Aunt Clara Is Optimistic

Well intended but unreliable advice to little Lester Harms from his Aunt Clara.


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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

I am not 100% sure of Aunt Clara's identity, but I believe she was born Clara Shumacher and married Fred Schavey in October 1892 (Indiana Marriage Collection) — so she was a sister-in-law to Lester's mother, Sophia Schavey Harms. And I think Clara was a sister of Hattie Schumacher, who married Fred Schavey's brother, William.

I can't actually place Clara and Hattie together in one census. Alas, that missing 1890 census! The 1880 Census shows Clara, 11 years old, in the home of Fredrick and Salma Shoemaker, who farmed in Hobart Township. Clara has four younger siblings (Edward, Annie, George, and Amelia) ranging in age from 9 years to 2 months. Twenty years later, the 1900 Census shows Fred and Selma Schumacher farming in Ross Township, with two children: Hattie (born shortly after the 1880 census), and Frank, 13 years old. Selma reports that she has given birth to eight children, of whom seven survive. The children listed in the two censuses add up to seven.

At the moment I have to rely on those circumstances as evidence that Clara and Hattie were sisters. Neither Fred nor Selma Schumacher's obituary named their children.


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Hobart Gazette 14 Dec. 1906.


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"Mortuary Record." Hobart Gazette 8 May 1908.