A New Feedstore and an Old Homestead

When I wrote about the 1910 death of Morgan Blachly, I didn't know the 1908 Plat Map existed, so I could not credit him with more than the 180 acres shown in the 1891 Plat Book … but now I know that the Blachly farm comprised 256 acres by 1908. After Morgan died, the land apparently was divided up among his heirs, and his three sons farmed their share, or rented it out for others to farm.

In February 1922, as we've seen, Earl Blachly announced that he had sold his share of the old homestead, but did not identify the buyer.

Now in September 1922 we have this announcement of a new feed store in Hobart, one of the owners of which had "last spring … bought the Morgan Blachly homestead."


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart Gazette 15 Sept. 1922

I believe I've identified him as Mark Pembor, born in Massachusetts on July 7, 1880. The earliest I can connect him to this area is December of 1911, when he married Esther Denton in Lake County, Indiana. (Why there, I do not know; Esther was a Chicago resident in 1910.) While my 1927 telephone directory lists a number for his "farm residence," I can't otherwise establish that the couple ever lived there. In 1920 they lived in Chicago; I can't find them in 1930; and Mark's death in 1933 happened in Chicago.

Mark and Esther are buried in (of all places) Frankfort, Michigan.

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The "Local Drifts" on the Gazette page above includes a few items about acquaintances of ours — the family of Dalia Messick moving from one unknown place to another; William Rossow loving the improvements on Lincoln Street; and George Rhodes moving to Cleveland Avenue, somewhere east of Illinois Street.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths Index.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ WWI Draft Cards.