South of Deepriver

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Hobart News 4 May 1922.

Among all this ordinary social news, we find an item about the Henry Cunningham farm. Last time we heard about that farm was in 1919, when Thomas and Maud Chandler were renting it and their landlord was planning to sell it.

Looking around on the plat maps, I had to go all the way back to the 1874 Plat Map to find a Henry Cunningham farm:


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Henry Cunningham was born circa 1827 in New York. The earliest I can find him around here is in Porter County in the 1850 Census; he was then working as a hired hand on the farm of Hazzard and Alvira Sheffield. In 1851 he married Elizabeth Sheffield (Indiana Marriage Collection) — the sister of his employer, I'm guessing. Henry and Elizabeth were still in Porter County, farming near Hazzard and Alvira, through the 1860 Census. By the 1870 Census, however, the Cunninghams were in Ross Township, apparently on the farm that would still be bear their name in local parlance in 1922.

… which is strange, because the 1880 Census shows that Henry, apparently widowed, had by then left Ross Township and was living with his children in Chicago, dealing in horses. In the 1891 Plat Book, the Cunningham farm is the Joseph Guernsey farm. I wonder why the Cunningham name had such staying power?