Schoolteachers, Fall Term, 1886

While searching for something else, I came across this mildly interesting list of schoolteachers in Lake County for the fall term of 1886.


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Crown Point Register, 25 Nov. 1886.

"Names and addresses," it says at the top, so perhaps the towns are where they lived but not necessarily where they were teaching, although where they lived would seem to be less important.

Many of these names are familiar.

Among the teachers in Ainsworth, if Alice Palmer was living there she must have been teaching there as well; otherwise she would have stayed at her father's home in Merrillville.

I wonder if A.H. Swain was related to our 1904 Grand Trunk station agent, P.H. Swain? I can't find out anything about either of them.

The only Charles Jones I can find in the 1880 Census would have been about 19 years old in 1886 — old enough to teach school. His father was a farmer named James. His mother, in the 1870 Census, is named Eliza, but in 1880 she's Jennie. Stepmother, or just using her middle name? Eliza J. Jones shows up in the 1890 Plat Book owning 142 acres in Section 19. Much of that land, I believe, was later purchased by Michael Weiler. Beyond that, I can't find out anything about Charles or his family.[1]

Kate Marble was the daughter of Horace and Mary Ellen (Booth). In June 1887 she married John Wesley Ott.


I don't have the time or energy today to look into all the names listed under Merrillville and Hobart, many of which are familiar. I will just say that among the Hobart teachers, Mary Sullivan was known to all Ainsworthites, and the Gadsbys were a teaching family, as well as being active in the Union Sunday School: here George is listed with two daughters, Annie and Nettie.

Just for search-engine purposes, I will list all the Hobart, Ainsworth, and Merrillville surnames list that I haven't discussed: Booth, Collins, Cook, Davis, Flick, Frazier, Halfman, Kern, Nash, Parks, Pattee, Smith, Spencer, Spray, Zuvers.


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[1] The 1860 Census shows a 25-year-old Jacob Jones working as a stagecoach driver and living with Lewis Merrill, stagecoach proprietor. The age is right for this to be our James, and of course James is the Anglicized form of Jacob.

Frederick and Fredericke

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Fredericke and Frederick Suhr. Images from findagrave.com.

Returning to the Harms 73rd Avenue farm, we left off in 1873 when Mary Chester bought the lower forty of the 80-acre parcel.

In September 1874, Mary lost her husband, Charles. In November, she sold her 40 acres to a German immigrant family by the name of Suhr, lending them $921 of the $1,000 purchase price.


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Image courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

I did not recognize that name at first, but I should have: from the early days of this blog, when I was researching the Chester Cemetery, as that is the final resting place of the couple who bought these 40 acres. Back then, I was able to find very little information on them: just the 1880 Census showing Frederick and Fredericke, along with their 27-year-old son, Henry, farming somewhere in Ross Township.

Since 2009, I have discovered findagrave.com, which, through the collective effort of many people, has become a remarkable resource. From information there, I can now fill in some of the missing background, as well as post photos of the Suhrs (above) from the same source.

Frederick and Fredericke (Lichtwarle) Suhr had been married in Germany, their native land, where Frederick worked as a miller. (It was Fredericke's second marriage; her first had produced one son, Charles Schmidt, named for his father.[1]) They came to the U.S. in 1870, evidently just missing the census, and brought with them their three children: Fredrika, Henry, and Emma.[2] They lived in South Chicago at first, but, as we see from our documents above, by 1874 the family moved to Indiana.

Their children all married — most importantly, Emma, in 1887, to Conrad Bender, a man prominent enough in Porter County to rate a biographical sketch in a regional history book, whence I have gleaned some of this information.[3] The other children, Fredrika and Henry, appear to have spent much of their married lives in Illinois.

The Suhrs evidently did well enough on their farm to pay off their mortgage by 1880.

