How to Get Injured in Ainsworth When You're Eleven

One way is to fall out of your neighbor's hayloft.


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Hobart Gazette, 22 Sept. 1956.

This issue of the Gazette was published on Danny's twelfth birthday.

The article immediately to the right suggests a way to get a traumatic brain injury in Hobart when you're twelve.

Clearwing Things

This is a Snowberry Clearwing caterpillar hanging out by my garden shed.


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It will turn into a moth that hovers over the flowers where it's drinking nectar.

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This is a rather ragged Hummingbird Clearwing moth hanging out on my sunflower.


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You can tell it from a Snowberry Clearwing by its pale legs.

The caterpillar can be distinguished from the Snowberry Clearwing caterpillar by the stripe running lengthwise on its body, and its blue (rather than black) tail.

The Harpers, the Other Harpers, and the Other Other Harpers

I thought I would just quickly research Calvin and Mary (Underwood) Harper of the brick house beside the Deep River, and figure out what (if any) relation they had to Ainsworth's other Harpers (Benjamin; Middleton; Robert; and Robert's aunt, Ellen, who married Cyrus E. Smith). I did research them, but it wasn't quick.

So first let me just get the basic facts about Calvin and Mary Harper, who built the brick house.

Calvin was born in Ohio on September 24, 1819, to William and Deborah (Thompson) Harper. William was a native of New York, Deborah of Vermont, but they had moved to Ohio by the time of their marriage in 1818.

Calvin married Mary Underwood in September of 1843, in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Mary had been born in 1822[1] to Harmon and Mary Mary (Mather) Underwood, in New York. The family must have moved to Ohio by the 1840s, although I can't find them in the census. By 1850 Harmon, Mary, and several of their children had gone to Lake County, Illinois.

But their daughter Mary, now a Harper, did not go with them. Here we see her and Calvin, with their only child, Mayvorite, in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in the 1850 Census:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

You will note that their neighbors include Harpers and Thompsons, any of whom may have been relatives. The family of Benjamin and Ruth Harper is particularly interesting. Ruth was Mary's sister, who married Benjamin Harper in 1842 (in Ashtabula County). But what was Benjamin to Calvin? — per a family tree I've found on Ancestry.com, Benjamin was Calvin's uncle, but that tree doesn't cite any definitive sources.

In my earlier post about the land now occupied by Southlake Mall, I noted its purchase in October 1852 by Daniel Underwood. He must have been some a relation to Mary (Underwood) Harper — brother, probably, or uncle. According to Early Land Sales, Lake County, in that same month and year, her father, Harmon Underwood, bought at least 160 acres in Ross Township.

Calvin and Mary Harper came to Ross Township in 1850, according to her 1916 obituary;[2] if so, that must have happened after July 1850 when the census was taken. The land they eventually owned was purchased by James Halsted in June 1852. The 1860 Census records Calvin and Mary in Ross Township. While (as we know) early censuses don't give addresses, the Harpers appear as neighbors (on the census, at least) to Carter and Charlotte Castle, who owned land adjacent to James Halsted's 1852 purchase. This suggests that the Harpers were already on their farm on what is now Grand Boulevard, living in a predecessor to the brick house.

In 1868, Mayvorite Harper married Admiral[3] Rodney Castle. He was the son of Lysander and Maria Castle, born in Ohio in 1841 (Indiana Death Certificates). Lysander had died in 1851[4], and his widow married Samuel Lathrop. The 1860 census and the 1874 Plat Map show the Lathrop-Castle blended family as neighbors of the Harpers.

As for Benjamin and Ruth Harper, they were still in Ohio in 1860, but within the decade they also came to Ross Township, where the 1870 Census found them. According to the 1874 Plat Map, they owned a good chunk of land at the tiny village of Hickory Top (later Ainsworth). They probably lived in, and may have built, the house at 6305 Ainsworth Road, built in 1869 per the county records.

The children of Benjamin and Ruth were Mary, Ellen, and Frank.

Ellen married Cyrus Smith in 1861 in Erie County, Pennsylvania;[5] in 1863[6] they moved to the farm in Ross Township where they would settle permanently.

Ellen's brother, Frank Harper, married Ella Hopkins in 1878, here in Lake County, and they had two children: Cassie and Robert. Thus, Robert was Ellen Smith's nephew.


