Smooth Aster?

It's a bit late in the season to start trying to repair my lack of knowledge about the various types of asters, but I came across this poor little thing still blooming out in my field, and just had to try to identify it.

The blossom is pale lilac, with a yellow central disk.



The leaves clasp the stem, and their edges are smooth or almost imperceptibly toothed.



I think it's a Smooth Aster. They normally grow as high as four feet, but this particularly one has been run over by a brush mower a couple of times during the summer.

I've previously identified two other varieties of lilac-colored asters. Not sure if I'm right about any of these.

Holy Nosegay!

In the Sievert-Thompson collection at the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society Museum are several personalized bibles, with their covers bearing the name of a Sievert family member and a year — the year, I suppose, when the bible was presented as a gift to the family member, at Christmas or on a birthday or some special occasion.

Here we have one given to Ida Lewin Sievert in 1903. Ida was then about 28 years old. She and her husband, Henry, farmed just west of Ainsworth, and had a little daughter (a son was yet to come). It is a German-language bible, die Heilige Schrift.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

Ida, like nearly every other owner of a bible or prayer book, slipped things between the leaves — for example, the little card above from her neighbor, Pearl Ols.

She also pressed flowers in it, like this little nosegay with its stems still bound by a thread.



I think there are two roses in there, along with some clover blossoms and a couple of many-petaled blooms like chrysanthemums or zinnias. (By the way, 4 Mose = Numbers, for us English-speakers.)


The card from Pearl Ols mentions a 25th wedding anniversary, which was probably Ida's and Henry's. That fell on March 17, 1921, just about four months before Ida's death.

Edward Clifford Stolp: A Mystery Solved

Among the many images in Minnie Rossow Harms' steamer trunk was this photo of a young violinist, taken probably circa 1912.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

Handwritten notes on the back identify him as Clifford Stolp.



I've mentioned before that Clifford and his ultimate fate were a mystery to me. But recently I came across a short article in the Hobart Gazette of January 21, 1943, announcing, without much explanation, his death on January 9. However, that gave me a time frame, which made further research practical.
I found this article from the Nashville Banner of January 13:


(Click on image to enlarge)

It helpfully explains who his wife and daughter were, as otherwise I would not have known. The only marriage record I had previously found for him was of his 1922 marriage to Dorothy Featherston (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index) and that one, it appears from the 1930 Census, ended in divorce. Clifford and Estelle married sometime around April 1941.[1] I do not know what brought Clifford to Tennessee in the first place, but now he rests there forever.

Here is another article from the January 21 Oak Leaves (Oak Park, Ill.).


((Click on image to enlarge)

Both articles, you will notice, give January 10 as the date of his death.

♦    ♦    ♦
The Gazette mentioned that Clifford Stolp "was an uncle to Billy and Carol Ann Stolp" of Hobart. Those were the children of his brother, Willard, who married Clara Shearer in 1929 (Indiana Marriage Collection). The Gazette added that Clifford had "numerous other relatives and friends in Hobart, having resided here at one time" — which we know, from the 1920 Census. He was, of course, related to the Rossows, and hence to the Harmses.

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[1] "Marriage Licenses," Nashville Banner, 14 Apr. 1941.

Ainsworth Then and Now: the Sievert Farmhouse

Circa 1942, and 2022:



(Click on images to enlarge)
Top image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

Thank goodness for Google street view, which saves me from having to go park my car on the shoulder-less 69th Ave. or DeKalb Street to get a photo of the old Sievert farmhouse.

Which, it turns out, is probably the old Brown farmhouse, since the county records show 1850 as the year it was built, and that was before the Sieverts came to Ross Township. The earliest record I can find of ownership of that land, from Early Land Sales, Lake County, is its purchase in May of 1844 by Severn Brown, who bought 80 acres constituting the west half of Section 7.

Severn Brown rests in the Chester Cemetery, along with his wife, Elizabeth.

I shall certainly have to write more about the Brown family, as well as the Sievert family, but at present my brain is very, very tired and has taken a leave of absence to rest and recuperate, and I don't know when it will return.