In 1882, at only 65 years of age, Fredericke Suhr died. She was buried in the Chester Cemetery, west of their farm. Frederick then sold the farm and left Indiana to spend the next 15 years in Illinois, probably with one or both of his married children there. He died in 1897, and they brought his body back to Ainsworth, to rest beside Fredericke.

Through their daughter, Emma Bender, their descendants were spread around northwest Indiana. Emma, who died in 1918, was survived by seven children: "Edward F. Bender, of Gary; Mrs. Martha Lute, of Hobart; Mrs. Ida Schenelter of Crown Point; Mrs. Bertha Malone, who lived with her mother in Hobart; Albert C. Bender and Frank J. Bender, who live on and operate the Bender farm in Portage township and Walter F. Bender, of Chesterton."[4]

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The real estate transaction we're looking at brought up two other names I recognize from past posts. The mortgage of the land in October 1874 was acknowledged before Justice of the Peace Horace Marble, whose 140-acre parcel just south of Ainsworth included the cemetery. (He was listed there, as a farmer, in the 1870 Census, but by 1880 had moved to Hobart and become a "commission merchant.")


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The Horace Marble farm as it appeared on the 1874 Plat Map. Hickory Top had not yet been renamed "Ainsworth."

The assignment of the mortgage, in December 1874, by Mary Chester to her son, Henry, involved J.P. Jesse B. Albee.

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[1] Pictorial and Biographical Record of La Porte, Porter, Lake and Starke Counties, Indiana. Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1894.
[2] "Long Illness Proves Fatal to Mrs. E. Bender," Vidette-Messenger (Valparaiso), Oct. 20, 1933 (transcribed at findagrave.com).
[3] Goodspeed (1894).
[4] "Long Illness Proves Fatal," 1933.

South of Deepriver, March 15, 1923

Among all the usual visiting going on in southern Ross Township, I am introduced to a connection between the Hurlburt-Smith family and the Ripley family that I didn’t know about.


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Hobart News 15 Mar. 1923.

Aside from a couple of passing mentions of the surname Ripley — back when I was figuring out who those south-of-Deepriver Smiths were, and in a 1920 "South of Deepriver" column — I have thoroughly ignored the Ripleys. That name shows up a couple more times in my notes, but never to tell of the Ripleys doing anything more interesting than being related to Milan Hurlburt and Rachel (Hurlburt) Smith. I am inclined to continue ignoring them.

However, I should do my duty as an amateur historian and at least get some of the basics. Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, Horace Ripley married Frances Hurlburt in Lake County, Indiana, on June 24, 1873. They were married by Horace Marble, J.P.

How on earth they ever met, I do not know, since Horace Ripley, aka "Hod," was born in Canada, raised in Wisconsin, and then moved to Missouri, according to his obituary on findagrave.com.

Frances Hurlburt Ripley was born March 25, 1852, according to her death certificate. Her parents were Jacob and Susan* (Perry Sheffield) Hurlburt.

What little information I have suggests that the Ripley presence in this area was never long-term, consisting only in visits to the Hurlburts and Smiths.

Now I've done my duty and can go back to ignoring the Ripleys.

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The shower for Bertha Fisher, also mentioned in the next column to the right, reminds us of the existence of Hubert Hahn.

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*Frances' death certificate gives her mother's name as "Jane," but I believe that is a mistake.

John Wood School ca. 1962

The John Wood School looks freshly built in this aerial view:


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

The image is not otherwise dated.

Here is the same image with a couple of features marked.



The old Foreman house is still standing, though its outbuildings (aside from the pump house) are gone. I have marked the location of the old wooden Ainsworth school according to what I have been told. I can't clearly see it in those trees, though I do see something that looks like a small building.

The Triebess house lies just outside the left border of the photo. That house was built in 1849 according to the county records. If that date is correct, we may also call it the old Horace Marble house (per the 1874 Plat Map) and maybe even the old Booth house, since members of the Booth family owned that land in 1848 and 1850, per Early Land Sales, Lake County.

