Maria Amanda Harvey Castle Lathrop

This obituary appeared in the Hobart Gazette of December 18, 1896:

Maria Amanda, wife of Samuel Lathrop, one of Ross township's oldest and well-known citizens, died at her home[1] about 2½ miles south of Hobart at 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 16th, aged nearly 80 years. While Mrs. Lathrop had suffered more or less for the past ten years from heart difficulties her general health of late had been reasonably good for a person of her age and on the day of her death she had been about her home as usual.

The deceased was born in Vermont in February, 1817. By a former husband she was the mother of four children, sons, Lucius, Harrison A., Jackson and A[dmiral] R[odney] Castle, and by her marriage with Mr. Lathrop she was the mother of two sons, Charley and George, all of whom survive her.

The funeral services will be conducted at her late home this afternoon (Friday) at one o'clock and the interment will occur at the Hobart cemetery.

Poor Lysander Castle: he never got his own obituary, and here he's not even named — just "a former husband."

Maria probably placed the monument on his grave. I believe it was placed there before 1895, when the partners making up Kelly and Son both died, as we learn from helpful information posted to findagrave.com. I do not know when the firm started its business. The 1880 Census shows George Kelly as a farmer, and David as a farm laborer. The earliest reference to the firm I can find in the on-line newspapers comes from the Hobart Gazette of August 7, 1890:


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[1] The home where she died is still standing, though severely neglected, on the south bank of the Deep River, overlooking S.R. 51.

Lysander Castle's Lonely Grave

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

The stone in this photo marks the lonely grave of Lysander Castle, who died in 1851. This digital scan of the photo is taken from the computer at the Hobart Historical Society museum. The original physical photo does not seem to be in the museum. No information about its source was preserved with the scan.

In the Chester Cemetery section of the NWIGS' Ross Township Cemeteries, we find the following text, quoted (if I understand correctly) by the 1992 readers, who noted: "This information about Lysander Castle was taken from previous records":

Lysander was actually buried by Deep River. This is a single stone of a later period than the death date. It was installed by Kelly and son. Tradition has it that this is on property originally owned by Nathaniel P. Banks. Present day owners are the Truitt family, though this property was formerly owned by John Knotts. The marker is a few feet south of Deep River, which cuts through the property, on a high bank in an area completely covered with scrub bushes and blackberry briars.

Tradition further tells that the river was so completely covered by snow and overflowing that the pall bearers could not cross the river even after a two day wait, so the casket was buried on this spot. We have placed him in this record since there are other Castles buried in Chester Cemetery.

Perhaps the photo above was taken by the writers of the "previous records," whoever they may have been, and whenever they may have hiked out there along the banks of the river to find the stone. (A photo taken in 1992, I expect, would be in color.)

Here is the 1874 Plat Map of Section 7:


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The 40 acres marked "M.A. Castle" were purchased by Lysander in 1849:


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Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records; Washington D.C., USA; Federal Land Patents, State Volumes, via Ancestry.com. U.S., General Land Office Records, 1776-2015[database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

M.A. Castle was Lysander's widow, Maria Amanda (Harvey) Castle, whom he had married in 1837 in St. Joseph County, Indiana (Indiana Marriage Collection), and who had married Samuel Lathrop in 1853.

If the "tradition" quoted in the NWIGS book is correct, Lysander may be buried on the bit of land that Nathaniel Banks owned south of the Deep River and east of Sprout Ditch. Banks would not have owned that land at the time of Lysander's death, as he was then a child of six. I don't know who owned it then; I can't find any record of Lysander buying any other land in Section 7. I am not sure why Lysander's survivors would not have buried him on his own 40 acres. Perhaps they were carrying him along the river, looking for a place where they could cross it (intending, I suppose, to carry him to the Old Settlers Cemetery north on S.R. 51), and just gave up near Sprout Ditch (would they even have tried to cross that?), and buried him there.

The reference to the Truitt family owning the land is not illuminating, as they owned a tremendous amount of land there by 1950. I can't find a plat map showing the Knotts ownership.

I have taken this break from Jeremiah Wiggins to memorialize Lysander, whose lonely grave may soon be paved over for a data center. Or may at least become less lonely, but not in a good way.

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 (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.

♦    ♦    ♦
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.

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.

