Losing Lucy

I missed the good part, back when I wrote up a short bio of Levi D. Jones. The good part is how he lost his third(?) wife in August 1857, half a year after marrying her:[1]


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Crown Point Register, 4 Aug. 1857.

It gets even better: apparently, he got her back for a while, and then lost her again in February 1858.


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Crown Point Register, 16 Feb. 1858.

In case you can't read it:

WARNING

This is to forbid all persons harboring or trusting my wife Lucy Jones, after this date, as she has left my bed and board, without just cause or provocation.

Levi. D. Jones
Ross February 11th, 1858.

I don't think he found her again after that. In the 1860 Census, Levi is living with (I believe) his daughter from the previous marriage, and no one else. Lucy is back home with her parents:[2]


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Notice the three "Jones" children and their ages in the census — George (9), Sydney (4), and Mary (2) — and remember that Lucy married Levi Jones in December 1856. So George can't be the product of that marriage, and Sydney also is questionable.

Let's take a little detour, and speed over to George's death in 1924. According to his death certificate, his parents were Lucy Sly …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… and Jacob Bigelow. I have not been able to find any record of marriage between those two. Nor can I positively identify Jacob Bigelow.[3]

As for Sydney, people on Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com believe he was actually Seneca Bigelow, born to Jacob and Lucy (Sly) Bigelow in November 1853.

But getting back to Lucy — we next catch up with her in July 1864, when she married William Brown in Berrien County, Michigan.[4] That was just an elopement, I believe; their permanent home was Porter County, where we find them in the 1880 Census:[5]


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The interesting thing we learn here (aside from the fact that Lucy is completely illiterate) is that William has a 25-year-old stepson named Simon Bigelow. Maybe the enumerator got Seneca/Sydney's name wrong, or maybe that's his middle name.

William Brown died in 1897. In August 1902, Lucy married Samuel Scott, who was some 35 years her junior. The marriage did not work out:


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La Porte County News (Union Mills, Ind.), 12 Feb. 1903.

Somewhere, perhaps in the next world, Levi D. Jones was laughing.

Lucy died in Michigan City in 1912. Here is her death certificate:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Martha Eckert, the informant, was Lucy's daughter. I find it interesting that Martha didn't know her maternal grandmother's name. Also, Lucy is described as widowed, but Samuel Scott outlived her by 30-plus years.

If you have the urge to stand at Lucy's grave and pay your respects, you'll need to go to Michigan City.

Seneca/Sydney/Simon Bigelow died, alas, in Chicago in 1941, meaning that his death certificate is not readily available and his obituary does not give his family background.

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[1] Per the Indiana Marriage Collection, they took out a marriage license in July 1857, and married in December 1857.
[2] Their farm was probably in west-southwestern Ross Township, based on the few of their neighbors I've been able to find on the 1874 Plat Map. (By 1874, Lucy's parents and married brother Russell had relocated to Michigan, and both parents had died.)
[3] Someone by that name was buying land in Porter County in 1837, but I can't find him in any census in this area. There was also a Jacob Bigelow involved in the planning City West (see Lake County 1929 at 183). I just don't know if that was the man who married Lucy Sly.
[4] Ancestry.com. Michigan, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1822-1940 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
[5] Neither I nor anyone else, apparently, can find them in the 1870 census.

Mary Munch's Sorrows

I can't figure out Mary Munch. In my notes I find a report[1] from the autumn of 1922 that the barn at her home "in South Hobart" had burned, although the fire department managed to save the house and the chicken coop; the fire was allegedly caused in her absence by her son-in-law burning rubbish. If she had a son-in-law, she must have had a daughter. But I can't find her daughter in a census.

A few weeks later, Mary traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to bring her son to a hospital in Gary.


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Hobart Gazette 24 Nov. 1922.

Her son's surname being Wilson suggests a previous marriage, but in the 1910 Census, Mary Munch is described as being in her first marriage, and having no living children. In the 1920 Census, Mary was widowed and no questions about children were asked.

Joseph Wilson died December 23, 1922 (Indiana Death Certificates). The informant was Mary Munch, who gave her maiden name as Mary Maurice and Joseph's father's name as Paul Wilson. I can't find the Wilson family in the 1900 Census, the earliest place I would have any hope of finding them (since Joseph was born in 1891). The death certificate states that Joseph was married to a Josephine, about whom I know nothing.

After the loss of her son, Mary had a little more than a month of peace before she was caught up in a Prohibition raid.


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Hobart News 22 Feb. 1923.

According to the next day's Gazette, Mary claimed she was only storing the unused still on her place as a favor to Nick Drakulich.[2] If that was true, then she suffered for a crime without having had the fun or the profit from it.

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Over in the right-hand column of that Feb. 22 News, we see that Mary was not the only one having bad times that week. The old Wesley Spencer homestead may have been on Center Street near the Nickel Plate tracks — that location seems to be associated with the Spencer name. And I never heard of Thomas Scott before, but I can't help but be interested in a suicide whose wife, according to her death certificate, died of "acute alcoholism."

I'm a bit confused about what Paul Newman was planning to build (left-hand column above). That sounds like the building on the southeast corner of Third and Center, but the county records don't give 1923 as the year it was built. The 1922 Sanborn map shows a substantial building already there.

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[1] "Barn Burns in South Hobart," Hobart Gazette 3 Nov. 1922.
[2] "Locate Two Stills," Hobart Gazette 23 Feb. 1923.