Edward Clifford Stolp: A Mystery Solved

Among the many images in Minnie Rossow Harms' steamer trunk was this photo of a young violinist, taken probably circa 1912.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

Handwritten notes on the back identify him as Clifford Stolp.



I've mentioned before that Clifford and his ultimate fate were a mystery to me. But recently I came across a short article in the Hobart Gazette of January 21, 1943, announcing, without much explanation, his death on January 9. However, that gave me a time frame, which made further research practical.
I found this article from the Nashville Banner of January 13:


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It helpfully explains who his wife and daughter were, as otherwise I would not have known. The only marriage record I had previously found for him was of his 1922 marriage to Dorothy Featherston (Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index) and that one, it appears from the 1930 Census, ended in divorce. Clifford and Estelle married sometime around April 1941.[1] I do not know what brought Clifford to Tennessee in the first place, but now he rests there forever.

Here is another article from the January 21 Oak Leaves (Oak Park, Ill.).


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Both articles, you will notice, give January 10 as the date of his death.

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The Gazette mentioned that Clifford Stolp "was an uncle to Billy and Carol Ann Stolp" of Hobart. Those were the children of his brother, Willard, who married Clara Shearer in 1929 (Indiana Marriage Collection). The Gazette added that Clifford had "numerous other relatives and friends in Hobart, having resided here at one time" — which we know, from the 1920 Census. He was, of course, related to the Rossows, and hence to the Harmses.

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[1] "Marriage Licenses," Nashville Banner, 14 Apr. 1941.

Hobart Then and Now: The Miller Corner

1970s, and 2017.


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Image above courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


I call this house the Miller house, because Eldon Harms told me that the Miller family lived there. But since I don't know when the house was built, I don't know who among the previous owners of that land might have lived there; nor do I know who might have lived there after the Millers ceased to own it. By 1950 it was part of Chester Wasy's extensive property, but surely he did not live there when he might choose the spacious Chester house or the riverside Nolte house.

If the house dated back to the early 1890s, it once housed Peter and Caroline Stolp, the maternal grandparents of Minnie (Rossow) Harms. They rented that farm for a short time. Peter may have died there (1892).

However, after that mystifying news item about John Miller moving his house, I don't know what to think.

The house was still standing when I moved here in 1990. By then it was painted green. There was a dog house behind it, and beyond the back yard a fenced-in area where a horse was kept, with a shed for its shelter. At the edge of the field to the south was a rusty farm machine — a tractor or some such thing. I liked that house. It was demolished before I began my historical research.

But getting back to the photo above — I'm dating it to the 1970s simply because of the style of photo. We have a similar photo, likewise undated, but taking in a car that looks like the sort of car you might see in the mid-1970s.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

These two photos were taken at least a few months apart, since here the trees are in full leaf, while in the first one the leaves are changing color and falling. I think this photo was taken when the Tonagels had their store up for sale. We have some others taken apparently at the same time with a better view of the automobiles that are helping me date these photos to the 1970s.

Her Cottage on Lake Street

The "Local and Personal" column of the Hobart News of Aug. 11, 1921, carried this announcement: "Mrs. Wm. Carey, who has been making her home in South Chicago for the past couple of years, is having her cottage on Lake street remodeled and a cement foundation put under it, and expects to return to Hobart in a couple of weeks to make her home."

I don't know whether Augusta ever had more than one house on Lake Street, but here she is at her house at 506 Lake Street; the date of the photo is circa 1921, so it may well be the one mentioned by the News.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Augusta Stolp Rossow Carey

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

As an adventurous teenager, Augusta had come to the United States in 1871,* leaving her parents in Germany (to follow some years later). Augusta was trained as a seamstress and planned to earn her own wages. She stayed with relatives in Chicago.

In As It Was Told to Me, Minnie Rossow Harms tells us that the marriage of Augusta's parents, Peter Stolp and Caroline Junke, had been more or less arranged. Peter, a widower with grown children, was a friend of Caroline's father, and the two men decided between themselves that such a marriage would suit both of them. So Caroline, as a young woman, became the wife of a man some 20 years her senior, and they shared a home with her father. The marriage was polite rather than passionate. Caroline hoped for better things for Augusta: a freer choice, perhaps a love match with some handsome young man.

