organized. Three days later, searchers found Retta alive about twenty-five miles east of her parents' house, and although she suffered from dehydration and exposure, she recovered. The search for Tillie continued with scores of area residents until her body was found some seven miles from Dunning on Sunday, May 17. She had walked an estimated seventy-five miles before her death and was buried in the Thedford Cemetery. The tragedy showed how neighbors and strangers joined together in a time of need and underscored the challenges new settlers faced in adapting to life in the treeless, roadless, sparsely settled Nebraska Sandhills.