Lumber and Groceries of Yore

The news of Allie Mason's death in February 1923 including some new information (new to me!) about Hobart's past.


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Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1923.

From the Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths Index, we learn that Allie's given name was Alfaretta. Her father was David Dickerson; her mother's maiden name was Tilitha McClosky.

Going by the 1895 Sanborn map, I guess the Dickerson lumber yard/grocery was about where the American Legion post is now — 208 S. Linda Street.

In one of the Hobart Township Trustee's account ledgers that I've indexed, we find D.H. Dickerson supplying a broom for a school in 1874 …


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

… and in 1875, lumber for a bridge over Duck Creek.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

And in the Indiana Marriage Collection, we find Alferetta Dickerson marrying George D. Mason on March 6, 1877.

If the Dickersons did indeed move to Hobart in the 1860s and were still around in the mid-1870s, you would expect to find them in Hobart in the 1870 Census … but instead we find them in Allen County, Ohio: David H. and Talitha, with daughters Marietta and Alfaretta, and sons Franklin and Wellington. In the 1880 Census, Talitha, now widowed, is living in Putnam County, Ohio. Marietta, unmarried, is still with her; so are the married Alfaretta and her two-year-old daughter, Grace (where's George?), as well as two male boarders.

I can't find the Dickerson family at all in the 1860 Census.

My theory is that the Dickersons moved to Hobart only for a few years between 1870 and 1880. More than forty years later, someone's memory misplaced the Dickersons in the 1860s.