James S. Sanders (Or Do You Spell It Saunders?)

Curious about the administrator of Luther Smith's estate, I looked into James S. Sanders and found that he was a long-time resident of Winfield Township and usually recorded as James Saunders.

He was born in Virginia in 1809. According to a family tree on Ancestry.com, by 1829 he had moved to Pennsylvania, where he married Mary Haines. The same family tree tells us that the young family left Pennsylvania for Ohio around the mid-1830s. Mary gave birth to a child in Ohio in January 1846, but early in May of the same year Early Land Sales, Lake County shows James S. Sanders buying land in Winfield Township, Lake County, Indiana: 160 acres in Section 16, along the Porter County line. The 1850 Census records James, Mary, and their eight children farming what seems to be the same parcel.

In December 1852, James purchased 80 acres in Section 5, and then in February 1854 another 160 acres — thus, the 240-acre farm we find on the 1874 Plat Map:


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The Sanders home appears to be on the north side of 109th Avenue not far east of its intersection with Grand Boulevard. No trace of the home remains as far as I can tell. (As for the 1846 farm, it's now buried under the Lake of the Four Seasons development.)

Here the Sanders family was recorded in the 1860 Census and the 1870 Census. Around 1874, apparently, James got tired of farming. He and Mary moved to Jackson Township, Porter County, where James became postmaster in the village of Jackson Center and started the first store there in 1874, and ran it for a couple of years.[1]

But by the 1880 Census James and Mary had moved to Westville in LaPorte County, and James, now 72, served as a justice of the peace. Living with them was their 16-year-old granddaughter, Melissa Shaw, whose mother, Joanna Sanders Shaw, had died.

James died in 1891 and Mary in 1900.

One would think that Deer Creek Cemetery, the Sanders' neighbor for some 20 years, would hold much evidence of the family, but the only person by the name I can find there is Alma Sanders — about whom nothing is known but her name.[2] I do not know where Joanna Sanders Shaw is buried.

I have satisfied my own curiosity about James S. Sanders, estate administrator, and to judge by the family tree on Ancestry.com, this family has already been well researched.

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[1] Goodspeed and Blanchard (eds.), Counties of Porter and Lake Indiana (1882), p. 203.
[2] I haven't been out to the cemetery to find out why we know her name but nothing else. Perhaps there is a grave marker that is illegible (or blank) but for the name.

The Death of Otto Kulage

Otto Kulage, who started the Kulage Brick Works, died May 24, 1923.


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Hobart News, May 31, 1923.

The child whose story is just below Mr. Kulage's was buried in Deer Creek Cemetery — the only one of that surname there (at least per findagrave.com). Louise Doepping had married Earl Fauser in 1919 (Indiana Marriage Collection).

Frederick Doepping

Frederick Doepping was an "aged Ainsworth citizen" when he died in March 1922.


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Hobart News 23 March 1922.

Per my own imaginative reading of the 1920 Census, I'm guessing Frederick and Mary occupied one of those little houses on the west side of Grand Blvd./S.R. 51 just north of the Canadian National tracks, either of which is old enough to accommodate them. But that's just a guess.

I am a bit confused about the Doepping family. According to the obituary, Frederick had no daughters (if a daughter had died before him, you'd still expect her to be mentioned). And yet the 1900 Census shows Frederick and Mary sheltering under their roof a schoolboy of 13 named Henry Kastner, described as their grandson. With only two sons, how did they get a grandson with a different surname? Or is that just a mistake by the census enumerator?

You may have noticed some mention in this blog of a Reinhart Doepping, most notably in connection with tree-related crime. I'm beginning to suspect that "Reinhart" was the newspaper's mistake for "Rheinholdt." It appears that the enumerator of the 1900 Census made the same mistake, while the 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940 Census got the name more or less right.

