A Love Letter and a Mystery

This letter (a recent purchase of mine) was written from Hobart, Indiana, on October 26, 1883, to a brown-eyed, dimple-cheeked schoolteacher in Kansas.


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Here is my transcription (original spelling retained but some punctuation added for clarity):

Hobart Ind Oct 26th 1883

Miss Clara

"My Dear Girl"

Yours of the 21st recd on the 25th. I remained in Chicago several days longer than I should otherwise have done waiting to get a letter from you, before I came out here. I left the City the same day I recd it, and will answer it immediatly, so that it will not be so long between letters. Was sorry to hear of Dr Steelman's death and also of the sad accident to your little niece. Hope she may recover soon.

You must excuse this paper as it is all I have at hand.

Am glad to learn that drouthy Kansas is having lots of rain. This makes my second trip into Indiana since I left home and I shall try my best to make all my collections this time before I return to Chicago. Shall not remain in the City long after I return, am getting anxious to get home, and I suppose the reason is, because there is a little browned eyed dimpled cheake'd school teacher about 14 miles east of St John that I want to see very much, and I hope when I get back to Chicago there will be a letter from her waiting for me. I love that little Brunette and I don’t care if she know's it — — but I don’t think her letters express much of that article for me, but perhaps she is reserving that to tell me when I get back which by the way will be inside of two or three weeks, if nothing happens. Was glad to learn that you were over to the wedding. Wish I could have been there? As it is getting late will close by wishing you happy and well, with much love

Yours &c —

Ross

In spite of some initial frustration,[1] I was able to identify these people. The writer was Elijah Ross Swartz, born in Ohio in 1843; the recipient was Clara Jane McNeil, born in Iowa in 1862. Here is an account of their wedding, from the front page of the Stafford Herald (Stafford, Kans.) of March 6, 1884:


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And here is a photo of Clara Jane McNeil Swartz, which someone has added to findagrave.com:


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Ross lived in this area for a time. We first encounter him in the 1870 Census, farming in Union Township, Porter County and still going by his first name, Elijah.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

He is listed first, as if he were the head of the household, but the family's property is attributed to his mother, the 63-year-old Mary. I have not been able to find out with certainty who his father was and whether Mary was, in 1870, widowed, separated, or divorced.[2]

The earliest map of Union Township that I know of dates to 1876 and does not show the Swartz family owning land, so either they rented the land, or they sold it before 1876. To judge by the names listed near theirs on the census, such as Shearer and Janes, the Swartz family was close to the county line.

In January 1876 (Indiana Marriage Collection), Elijah married Alla Demott, also a native of Ohio and some 12 years his junior. By 1880, Elijah had given up farming in Union Township for dealing hardware in Chesterton.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

The family's record does not continue on the next page: he and Alla had no children.

The next we hear of Elijah, or Ross, it's October 1883 and he is courting Clara McNeil. That is the mystery of this post's title: what happened to Alla? I cannot find any record of her death. It's possible that they were divorced, though that would be unusual. Alla simply disappears.

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Ross and Clara remained in Kansas until the early 1890s, when they moved to California. There the 1900 Census records them …


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Image from Ancestry.com.

… and there they lived out the rest of their lives.

Ross's death in 1913 was reported back in St. John, Kansas:


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County Capital (St. John, Kans.), 30 Oct. 1913.

Clara died in 1934, and her obituary suggests that all her life she remained proud of her work as a schoolteacher in Kansas.


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Highland Park News Herald (Calif.), 18 Jan. 1934.

She and Ross are buried in California.

♦    ♦    ♦
As a postscript, here is a letter Ross wrote for publication in the Porter County Vidette, telling citizens of Porter County why they should move to Stafford County, Kansas.


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St. John Advance (Kans.), 22 Mar. 1883.


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[1] For some unknown reason, Ancestry.com turns up no record of their marriage.
[2] Mary died in St. John, Kansas, in 1892. Her brief obituary does not mention a husband, or any of her children except the one she lived with. ("Obituary," County Capital (St. John, Kans.), 26 Aug. 1892.)

Aunt Nancy's Birthday Pictures

These photos of Nancy Thompson, taken on two consecutive birthdays, survived among the many photos owned by the Harms family.

The first was taken on February 20, 1943, when she was 75 years old.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

The second was taken exactly a year later.



Nancy was born February 20, 1868, the first child of Valentine and Rebecca aka Anna (Winsell) Swartz, who had been married in Porter County in February 1867. The family shows up in the 1870 Census farming in Union Township.

Then they started moving around, it seems: if I've found the right people, for the 1880 Census the Swartzes were living in Cass County, Nebraska. By the 1900 Census, they had moved to Elk Falls, Kansas, and Valentine gave his occupation as a guard at a penitentiary. Valentine and Rebecca both ended their days there.

However, I would not be surprised to learn that between 1880 and 1900 they had come back to Indiana for a time — why else would Nancy, in 1898, have married George Morris Thompson of Porter County (Indiana Marriage Collection), rather than some nice young man in Nebraska or Kansas?

At the time of their marriage, the young couple planned to live in Hobart ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 16 Sept. 1898), but, as I have tried to trace, they moved about a good deal.

I do not know much about where Nancy lived after being widowed in 1928, nor do I know where either of the two photos above were taken.

Not two months after the second photo, Nancy died in Hobart (Indiana Death Certificates). She was buried beside her husband in Salem Cemetery.

I am classifying these photos as belonging to the Eva Thompson collection even though, technically, that's not where I got them.

Breaking Camp

Mrs. George Thompson was Lee's (and Eva's) mother. Her maiden name was Swartz and per the 1900 Census she had married George Thompson in 1899, but I've not yet been able to find the record of their marriage.


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Hobart News, 19 Oct. 1922.

The little Amlong family started camping out near the village of Deep River in June. They must have spent a few chilly nights in their tent before finally moving into a house for the winter. The "Humes residence south of the city" was likely on what's now State Road 51, though I still don't know exactly where.