The Farm Under the Mall

I recently mentioned the Underwood school, so now I'd like to talk about the family for whom the school was named, and the farm they owned for many decades.

The 1874 Plat Map shows 160 acres straddling Mississippi Street, on the south side of present-day U.S. 30, owned by Daniel and Sybil Underwood.


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These days, of course, Southlake Mall sprawls over half of it, the other half teems with restaurants and hotels, and I-65 roars past its western border.



My imagination is not good enough to turn that into a family farm, much less virgin woodland or prairie.

The earliest record I can find of the Underwood farm is the purchase in October 1852 of the west half by Daniel Underwood (Early Land Sales, Lake County). The east half was purchased by Henry Wells[1] in 1854; how it got from him to Daniel I do not know. [Update: I think I was wrong about Henry Wells' purchase.]

Daniel was the son of Harmon and Mary (Mather) Underwood, both natives of New England who had moved to Ohio by the time Daniel was born in 1828. Sometime after 1840 the family moved to Lake County, Illinois, and it was there that, on November 7, 1854, Daniel married Sybil Huntley.

Sybil was likewise of New England stock. Her parents were Nehemiah and Lucy (née Dudley). This family, too, had relocated to Ohio, and eventually to Lake County, Illinois (with a stop in Winnebago County per the 1840 Census). If you look at the 1874 map above, you can find Sybil's younger brother, Nehemiah Jr., owning 40 acres north of Daniel and Sybil's farm.[2]

The 1860 Census shows Nehemiah and Lucy Huntley, along with Nehemiah Jr., living in the household of Daniel and Sybil Underwood and their two young daughters. Harmon and Mary Underwood are living nearby with two of their adult children, John and Ann. Harmon, as we already know, had bought the 160 acres that eventually became the Willy farm in 1852, and sold them to John in 1854.

Between 1854 and 1880, Daniel and Sybil had six children that we know of: Mary, Emma, Florence (or Flora), Clara, Frank, and Jessie.

In 1886, Sybil unexpectedly died.


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Crown Point Register, October 14, 1886.

The location given for Daniel and Sybil's marriage is not consistent with records currently available. The obituary mentions a child who did not survive Sybil; that was Flora, who died in 1884.

Daniel never remarried. He remained on the farm with three of his adult children: Frank and Clara, who were unmarried, and Mary, who was the widow of Jackson Castle. (Jackson had grown up on the old Castle-Lathrop farm north of Ainsworth.)

Findagrave.com tells us that Jackson and Mary had lost a little daughter, but the 1900 Census tells us that a son, Harry, survived and was growing up on the Underwood farm.

The 1910 Census shows Daniel Underwood still on the farm. His household now included another grandson, Willis Saxton, the child of Jessie Underwood, who had married Bertram Saxton in 1895 and died of puerperal fever nine days after giving birth to Willis. (The other surviving child of that marriage was living with Bertram closer to Merrillville.)

Daniel Underwood died in 1912.


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The Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 14 May 1912.

That is the only notice I could find of his death. The Hobart Gazette said nothing about him, which is odd for such a long-time resident. The issues of the Hobart News that might have said something are missing from the microfilm.

The farm apparently passed to Daniel's children, or one of them. Frank Underwood's name is printed on the farm in the 1926 Plat Book, although the 1920 Census seems to place the household of Frank and his two sisters somewhere closer to Merrillville. They might have been living in town, possibly in the Burge-Underwood house, and renting out the farm.

Although the land appears under Frank's name in the 1939 Plat Book, by March of 1940[3] it had been bought by John and Ethel Sunderman.

John Sunderman identified himself as farmer in both the 1940 and 1930 censuses, but he was also involved, along with his father, John Sr., and his brother, Howard,[4] with the Sunderman Construction Company, a prominent local road-building firm.[5] Back in the 1920 Census, John Jr. had given his occupation as a housing contractor.[6] He was then living in Gary with his first wife, Katherine, and their two sons. Within ten years he had taken up dairy farming and moved his family to Ross Township. The enumerator of the 1930 Census records that John and Katherine owned their farm, and from the few landowners who appear near them in the census (there was a lot of farm-renting going on), I gather they were somewhere in the vicinity of the Underwood farm, but I can't find them on any relevant plat map.

The history train will now make an unscheduled stop at Gossip City to pick up some forgotten baggage.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 19 Nov. 1932.