Rheinholdt/Reinhart had a son named Richard Doepping (and I've encountered more than one reference in the newspapers to "R. Doepping," which isn't illuminating). In January 1919, Richard Doepping bought a farm belonging to Chester Guernsey — exact location unknown, but my guess is that it was somewhere close to the Ross-Winfield Township line and the Lake-Porter County line. ("South of Deepriver," Hobart News 23 Jan. 1919.)

The other son, Emil, is elusive. He may be the Emil Doepping born Dec. 24, 1880, who married a woman named Bertha between 1910 and 1920 (though I can't find the record of their marriage). But in that case, the official records would seem to place him in Chicago, not south of Ainsworth.

This is where I stop trying to figure out the Doeppings.

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Moving on to the items in the "Local and Personal" column, Mrs. Mike Foreman was married to a man who liked to confuse historians by going by Michael, Mike, or Helmuth, as his fancy took him. She had been born Mary Mau (Indiana Marriage Collection).

James Jeffrey had indeed bought some Guernsey land, but I wouldn't describe it as being near the old Deepriver schoolhouse.

Elizabeth Fredrick was my favorite census enumerator; Sadie Baker helped her husband, William, run their general store in Deep River. I have no idea who Mrs. Carl Harper was. Mrs. Lulu Crisman was married to Thomas, who was a son of John and Elizabeth (Small) Crisman of Porter County … which would, I think, make him a brother of John Crisman of Deep River.

And, of course, we all know the Raschkas and the Shearers.

South of Deepriver

A social column from the countryside south of Deep River …


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Hobart News 13 Oct. 1921.

… and a full obituary for Harry Breyfogle's foster grandma.

Also a little more information about the Yellowstone Trail.

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Elsewhere in the same issue of the News, one heck of a chicken dinner …



If the Nelson family was our own Glen and Elsie Nelson (and their two little boys, Delmer and Melvin), I wonder if their being "of Crown Point" was only in terms of mail delivery routes. The 1920 Census seems to place them on Grand Blvd./S.R. 51 between Ainsworth and the Deep River, and I haven't seen any news since then of their moving.

Pigs and Cows, and People I Just Can't Find

The Nolte Bros., "Hen" and "Lou," are selling Duroc Jersey pigs; Herman Harms took his teen-aged nephew, Lester, to a sale of Holsteins; Mary Yager* hosts a former pastor … and someone I've never heard of and can't find in any records dies an untimely death.


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I've looked in my blog and my notes, and can't find any previous mention of this John Bromberg. I've looked for him without success in the census and death records. I've looked in the NWIGS's all-name listing for Deer Creek Cemetery in Lake County — he's not listed.

(As for the "Hayward farm south of Ainsworth," I believe it was the southwest quarter of Section 29, so it lay on the west border of part of the Hurlburt land that gave Hurlburt's corners its name.)

The following day's Gazette carried an item that brought to mind another person I just can't find:

Mrs. W.H. Wagoner of Goshen, Ind., came to Hobart Wednesday to visit at the home of her daughter, Mrs. C.H. Messick. She was joined yesterday by her son, W.B. Wagoner, and wife, from Chicago, the occasion being their mother's birthday.

It's clear enough that Mrs. W.H. Wagoner was the mother of Bertha Wagoner, who married Cephas Messick in 1905 — thus the grandmother of Dalia Messick. And while I don't know her given name, I don't really care … except that all this reminds me of W.N. Wagoner, the mysterious saloonkeeper who flitted into and out of Ainsworth between September 1905 and March 1906, leaving behind no trace but a remonstrance. His identity has thus far completely eluded me. I wonder if there was any family connection between him and these Wagoners?

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*I hope I've identified her correctly. She was about 66 years old, the wife of our strawberry-growing Jacob Yager, living in Union Township, Porter County. Adam Yager was their son (who lived with them per the 1920 Census), and the Jake Yager mentioned as attending may have been another son, unless that was the News's very strange way of naming Jake Sr.


Sources:
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 12 May 1921.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 13 May 1921.