We can't know what motivated Augusta, at about 16 years of age, to marry Henry Rossow. He was not a young man; he was a forty-something widower with three sons ranging in age from toddler to schoolboy. But this was the New World, not the Old Country; Augusta, being neither timid nor dependent, presumably made a free choice. And perhaps it was a love match, after all.

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*1910 Census.

Henry Rossow

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Henry Rossow was born in Germany in 1827. He came to this country early enough in his life that all his children were born here — and he had plenty of children: a dozen that I know of, who reached maturity, and populated this area, and handed down enough historical images and information to fill a blog. His first marriage, to Wilhelmina Kummerow, produced three sons: William, Theodore, and Robert. Among the children of his second marriage, to Augusta Stolp, was Ida Rossow Henrix, whose grandson has given us the image above, and the clipping below that tells how Henry's life was cut short:


Hobart Gazette, 23 Aug. 1895.

Among the grandchildren Henry did not live to see was Minnie Rossow Harms. The story of his death came down to her with a few details differing from the newspaper's version, as she recorded in her manuscript, As It Was Told To Me:

Going back now to the year Summer of 1894,* in the month of August, the exact date was Aug. 17. A church holiday was planned with a basket dinner, a host of relatives and friends were to join them on the morrow — for this was Saturday. Some of these folks were from Chicago so work laid aside, a group of them hitched the old Prince horse to a light wagon and were all set with worms and rods to fish in the near-by river. My grandfather declined. He said, all his grain was laid by, threshing done, hay all made, he'd go to the woods to cut some marsh grass to cover a stack of good hay he had to stack outside and it wouldn't take long and then he'd be thru so by that time you folks, he said, could be home with a mess of fish if they're biting for when I get thru today, he said, I can enjoy a few weeks vacation like before the fall comes and its corn-husking time again and we'll all have a good time tomorrow at the Church Mission (Sunday) Festival to be exact. The Lutherans still set aside a Sunday at the end of the Summer for it and they were all taking a basket dinner so they could enjoy both morning and afternoon services.

Well, with his spirited horses and his jug of water he went to the woods, hitched his horses on the waiting mowing machine. The other group went off with a wagon-full of happy people bent on catching fish. They heard the clatter of the mowing-machine as they passed the marshland (Missouri St. and Road 6 [Old Ridge Road]) but as they neared the corner Oh a sight met their eyes — the eldest daughter with the fishing party (Lizzy Rossow) walked on up to what seemed to be a jumble of horses and mow-machine and there was my grandfather lying on the ground right leg and neck broken. From what they could learn they judged the horses ran away and he wasn't expecting it so he had been jerked to the ground and the heavy wheel ran over his leg so the unexpected jerk also snapped his neck. He must have died instantly for though warm his body was lifeless when found. The family was too grief-stricken to have an outing on the morrow so preparations were made for his funeral and the family needed all the money they could gather together now so my father went to (Hobart) and purchased a cemetery lot, … so midst sympathy, tears and heartaches he was laid to rest there, leaving 5 daughters and 2 sons and his young 36 year old wife [Augusta]. The baby girl Clara was about 3 yrs. old and that was 3 yrs. before I was born. And as long as I can remember it was a yearly task in May — was to pretty up the cemetery lot and fix grandfather's grave.

Henry's grave is in Hobart Cemetery.

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*Minnie was writing from memory, apparently, and was off by one year.

Ice-Cream Plumbing

Our plumbing friends, Lee & Rhodes, got to spend some of their summer days inside Sherman Henderson's ice-cream factory.


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"Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 July 1921.

The "Mrs. Wm. Carey" who mothered young picnickers at the campground was born Augusta Stolp; the widow of Henry Rossow, she became the second wife of William H. Carey in 1903, and was widowed again in 1916.

Stag Party

Reader, do you remember the three little Hendrixes from the steamer trunk? — they had only a tangential connection to Ainsworth via the Rossow family, but they were cute as heck, so I posted their picture.

