Cora Maybaum

We've seen the interior of the Main Street Trinity Lutheran Church before.


(Click on images to enlarge)

I finally took the trouble to figure out the text across the top of the front wall — it's the beginning of 1 Corinthians 1:23, "But we preach Christ crucified."

Once again, I didn't buy the postcard for its front but for the mystery on its back (and this time I didn't wimp out).



The postmark is 1909. The writer signs herself Cora M. From the text we can gather that she has two daughters, Mary and Margaret, and that Mary is old enough to go to school. Looking in the 1910 Census records for Hobart, we find all those elements in the household of Fred and Cora Maybaum. They have two children: Mary, who in 1909 would have been just old enough to go to school (about six years of age), and Margaret, about three years old. They lived at 1122 Devonshire Street.

According to Fred Maybaum's death certificate (Indiana Death Certificates), his mother's maiden name was Maasch, which would explain why Cora was writing to Mrs. F. Maasch.

Fred was not one of the Ainsworth Maybaums. He was one of the many, many Hobart Maybaums. I believe his brother, Louis, had also married a Cora.

The postcard-writing Cora's maiden name was Shearer (Indiana Marriage Collection), but if she was related to the Ainsworth Shearers, I haven't found out about it yet. Her father was Harrison Shearer; I think Amanda Shearer Scholler was her aunt. Her grandparents were Daniel and Sarah (Ream) Shearer, who came to Union Township, Porter County, sometime between the 1850 Census and the 1860 Census.

Here is the Daniel Shearer land in 1876:


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1876Plats/Union-1876.jpg, courtesy of Steven R. Shook.

Note the road I've marked with a question mark. If that road ever existed, it has long vanished. But the map fails to show Duck Creek, which runs about the same route as that road; so I'm wondering if somewhere between the surveyor and the printer, the creek got mistaken for a road. We find the same marking in the 1895 and 1906 plat maps, but with the 1921 map the road is replaced by Duck Creek.

Also with the 1921 map, we find some of the former Shearer land in the hands of Theodore and Annie Rossow, whose niece, Minnie Rossow, married in the Harms family of East AINSWORTH — ha! I've finally brought this back around to Ainsworth, so I guess those 6 hours I spent researching this little postcard weren't all wasted.