Lillie Newman Barnes

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Image courtesy of Diane Barnes.

This is Lillie Newman Barnes. The photo is undated, but she wears the pigeon-front bodice popular in the first decade of the 20th century. (The photographer was Adelbert Reading, which doesn't help us narrow down the time frame.)

In 1909, on the John Gruel farm that is now River Pointe Country Club, Miss Lillie Newman became Mrs. Harry Barnes.


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From the Hobart Gazette of May 7, 1909.

But where, during all this merry-making, were Lillie's parents? — they lay in the Hobart cemetery.

The Gruel family came over from Germany in 1871,* including the 17-year-old John Jr. (who would end up farming near Ainsworth); his 25-year-old sister, Wilhelmine; and their 10-year-old brother, Charles (who would become a butcher in Hobart). In 1872 Wilhelmine married Otto Newman in Cook County, Illinois. The young couple settled in Hobart, where the 1880 census showed them with two children, Paul (6) and Edwin (2), Otto working as a stonemason. Over the next eight years, Wilhelmine gave birth to four more children: Emma, Arthur, Lillie, and Bliss (known as "Dollie").

Otto Newman died in 1890, and Wilhelmine just four years later, leaving six orphans, the eldest just 21. But the young Newmans had their Gruel uncles nearby to help them, and give them a home if desired — Emma moved in with Uncle Charles, and Arthur with Uncle John. I do not know where Lillie stayed, as I can't find her in the 1900 census. But clearly she was close enough with Uncle John to be married from his house.

So you see even the Newmans of Hobart have an Ainsworth connection!

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*Or 1872; sources vary.



Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ Anuta, Michael J. Ships of our Ancestors. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1999.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ "Death." Hobart Gazette 5 Oct. 1894.
♦ "Emma Newman Drowned." Hobart Gazette 30 July 1897.