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LOU ISVILLE HOSETEAM or IS 0 • WET TNT 25%?s-a* According to a 1976 newspaper interview with his nephew, Roy Austin, Ben Niehoff took a strongly pro - union position during the long mining strike of 1910-1914. From his front porch in downtown Louisville just a block away from 717 Main, he would shoot out the light at the Hecla Mine about a mile away. According to Roy Austin, the Hecla Mine owners never figured out who was doing it. Jessie Niehoff and Her Husband, William Austin Jessie Niehoff, who was born in Hermann, Missouri in 1870, was seven years old when she came to Louisville with her family. She had a very close association with this house, as she lived in it for almost her entire life. She also was closely associated with Louisville and its development. She was present at the start of Louisville in 1878 and had seen many changes by the time she died in 1959 at the age of 89. For example, she was among the first students in Louisville's first school, which was one room, and she experienced a time when wash water came in ditches from the Goodhue Ditch just west of Louisville to a water hole, where residents would get the water and store it in barrels. In 1889, at the age of nineteen, Jessie Niehoff married William Austin. The following photo is their wedding picture: 8