When it comes to Middleton Harper, things get murky. From his obituary and his grave marker, we know he was born in Montgomery County, Indiana, on December 10, 1850. Per his death certificate, his father was John Harper, born in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and his mother was Sarah Frazier, born in "East Tenn." or maybe "East Penn."

Middleton first appears as a nine-year-old boy in the 1860 Census of Tippecanoe County. The household consists of his grandfather (I'm guessing), Middleton, born circa 1795 in Maryland, and his 27-year-old mother, who is described as widowed. (She has several children besides Middleton, and there is a 21-year-old William who may be her brother-in-law.)

The next glimpse I catch of Middleton Harper is not the 1870 Census — I can't find him in it — but the Indiana Marriage Collection, which shows him in Lake County, Indiana, marrying Anna Goodrich in 1872. You'd expect to find them in the 1880 Census, but you'd be disappointed.

We do find Anna Harper in the 1900 Census. By then she was widowed. We also find her in 1910 and 1920, living with her married daughters.

But that doesn't help us figure out if Middleton Harper was any relation to all these other Harpers. I just don't know.

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All of this was put together with online sources. If I ever get the time to go through microfilm and other offline sources, I may find out more.


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[1] Indiana Death Certificates.
[2] "Descendant of Cotton Mather Dies at Miller," Porter County Vidette (Valparaiso, Ind.), 19 Apr. 1916.
[3] Yes, that was his given first name.
[4] He is buried on the south bank of the Deep River west of State Road 51; according to legend (as noted in the NWIGS's Ross Township Cemeteries), at the time of his funeral and even after two days' wait, the river was too swollen to carry his coffin across to the cemetery up the road in Hobart Township.
[5] This is according to his obituary ("Death of a Ross Township Citizen," Hobart Gazette, 8 Oct. 1915); I can't find a record of their marriage on Ancestry.com. I do wonder if this means that Ellen's family spent some time in Pennsylvania, between the time they left Ohio and the time they came to Indiana.
[6] Also from Cyrus' obituary.

Amazing Rear Ends of Ainsworth (Arachnophobes Beware!)

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This lady with the prickly back end is a Spined Micrathena. The purpose of her spines is unknown, apparently; I've seen some discussions and speculations online, but none of it sounds certain.

We know she's a female because she has built a web, as we can see in this view of her underside …



… which is something males of this species don't do once they have "attained sexual maturity." (Source)

Like most web-building spiders, she likes to eat mosquitoes and flies, so she's A-OK in my book.

She is a bit shy and didn't really like having her photo taken. That's why she left the middle of her web and ran to take shelter on the goldenrod.



For a picture of a male Spined Micrathena, click here.

The Harper-Carlson-Grabowski-Pike House

I came across this article, in the Hobart Herald of September 9, 1954, summarizing the history of the house at 6430 Grand Boulevard.


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According to the county records (which tend to be imprecise when you get back into the 19th century), the house was built in 1879: a date not inconsistent with this article. I am so curious to know what the author was told that led her to say that the house was built "sometime after 1863" — not that I doubt it; I'm just curious. I'm guessing she talked with old-timers to get this information.

The article doesn't mention William Blumenthal's brief ownership, but of course he was a mere passer-by, wasn't he?

Considering that the Grabowskis' addition to the house was begun in 1923, it's possible the old timers' memories were not serving them well if they thought it hadn't been completed yet by 1930.

The "Verne Manteuff" whose identification of a shoe is said to have been so important after the accident that killed the Grabowskis was LaVerne Manteuffel.

I want to get into more detail about some of the people mentioned in this article, and I will do that in future posts.


By the way, the photo at the top of my second image above doesn't relate to the house, but to a monument I posted about 'way back in 2010, which (according to the program John Dorman had printed up) was erected in 1931.

Cross-Striped Cabbageworm

This little guy* was eating holes in the mustard spinach out in my garden, earlier this summer.


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It will turn into a not-very-interesting moth.

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*Term used generically. "It is almost impossible to determine whether most caterpillars are male or female. Caterpillars are the juvenile life stage of butterflies and moths — they don't mate or reproduce. While most are genetically either male or female, their reproductive organs don't develop until they're pupae, transforming into adults." Source: https://sciencing.com/determine-caterpillar-male-female-5911369.html