The white house along the left border was built in 1939 according to county records, and I haven't yet found out yet who built it.

Too Good to Be True

The Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society Museum has a big ledger titled, "Record of Recognizance Bonds," being the record of bonds posted for people charged with various misdeeds in Lake County from the late 1870s to the mid-1890s. Among them is this one dated May 18, 1883:


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

Of course, when I saw that name I got all excited. While the notion that the Ainsworth stop on the Grand Trunk Railroad was named for a railroad executive comes only from a 2006 Post-Tribune article by Bob Burns, who qualified it with "reportedly," still I dreamed up a story about this mysterious executive who, after spending time in northwest Indiana in 1880 overseeing the construction of the railroad, became fond of the area, and especially of Cedar Lake; so a couple of years later he took a vacation there — but alas, he chose to fish in an unsportsmanlike manner, and fell into the hands of the law.

That story was too good to be true.

A little investigation into the census records turned up not a railroad executive, but a "laborer" living in Center Township, perhaps in or near Crown Point (since one of his neighbors is a deputy county clerk). Sidney Ainsworth was born circa 1852 in New York, and sometime after 1870 came out to Lake County and got married, not necessarily in that order (1870 Census, 1880 Census). The S.W. Ainsworth who co-signed his bond was his father, a Civil War veteran born circa 1821.

Neither lived long after the gill-net incident. Maplewood Cemetery in Crown Point is the final resting-place of both father and son.


Horace Marble was the Lake County sheriff at the time of this incident, having been elected in 1880. The 1880 Census showed him living in the town of Hobart, working as a "commission merchant," whatever that may be. As we know, his first wife, Mary, rests in Chester Cemetery.

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[12/2/2015 update] Here is Sidney Ainsworth's obituary, from the Lake County Star of May 31, 1889:


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How Do You Spell Your Name, Again?

I just love these actions to quiet title. Here we have George Chester seeking to establish his perfect right to the farm his father, Charles, bought for him. From the length of this notice, it looks as if hundreds of people have had some claim on this land, but when you look closely you see there were not that many — it's just that they never spelled their names the same way twice, and due diligence requires every variation to be published.


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From the Hobart News of April 1, 1920.

So let's count:

1. Andrew L. Booth (or Andrew J. Boothe or Andrean J. Booth) and his wife, Sarah;
2. Winnefred Linsey (or Winfred Linsey) and her husband, name unknown;
3. Finette Gordon (or Finnet Gordon, or Finette Pierce) and her husband(s), name(s) unknown;
4. James Crawford and his wife, name unknown;
5. Horace Marble and his wife, Martha;
6. William Mankey (or Menkey or Menke) and his wife, Doris;
7. Frank Abel and his wife, name unknown;
8. Oswald Kleine (or Oswold Kline or Oswold Kleine or Oswald Kline or Oswald L.E. Kline) and his wife or wives, Christiana and Emeline;
9. Vincent Hassler (or Vencennes Hassler or Vincent Hasler) and his wife, whose name may be Anna;
10. Frank J. Smith (or Francis J. Smith) and his wife, whose name may be Hattie;
11. George Earle and his wife, name unknown;
12. George Earle & Son; and
13. Charles Maybaum and his wife, Carolina.

That's only 13 pairs, and there you have, for search-engine purposes, every name they ever called themselves when they were dealing with this land.

Below that notice, I see we are finally getting around to settling the estates of a couple of Ainsworth-area people who have left Ainsworth forever.

Indian Ridge and Pioneers

That Indian Ridge Golf Club postcard from earlier motivated me to check in the Indian Ridge file at the Hobart Historical Society Museum. Here are a couple things I found there.

The entrance, from a postcard postmarked 1934:


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All images in this post courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

In 1931 the Dormans hosted a ceremony dedicating a monument to 150 pioneers of Hobart and Ross Townships. The program for the ceremony listed the pioneers they had in mind.









