Hobart's Yellowstone Trail Members

Here's something for you Yellowstone Trail fans: a list of Hobart people and businesses who in December 1922 promised five years' support for the Trail's maintenance and promotion.


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Hobart News 28 Dec. 1922.

I can't index that many names, so here they are for the search engine: S.E. Henderson, O.L. Pattee, Brahst Bros., Hobart Bank, A.J. Newman, First State Bank, Albert Orcutt, Dwight Mackey, Clara Faulkner, Frank Reissig, Busse & Long, Phillips & Byall, Nick Ehrhardt, National Oil & Supply Co., Hobart Lumber Co., R.R. Peddicord, George Watkins, Roper Bros, Emil Scharbach, Hobart Filling Station.


Below that story is one about a wedding anniversary that draws our attention to some Deep-River-area history.

Mary (Ferguson) Hanna was a niece of Catherine Mereness Crisman, but her immediate family is elusive. The earliest I can find her parents, Ezra and Anna (aka Christiana) Ferguson, in a census is 1900, where they are recorded farming in Union Township, Porter County; yet they were married in Lake County in 1861 (Indiana Marriage Collection), and the Civil War draft registration records Ezra in Union Township in 1863. Mary had been born in 1862 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Thomas Hanna was born in Michigan in 1858. I find it interesting that his death certificate (1953) has a blank for his father's given name, and "Unknown" for his mother's name. Either the person who completed the certificate was a bit offhand about it, or his daughter Eva, who reported his death, did not know much about her paternal grandparents.

In the 1900 Census, which shows the Hanna family living in Hobart, Thomas gives his occupation as "R.R. Towerman." By the 1910 Census he had become a teamster — a drayman, as the article says — but the 1920 Census shows him back on the railroad, as a section worker.

Mary died in 1928. I can't find Thomas in 1930. If I've found the right person in the 1940 Census, Thomas had remarried, and his second wife was named Mary, too. I believe the second Mary Hanna died in 1950. Apparently nobody knew her maiden name at that time; from clues on Ancestry.com I'm guessing that it was Moffitt and that her first husband's surname was Smith. I think I need obituaries for all of these people if I'm ever going to figure this out.

As for this Davis Peck — the Deep River justice of the peace from 1882 — I wonder if he was any relation to the Pecks who keep showing up in those "South of Deepriver" columns, but at the moment I don't know anything about him.

… And finally, burgling the home of a grieving widower is pretty darn low.

Catherine Mereness Crisman

Catherine Mereness Crisman died in Chicago, I gather, so her remains had to be brought back to the place where she had spent much of her life, to be laid to rest with her husband in Mosier Cemetery.


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Hobart News 23 Feb. 1922.

I suppose I will have to wait for another obituary to find out if Jane Crisman Maxwell's husband was related to the Lewis and Nettie Maxwell of Deep River.

John Barney

A westbound Grand Trunk train stopped at the Ainsworth station on the morning of October 24, 1921, to deliver a sad cargo: John Barney, born and raised in Ross Township, was making his last trip home.


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Hobart News 27 Oct. 1921.

I've seen the Barney name every now and then in social news, but I didn't realize until now how long the family had been in this area. A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Thomas Chandler buying a farm from "Charles E. and Maggie E. Barney at Palmer" — John's parents — which farm I haven't identified; but oddly enough it seems that Charles E. and Maggie E. Barney sometime between 1874 and 1891 bought 80 acres that had belonged to Thomas Chandler's grandfather; namely, this parcel on the south side of E. 73rd Ave.:


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On this image from the 1908 Plat Map, the land that belonged to Charles and Maggie Barney in 1891 is outlined.

That's the only land I have found ascribed to the elder Barneys in any plat map.

John's widow, née Lena Maybaum, belonged to the large Maybaum family. They had married in 1887, not 1886 as stated in the article above.

Their two sons, Edward Ray and Charles Leslie, often went by their middle names.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1874 Plat Map.
♦ 1891 Plat Book.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Obituary." Hobart Gazette 28 Oct. 1921.
♦ WWI Draft Cards.