Mr. and Mrs. Johann Christian Traugott Erfurth, Just Passing Through

Now let's get back to the northern 40 acres of the Harms 73rd Avenue farm. We left off in 1870, at which time ownership of those 40 acres was transferred from Charles Smith to Albert Van Doozer. Charles' parents, Jacob and Hannah, may or may not have still been leasing the land and farming it themselves.

Five years later, it appears that the elder Smiths had no further want of the land, for whatever reason that may have been. On New Year's Day, 1875, Albert and Emma Van Doozer sold the land to someone named Johann Christian Traugott Erfourth.


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Images courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

Johann aka John, and his wife, Eliza Rosalia, borrowed the money to purchase the land from one Emma P. Smith …



… who was, I'm guessing, the daughter of Luther and Sarah Smith. If my guess is correct, Emma was about 20 years old (born circa 1855 per the 1860 Census). I do not know where a 20-year-old would get $500 to lend out, unless she inherited it from her mother, or perhaps a grandparent (we know that both her grandparents were dead by September 1877). I have not been able to find out anything about Emma's life after her father's estate was distributed, beyond the fact that she became an orphan in 1871.

The surname of the purchasers has already appeared in two different spellings: Erfourth and Erfurth. Later it shows up as Ehrfurth. Even with all those options I cannot identify Johann and Eliza in any other record, such as a census, that would give us details about them.

A lien search two years later (when the Erfurths were selling the land) showed that Johann had been active enough, during the previous ten years, to be involved in a couple of lawsuits:



That first lawsuit, Ehrfurth v. Kline, might have involved an Ainsworth-area Kleine/Kline, but without a first name we can't know.

The second lawsuit, Steinfeld v. Ehrfurth & Bommerschein, tells us that the Erfurths were in business with a Martin Bommerschein — but I can't find any information about him, either. Nor can I identify this Steinfeld person who sued them.

So this episode in the history of the Harms 73rd Avenue farm is a big "I don't know."

Finally, in 1878 — several months after the Erfurths had sold the land — Emma Smith released the mortgage on it.




I just have to add that I think "Traugott" is an interesting name. It means "trust in God."

Ipsilon Dart

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This Ipsilon Dart can't believe how busy I've been lately. Where does the time go? wonders this Ipsilon Dart.

The Aurelia Building in Gary

I don't usually deal with Gary history, because it's a huge topic and there are thousands of people better qualified to talk about it, but this lovely structure has an Ainsworth connection.


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Image courtesy of David Conley.

It was built by Teofil H. Grabowski, and named for his daughter, Aurelia. We can assume that the building went up sometime after Aurelia's birth in September 1922; that's as exact as I can get at this point.

It stood on the north side of West Fifth Avenue in the 900 block. In addition to office space, it held apartments: for example, the dentist whose sign we can see on the nearest corner, Samuel De Haven, appears in the 1930 Census in a rented residence at 902 West Fifth, and his office is listed at the same address in a 1929 city directory.[1] In the same directory, Dr. Sophie Solf is listed at 914 W. Fifth. The awning of the Fifth Avenue Restaurant gives its street number as 904.

I'm guessing the photo dates to roughly 1929 (although some of the businesses in the photo are not listed in the 1929 directory).[2]

The Aurelia Building is no longer standing. My source tells me that family members saw it as late as (approximately) 1967 as they were driving through the region. According to Lake County records, the Rally's restaurant now on the site was built in 1989. A few years after that, Aurelia Grabowski Conley came to the area for a brief visit and found her namesake building replaced, but she did get to visit her childhood home north of Ainsworth.


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[1] Polk's Gary (Indiana) City Directory 1929. Chicago: R.L. Polk & Co., 1929. Via Ancestry.com.
[2] Ainsworth's own vintage-car expert tells me that he can't see anything inconsistent with that approximate date in the vehicles on the street.

Tressy's Secret

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

When a stranger named Mandy Haggerty contacted me out of the blue to tell me that her grandfather was Theresia Chester's illegitimate child, I was astonished. Tressy? Who would ever have thought…?

But the birth certificate is easy enough to find, if only I had known to go look for it. I wonder that I did not stumble across it before in all these years of research.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com.

The father, George Peterson, was born December 24, 1888, somewhere in Wisconsin (sources vary). His parents, Danish immigrants, were farmers (1900 Census, and I am relying on Mandy's research for his background, since a guy with a name like George Peterson — well, you have to have a special interest in him to do the work of separating him from all the other George Petersons). At about 20 years of age George married for the first time and had a child; the 1910 Census shows him living in Chicago with his in-laws. I do not know what became of that marriage. George somehow found his way down to Ross Township. When the Great War broke out and he had to complete his draft card on June 5, 1917, he described himself as single (WWI Draft Cards). He was working as a hired hand on the farm of Nicholas Fleck, Jr.

Living in Ross Township, he not surprisingly came to know Tressy Chester. She was about ten years his junior.

What is surprising about this episode is that throughout the late autumn of 1917, and the winter and spring of 1918, none of the local papers mentioned a word about Charles Chester's taking any legal action against his daughter's seducer — or even illegal action, as might be the first impulse of the hot-headed Charles.

To his credit, Charles apparently did not do anything against his pregnant daughter, either. It was probably under his roof, on May 14, 1918, that George Jr. was born. As noted on the birth certificate, George Sr. was then residing back in his home state, Wisconsin.

We have no way of knowing how Tressy felt about giving her child up for adoption. The fact that birth certificate recorded a name rather than just "baby boy" would suggest emotional attachment — but I ought not to subject Tressy to my amateur psychologizing.

At that time and place, of course, her keeping the child as a single mother would have come at a very heavy social cost. As to letting her parents raise the child as their own — as the Ols family had done with little Lela — well, Charles and Constance were both about 46 years old at that time; I suppose they could have brazened it out if they'd really wanted to. But that didn't happen.

The child having been adopted out, Tressy's life resumed all appearance of normality. As we know, in September 1919 she married Robert Shaw. The ceremony took place in Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. The bride wore white crepe de chine and was attended by her sister, Jennie.[1]

Our knowing what we know now makes it all the more poignant that the first child of that marriage, a little boy names James, died shortly after birth (Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index). Robert and Tressy went on to have two more sons whom they raised to adulthood.

I wonder if Robert knew about Tressy's first child?

The Chesters kept quiet about it all even within the family, it seems. In contrast to the Ols descendants, to whom the story of Jennie and Lela was just a part of family history, none of the Chester descendants I'm in touch with knew anything about Tressy's secret. The story was equally unknown among the descendants of Tressy's baby. Mandy Haggerty needed an Ancestry.com DNA test, with its suggestions of possible relatives, as well as the help of a "search angel," to figure out that the grandfather she knew as Donald Robert Haggerty had come into the world as George Peterson, Jr.

I will talk about him and his adopted family in a future post.

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[1] "Hobart," The Times (Hammond, Ind.), 5 Sept. 1919.

Collared Dart and Bristly Cutworm. Maybe.

Here's a bad moth pic, taken with my phone.


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I think it might be Collared Dart, but I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.


Here's an even worse pic of a different moth.



The only thing I can find in my Peterson Field Guide to Moths that looks like it is the Bristly Cutworm moth.