Recently a descendant of that little girl in the middle, Rosemary Hendrix Rainford, allowed the Hobart Historical Society to scan a collection of Rossow/Hendrix photos. Again, very little connection to Ainsworth, but I find these photos very interesting, so I'm going to begin posting them.

Let's start with Ida Rossow Hendrix and Kate Stolp at a "stag party" (Ida's words).


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Ida is marked "(5)," Kate is marked "(2)." Alas, the others' identities have been lost.


I think I've figured out the relationship between Ida Rossow Hendrix (born 1886) and Minnie Rossow Harms (born 1897), but it's complicated. Ida was a half-sister to Minnie's father, William Rossow. William was born to Henry Rossow by his first marriage. Henry's second marriage was to Augusta Stolp, Minnie's aunt. That marriage produced (among others) Ida. Which makes Ida a paternal aunt and a maternal cousin to Minnie … doesn't it?

The Mystery of Clifford Stolp

From the steamer trunk.


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Images courtesy of E.H.

Here, in his too-large Sunday best, is Clifford Stolp. I love that little half-smile of his. It seems to say he's planning to do something big as soon as they let him out of those glad-rags.

On the back of the postcard is a date — "Apr 9 '16" — which, assuming it's near the date the photo was taken, would put Clifford at about 14 10 years of age.



If I've got the genealogy right, he was a cousin of Minnie Rossow Harms: the son of her mother's brother, Herman Stolp, and his first wife, Katherine Schrankel.

Clifford is maddeningly elusive. The only official record I can find him in is the 1920 Census, where he says he is 18 years old, boarding* at the home of Jennie Clifford in Hobart, and working in a steel mill. (His widowed father and a younger brother were boarding at a home in Chicago.)

Before that, and after that, he is invisible. The only clue we have about his fate comes from Minnie Harms' manuscript, "As It Was Told to Me," in which she says that he "died from wounds during the beginning of World War II," leaving a wife and daughter. But I can't confirm any of that.

Even more perplexing, to me, is that I could have sworn I found, a few weeks ago, some kind of military record on Ancestry.com that gave him name as Edward Clifford Stolp. I remember thinking that I had perhaps found the reason he was so elusive — because his official first name was Edward, but he usually went by Clifford among family and friends. However, I dropped the search at the time, and didn't put that record in my "shoebox." And now I can't find it again, which makes me wonder if I only dreamed that whole episode.

And so Clifford remains a mystery.

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*On Ancestry.com, the word written in the "relationship to head of family" column is transcribed as "stepson," but to me it looks more like "boarder."

Hobart Then and Now: Shearer House on Lincoln

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Top image courtesy of E.H.

The steamer trunk included this photo postcard of the home of James and Hulda Shearer, at the corner of 8th and Lincoln.

There is nothing on the back of the postcard except the identification:



The little girl between Hulda and Jim is their daughter, Clara. She was born in 1910. Here she looks to be about six years old, which would date the photo to circa 1916.

From the same source we have a photo of Clara and Hulda, about three years earlier.





The 1940 Census shows Clara, married, living with her parents. Her surname was Stolp; I think her husband's first name was Willard and she married him circa 1929 (if I've found the right people in the 1930 Census).

William and Antonia Rossow

From the steamer trunk.


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Image courtesy of E.H.

Handwritten on the back of the original photo are these cryptic notes:

Did you see Ma's enlargement something like this?
I think that one of Ma's is a peach don't you?

At left is William Rossow, at right Antonia. They are showing off their beautiful horses.

We don't know where this photo was taken. It may have been on the Rossows' farm.


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The Rossow farm as it appeared on the 1908 Plat Map.

William Rossow married Antonia Stolp on August 16, 1890 (Indiana Marriage Collection). The 1910 Census shows their complete family: William, 44 years old, the Illinois-born son of German immigrants, farming his own land; Antonia, 38, who immigrated from Germany in 1879; and daughters Wilhemina, aka Minnie (13), Ella (10) and Louise (7). Antonia's widowed mother, Carolina (78), also lived with them.

Those three daughters were their only children to survive to maturity.