"Hickory Grove" and Other Mysterious Places

In August of 1874, Hobart's Union Sunday School made plans for its annual picnic. The date was set for Thursday, September 3. The organization's secretary, John Blackhall, wrote to neighboring Sunday schools inviting them to join in the fun. Two of them accepted the invitation: the Underwood school and the Hickory Grove school.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

I have come across the Underwood name before. There was a one-room schoolhouse by that name in Ross Township, exact location unknown, which may have been associated with a Sunday school as well. But in all my research, I have never come across the name Hickory Grove in this area. Was that a mistake for Hickory Top — the village that eventually became Ainsworth? And then again, was it actually a mistake? Perhaps some people called the village Hickory Grove, while others called it Hickory Top, and somehow the former was overshadowed by the latter in collective memory.

That's just a theory. You know how I love theories.

Anyway, it sounds as if the picnic went off well. The Hobart Cornet Band came along to provide music. The attendees rode in two excursion cars — on the Pennsy Railroad, I'm guessing, since during the planning stages the location was set for Robertsdale, which got its name from George Roberts' giving the Pennsy Railroad right of way through his land.[1] But below the reference to Hickory Grove on the page above, the writer gives "Sheffield" as the location of the picnic. Perhaps those were pretty much the same place. These days you can find Robertsdale on Google maps, but not Sheffield. We do find Sheffield on this section of the 1874 Plat Map showing the west end of North Township:


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Image courtesy of the Merrillville-Ross Township Historical Society.

At the eastern border of Sheffield, we find a parcel of land belonging to George Roberts, with the Pennsy Railroad (the southernmost of those three lines) crossing it. Further to the southeast lay another George Roberts, also crossed by the Pennsy Railroad. I don't know which of those gave Robertsdale its name — maybe both?

But all of that area is in Hammond now, and this is as far as I intend to go into Hammond history.

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[1] Gayle Faulkner Kosalko, "Robertsdale has a history all its own," April 3, 2008, NWI Times, https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/robertsdale-has-history-all-its-own/article_df6cf958-2db8-540f-aff0-8f3ea0fe5f81.html

South of Deepriver

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Hobart News 4 May 1922.

Among all this ordinary social news, we find an item about the Henry Cunningham farm. Last time we heard about that farm was in 1919, when Thomas and Maud Chandler were renting it and their landlord was planning to sell it.

Looking around on the plat maps, I had to go all the way back to the 1874 Plat Map to find a Henry Cunningham farm:


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Henry Cunningham was born circa 1827 in New York. The earliest I can find him around here is in Porter County in the 1850 Census; he was then working as a hired hand on the farm of Hazzard and Alvira Sheffield. In 1851 he married Elizabeth Sheffield (Indiana Marriage Collection) — the sister of his employer, I'm guessing. Henry and Elizabeth were still in Porter County, farming near Hazzard and Alvira, through the 1860 Census. By the 1870 Census, however, the Cunninghams were in Ross Township, apparently on the farm that would still be bear their name in local parlance in 1922.

… which is strange, because the 1880 Census shows that Henry, apparently widowed, had by then left Ross Township and was living with his children in Chicago, dealing in horses. In the 1891 Plat Book, the Cunningham farm is the Joseph Guernsey farm. I wonder why the Cunningham name had such staying power?