Late Winter Moving

If farmers wanted to move, the best time to do it was winter — after the autumn harvest, before the spring planting. The late winter of 1919 saw a lot of our acquaintances moving around. I am going to try to keep track of them.

I have not known exactly where Lovisa Chester Nelson was living during nearly three years since she quit farming, but January 1919 finds her and Ruth Miller, after a visit with the Raschkas in Hobart, returning "to their homes at Ainsworth."

We know that her daughter, Myrtle, and son-in-law, Ernest Sitzenstock, Jr., just bought the former home of Ulric Blickensderfer in Ainsworth, where Ernest was working for Uncle William Raschka (managing hay and grain shipments on the Grand Trunk Railroad, probably). This was their second house in Ainsworth, for they had already built their own bungalow. However, on February 27 they left Ainsworth to move onto "the Henning farm near [Ernest's] father's place in Ross township," with the intent to operate it themselves.

The 1908 Plat Map shows several Henning farms in the vicinity of the Sitzenstock farm:


(Click on image to enlarge)

The Henning* farm had recently been occupied by Myrtle's brother, Owen Nelson, and his wife, Caroline — in fact, they had moved there only the previous autumn. But those young Nelsons were now moving onto "the Hoffman farm," described as east of Hobart, which they planned to operate on shares for Louise Schavey, recently widowed by the Spanish influenza. I don't know for sure where the Hoffman farm was, but we do find a couple of Hoffman parcels in the 1926 Plat Book:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Next we hear that Lovisa Nelson bought "the house and acre lot in Ainsworth" from her daughter and son-in-law, Myrtle and Ernest. That description sounds like the Blickensderfer place, but then again I don't know how much land the Sitzenstocks' new bungalow sat on.

All right, that's enough, my head is spinning.

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*Recall that Glen Nelson married Elsie Henning in 1915.


Sources:
♦ "Additional Local News." Hobart Gazette 28 Feb. 1919; 7 Mar. 1919.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 30 Jan. 1919.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 7 Mar. 1919.