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Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 25 Nov. 1932.

And thus the 1940 Census shows John Sunderman on the Ross Township farm with his new wife, while Katherine is living in Gary with their two grown sons, John and William.


The 1950 Plat Book shows the farm still in its 1874 configuration, owned by J.C. and E.E. Sunderman. The 1972 Plat Book shows a change:



Sometime after 1950, apparently, the Sundermans had sold the west half of their farm, and purchased another half-quarter-section north of U.S. 30.

By 1972, though, John Sunderman was gone; he had died January 31, 1967 (Indiana Death Certificates). And Ethel died on May 17, 1972.

In the summer of 1973, construction of Southlake Mall began.


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Vidette-Messenger, 6 June 1973.

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[1] Possibly this Henry Wells? Early Land Sales, Lake County shows a whole lot of land purchased under that name.
[2] I have a story about him that we will get to some other time.
[3] "Merrillville," The Hammond Times, 28 Mar. 1940.
[4] "Hold Rites For Gary Highway Builder Today," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso, Ind.), 6 July 1935.
[5] "The Sunderman company is one of the largest road contracting firms in the state." "Contract Was Not Sub-Let," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 19 Aug. 1931.
[6] In the Occupation and Industry columns, the enumerator crossed out "laborer" and "steel mills" to substitute "contractor" and what looks like "house."

Lathrop Catch-Up

If I have neglected the Lathrops, I am not alone — well known Lake County historians, such as the Rev. T.H. Ball and Sam Woods, skipped over them as well.

Samuel Lathrop was born in Ohio around 1822. By 1853 he had come to Lake County, Indiana, for that was the year he married the 30-year-old Mariah Castle — a widow, I gather, with four young children from her first marriage. In 1856 Samuel and Mariah had their first child (or first to survive), George. Charles, their second and last, was born in 1860.

I cannot find any evidence that Samuel served in the Civil War.

The 1860 census shows them near the Chester family, which may mean that Samuel already owned the land that bore his name in 1874:


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In December 1880, as we know, George Lathrop married Eva Niles. In 1885 Charles Lathrop married Emma Jacobs.

After his disastrous career as an assistant postmaster, George seems to have made a success as a wholesaler buyer of apples for resale in Chicago and perhaps locally. He traveled widely in search of good fruit, including to Illinois, Colorado, New York, Utah — and, of course, Michigan, where he met his second wife.

In 1901 came a great change: the Lathrop farm was sold to Gib Bullock. A "Mr. Lathrop" bought a lot and house in Ainsworth from John Ols — that would probably be George, as we soon find him moving himself and his father from the farm they had just sold. Perhaps George's son, Samuel (Jr.), lived with them for a time, as he was "operating a feed mill at Ainsworth." George and Samuel Jr. bought some threshing machinery from the Aultman Co. of Ohio.

An even greater change came in March 1903. George uprooted his family and moved to Portland, Michigan, where he owned a fruit farm. "His family" was pretty small — besides his wife, it may have included his father and his son from his first marriage (Samuel Jr.). But the first child of his second marriage was born in Michigan.

As for brother Charles and his wife, Emma — by 1910 they too had moved to Michigan, taking their two youngest children (Earl and Etta) with them, their two oldest children (Henry and Clara) having apparently left home already. But I am not sure what happened to their marriage. This report on Earl's death has some suggestive wording:

Mrs. Catherine Pierce and sister, Louise, and brothers, John, Adam and Henry Jacobs, went to Muskegon, Mich., to attend the funeral on Wednesday of their nephew, Earle Lathrop, who died Sept. 22 at the home of his mother, Mrs. Chas. Austin, formerly Emma Jacobs-Lathrop. Earle was her youngest son, and was born Oct. 18, 1898, near Ainsworth, and was said to have been a most promising young man. Besides his parents, he is survived by one brother and two sisters.

(Emphasis added.) Make of that what you will, but to me it sounds like divorce.

And now, dear Reader, you know as much as I do about the Lathrops.


Sources:
♦ 1860 Census
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 18 Jan. 1901; 5 Apr. 1901; 26 Dec. 1902; 6 Mar. 1903.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 6 Oct. 1899; 7 Sept. 1900; 20 Sept. 1901; 4 Oct. 1901; 26 Dec. 1902; 28 Sept. 1917.