Trees: Falling and Family

As I said, I'm at a point in time where an Ainsworth person has to die or be born in order to get into the paper. Charles Maybaum made it onto the front page of the Hobart News of September 11, 1913, by being killed by a falling tree. And it took that obituary to inform me just how instrumental he and his wife, Caroline, had been in populating the area. Just look at the list of surviving (adult) children:

In Ainsworth:

• Albert Maybaum
• Edward Maybaum
• Charles Maybaum
• August Maybaum (in Ross Township, outside the village of Ainsworth)
• Mrs. Lena Barney
• Mrs. Martha Miller
• Mrs. Hattie Sizelove

In Deep River: Mrs. Gusta Waldeck
In Hobart: Mrs. Jennie Dewell
"Near Hebron": Mrs. Mary Thompson

Honestly, Ainsworth wouldn't have been much of a town without Charles and Caroline Maybaum; now, would it? I mean, even less of a town. Or village.

He was also survived by a brother, Fred Maybaum of Chicago, and just to make things interesting there was an (I believe) unrelated Fred Maybaum in Hobart whose hobby was likewise, apparently, populating the town.

Charles Maybaum was born in Germany in 1840. In 1863 he married Caroline Wagoner, and their two eldest sons, August and Charles junior, were born in Germany. In 1871 the family came to the United States and eventually settled in Ross Township, south of Ainsworth, where they resumed producing children. The 1891 Plat Book shows "Chas. Maibaum & wife" owning the 80-acre parcel that later passed into the hands of George Chester, and where Chester Cemetery is located.


(Click on image to enlarge)
The 80-acre Maybaum parcel is outlined in red. This image is from the 1926 Plat Book, which I use because it's easier to read than the 1891 one, and by that time the land belonged to George Chester.

Charles died sometime on the morning of September 4, 1913. He had left the house about 9 a.m., after announcing his intention to go chop down a tree in the woods on his land. No one thought anything of it when he didn't come back for lunch, but as the afternoon wore on and Charles was nowhere to be seen, someone got worried and set out looking for him. His "severely bruised" body — dead for probably several hours — was found near the tree he had cut down.

He is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.


(Click on image to enlarge)


Sources:
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Chas. Maybaum Killed by Falling Tree Thursday." Hobart News 11 Sept. 1913.