*sigh* Most of these men had wives. But there were no women pioneers.

Leaving aside that little injustice, I notice some familiar names on this list. I've already written about, or at least mentioned, Morgan Blachly; Henry Chester and his father, Charles; Charles Gernenz; Horace Marble; William Potter; Cyrus Smith; Henry Nolte (there were two who could qualify as pioneers); and Patrick Sullivan.

Just Two More, I Promise

I just wanted to mention two more people with slender Ainsworth connections who died in 1910:

1. Horace Marble. Remember him? He died June 15, 1910, after a long and fruitful life. His Ainsworth connection is that his first wife, Mary, is buried in Chester Cemetery. Her grave marker is in pieces on the ground.


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2. Howard Eugene Halsted. He was the only son of Willard and Barbara Halsted, who ran a store in Ainsworth from around 1888 to 1904. Howard spent his early childhood here, but the family moved to Hobart when he was 14 and he did the rest of his growing up there. He was a second-year law student at Indiana University in Bloomington when illness forced him to withdraw. The family went to Texas in December 1909 hoping that the mild southern winter would prevent his illness from worsening. It was no use. Howard died in Austin on March 3, 1910, at only 21 years of age. His parents brought him home to Hobart for burial in Crown Hill Cemetery.



I have not exhausted the inventory of 1910 Ainsworth-connected deaths, but I can't take it anymore.


Sources:
♦ "Horace Marble Dead." Hobart Gazette 17 June 1910.
♦ "Young Man Passes Away." Hobart Gazette 11 Mar. 1910.

Horace Marble Gets Tetchy

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I was delighted to find this little note in the margin of the 1891 Plat Book for Appraisers of Real Estate. This particular map shows Section 21, Township 35 North, Range 7 West, and the northeast quarter Horace mentioned is the town of Deep River. I expect the northeast-quarter land, shown on the plat map as all belonging to George Wood, was divided into smaller lots along both sides of 73rd Street, and the failure to show those smaller lots and their owners is what Horace was complaining about.

I knew Horace only from the research I did on Chester Cemetery. His first wife, Mary, is buried there, as well as his father and two stepmothers.

Horace was born in Vermont around 1839 to Simeon and Louisa Marble. After Louisa's death and when Horace was about nine years old, the family emigrated to Lake County, Indiana, settling on a farm west of Deep River. There Horace grew to young manhood. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Horace enlisted in the infantry. He rose to the rank of captain and was honorably discharged in 1865.

In 1866 he married Mary E. Booth (who may have been a relation of his stepmother, Elizabeth Booth Marble) and the young couple had two children, Kate and Bernice. In 1872 Mary died. The following year Horace married Martha Skinner, who bore him two children, Henry and Ruth.

Horace was elected sheriff of Lake County in 1880; he was re-elected for a second term and served until 1885. Then he was elected Lake County auditor, a position he held until 1893.

During these years he had been buying up land in Jasper County, and upon leaving office as auditor he moved to Wheatfield Township, Jasper County. In addition to overseeing the farming of his land, he managed the Bank of Wheatfield. He was also active in the Freemasons.

A Jasper County historian described him as "a man of intellectual gifts, with excellent business judgment and foresight, and of the strictest integrity. …[H]is genial, courteous manner drew all to him."

Horace died June 15, 1910, and is buried in Wheatfield Cemetery.

Sources:
♦ Ball, the Rev. Timothy Horton. Encyclopedia of Genealogy and Biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a Compendium of History 1834-1904. Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1904.
♦ Goodspeed, Weston Arthur. Counties of Porter and Lake, Indiana: Historical and biographical. Chicago: F.A. Battey & Co., 1882.
♦ Hamilton, Louis H., and William Darroch, eds. A Standard History of Jasper and Newton Counties, Indiana. Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1916.
♦ Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society. 1891 Plat Book for Appraisers of Real Estate, Lake County, Indiana. Valparaiso: Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, 2007.