Saturday, February 25, 2017

Hobart's Yellowstone Trail Members

Here's something for you Yellowstone Trail fans: a list of Hobart people and businesses who in December 1922 promised five years' support for the Trail's maintenance and promotion.

2017-2-25. Yellowstone Trail; Hanna anniversary
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

I can't index that many names, so here they are for the search engine: S.E. Henderson, O.L. Pattee, Brahst Bros., Hobart Bank, A.J. Newman, First State Bank, Albert Orcutt, Dwight Mackey, Clara Faulkner, Frank Reissig, Busse & Long, Phillips & Byall, Nick Ehrhardt, National Oil & Supply Co., Hobart Lumber Co., R.R. Peddicord, George Watkins, Roper Bros, Emil Scharbach, Hobart Filling Station.



Below that story is one about a wedding anniversary that draws our attention to some Deep-River-area history.

Mary (Ferguson) Hanna was a niece of Catherine Mereness Crisman, but her immediate family is elusive. The earliest I can find her parents, Ezra and Anna (aka Christiana) Ferguson, in a census is 1900, where they are recorded farming in Union Township, Porter County; yet they were married in Lake County in 1861 (Indiana Marriage Collection), and the Civil War draft registration records Ezra in Union Township in 1863. Mary had been born in 1862 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Thomas Hanna was born in Michigan in 1858. I find it interesting that his death certificate (1953) has a blank for his father's given name, and "Unknown" for his mother's name. Either the person who completed the certificate was a bit offhand about it, or his daughter Eva, who reported his death, did not know much about her paternal grandparents.

In the 1900 Census, which shows the Hanna family living in Hobart, Thomas gives his occupation as "R.R. Towerman." By the 1910 Census he had become a teamster — a drayman, as the article says — but the 1920 Census shows him back on the railroad, as a section worker.

Mary died in 1928. I can't find Thomas in 1930. If I've found the right person in the 1940 Census, Thomas had remarried, and his second wife was named Mary, too. I believe the second Mary Hanna died in 1950. Apparently nobody knew her maiden name at that time; from clues on Ancestry.com I'm guessing that it was Moffitt and that her first husband's surname was Smith. I think I need obituaries for all of these people if I'm ever going to figure this out.

As for this Davis Peck — the Deep River justice of the peace from 1882 — I wonder if he was any relation to the Pecks who keep showing up in those "South of Deepriver" columns, but at the moment I don't know anything about him.

… And finally, burgling the home of a grieving widower is pretty darn low.

4 comments:

Rachel said...

They always strike around Christmas. Loved the arrow!

Anonymous said...

Only two sons were called out out in the obituary, so I have to wonder if the un-named son was Myron M Peck, who kept a feed store on Hobart Road until the late 60s.

It is still there, on the east side of the road across from the small diagonal cutoff road.

I remember walking there for chicken feed.
I believe one of his daughters married a man named Speer, and lived in the house just north of the feed Store.
I knew her son, Kevin.

Ainsworthiana said...

I've got a couple accidental photos of Peck's from the east that I will get around to posting one of these days. But you've got me confused, I don't know which obituary you're referring to.

Anonymous said...

James Gill the acting night marshal is my great grandfather.