John Chester

John Jarvis Chester was the eighth of Henry Chester's nine children, and the second of three borne by Mary E. (Baird) Chester, Henry's third wife. We've looked at his legal difficulties and his bereavements and final tragedy; now let's go to the governmental records to sketch out the less newsworthy facts of his life.

Although his gravestone gives his birth year as 1888, all the official records I could find accord with a birth date of September 11, 1885.

Reader, did you know the 1890 federal census had been destroyed? I didn't, until I started doing this research. In January 1921 there was a fire in the Washington, D.C. building that housed the 1890 census, and the records were so damaged by water as to be deemed unreadable and thrown out.

That is why the first official glimpse we get of John Chester is in the 1900 census, when he was a boy of 15 living in his parents' house along with his little sister, Daisy. (Big brother Jerome had already moved out.)

On August 31, 1905, at the age of 20, he married Emma A.B. Klemm.

The 1910 census found him living in Ross Township, farming in a general way and renting the house where he, Emma and their two little girls lived.

When World War I came, John was living on Harrison Street in Gary, Indiana, employed at Illinois Steel Company as a rougher. His draft card notes that he had grey eyes and brown hair, and was of medium height with a slender build. He did not serve in the army — deemed ineligible, it seems, because of his physical problems, described by the examiner as: "Loss of left vision, 1 finger on left hand crippled, thumb, left limb short."

I have not found anything to explain how he received those injuries, but both lines of work he had followed up to this point — farming and steel working — were dangerous.

In 1920 he was working in a Gary steel mill as an oiler (that's what it looks like on the census sheet, and a pox on census takers with bad handwriting). He and Emma now had four children: three daughters and a son. The family had prospered well enough to buy their home.

Sometime in the 1920s John and Emma left Gary to open their tourist stop along the Lincoln Highway. As we've seen, by 1927 the lunch stand was in business. In the 1930 census John described himself as a tourist camp operator; he employed his son William as an attendant, but no other family member is listed as working there. John's widowed mother had joined the household, while their eldest daughter, Mamie, had married and moved out in 1928. The Chesters owned their home.

And there the official record ends. Neither Emma, nor Ella Mae (John's second wife), nor John himself would survive to be counted in the 1940 census.

Sources:
♦Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls.
♦Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1910. T624, 1,178 rolls.
♦Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920; (National Archives Microfilm Publication T625, 2076 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
♦Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.
♦Ancestry.com. Indiana Marriage Collection, 1800-1941 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: Works Progress Administration, comp. Index to Marriage Records Indiana: Indiana Works Progress Administration, 1938-1940.
♦Ancestry.com. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.
♦"Former Local Man Marries." Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.) 30 Mar. 1928. Access Newspaper Database. Lake County Public Library 10 Nov. 2009 .