Survived by His Sisters and Brothers

I didn't miss this article the first time through the 1919 microfilm, but for some reason I didn't put it in the blog at the time.


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Hobart News, July 24, 1919.


Lynne was the illegitimate son of Sarah Jane Carey and an unknown man. What strikes me about the few records we have of his short life is how well his grandfather, William H. Carey, and William's second wife and step-family of Rossows seem to have accepted this child whose coming was, at first, such an unpleasant surprise.

In the 1910 Census (the only census Lynne lived to be counted in), William H. Carey claimed this boy as his own son.


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Image from Ancestry.com.

The Careys seem to be naming William's second wife, Augusta, as the boy's mother – note that she claimed to be the mother of only one child, although she had seven from her previous marriage to Henry Rossow. (The enumerator, Charles Blank of Miller, may have made this mistake, not being a local.)

And then, in the 1919 News death notice, Augusta is described as Lynne's "foster mother," and Augusta's children are called his sisters and brothers — though in fact they were his step-aunts and step-uncles.[1] Lynne was living with two of his "sisters," who had long since moved out of the Carey home, when he left for that ill-fated trip to Michigan.[2]

And the survivors bought a stone to mark his grave, which is more than his mother or grandmother got.


When Charles Hendrix (husband of Lynne's "sister," Ida) went to Michigan to bring the boy home, he kept the family secret, according to the death certificate:


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Image from Ancestry.com.

Charles may not have known who Lynne's mother was — was it he who gave the name "Leonard" for a boy who had always been called Lynn? Or maybe Charles knew, but thought it nobody's business except the Carey family's.

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We have only one known photo of Lynne.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Both the News and the Gazette agreed that he had been born on October 29, 1904, so the handwritten note on the photo, giving his age as 16, is probably an error.

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[1] The Gazette simply called Lynne the "grandson of the late Wm. Carey" and noted that Lynne had "made his home in Hobart with Mrs. Carey," but did not name any survivors — thus being correct, discreet, and a bit cold, if you ask me. ("Hobart Boy Dies in Michigan," Hobart Gazette, July 25, 1919.)
[2] The death notice does not mention any of Lynne's uncles or aunts on the Carey side; I wonder if that omission means anything?

Sweet Sixteen?

This is Clara Rossow at 16 years of age, according to the hand-written caption. Does she look sweet? — I think she looks determined.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Assuming the caption is correct, this photo probably dates to circa 1906. I say probably because sources vary as to her birthdate, but the majority place it in 1890 or 1891.

She was one of the children of Augusta (Stolp) Rossow. The earliest census in which I can find her, the 1910 Census, gives her birthplace as Indiana. In subsequent censuses she claims to have been born at sea, on the Atlantic Ocean. It's a good story, but I don't think it's true.

That 1910 census shows her living with her siblings on Lake Street in Hobart. (As Minnie Rossow Harms tells us in As It Was Told to Me, the Rossow kids found that they got along better with their stepfather, William Carey, if they didn't live in his house, so they got their own.) Clara was working as a telephone operator. Sometime between 1910 and 1920 she married Thomas Davies, according to the family — I can't find an official record of the marriage on-line, but the 1920 Census records the two of them as married. It seems there were no children. When Clara died in 1976,[1] the background information on her death certificate came from a niece who did not know Clara's parents' names.


By the way, we have seen that painted backdrop a couple of times already.

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[1] [11/2/2026 update] A family member has sent me this correction: Clara Rossow Davey died on April 1, 1984.

Baseball Player

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

A handwritten note on the back of the original photo identifies this young athlete only as "R. Hendrix." At first I thought that the "R" must stand for Roy or Ray — that this was one of the three little Hendrixes, all (or half) grown up.

Only … this fellow couldn't be younger than about 16, could he? — which means, if he is indeed Ray/Roy, the photo must have been taken about 1930. And doesn't it all look a bit old-fashioned for 1930? I mean the laced-up jersey, and the painted backdrop of the photographer's studio … it makes me wonder.


[12/18/2016 update: compare the photo above to these.]

On Sykes Farm

Two copies of the same photo have come down to us via Ida Rossow Hendrix. Handwritten notes on one of them identify the scene as "on Sykes Farm."


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.



We have no date for this photo, nor can I judge by anything in the photo, since I can't really see any fashions, and people around here continued to use horses for transportation into the 1930s and even later.

We know who Herman Rossow was, but Betty Koepke is a mystery to me.

From what we can see of the house in the background, it does look like the house on the Sykes farm we've identified, but as I've mentioned, there were several Sykes farms. However, the Rossows had a connection with the Wm. Sykes farm southwest of Hobart (which sounds like the one we've identified) through Harve F. Carey, who rented and occupied it for several years until the late winter of 1906.* Harve was the son of William H. Carey, the second husband of Augusta Stolp Rossow Carey, mother of Herman Rossow, and Ida Rossow Hendrix.

If the Rossows or the Koepkes (whoever they were) ever had a more direct connection with the Sykes farm, I haven't found out about it yet.

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[9/30/2015 update] Betty Koepke has become just slightly less mysterious since I found this item in the "Local Drifts" of the Hobart Gazette of Jan. 23, 1903: "Miss Bettie Koepke, of Chicago, was a guest last week at the home of Mrs. H. Rossow." I'm guessing that "Mrs. H. Rossow" was Augusta Stolp Rossow, widow of Henry Rossow and soon-to-be second wife of William H. Carey. (In January 1903 Mr. Carey was not yet a widower.) So whoever Betty was, she lived in Chicago and was a friend of the Rossows. She may have been the Bettie Kopke who was recorded in the 1900 Census as a 14-year-old schoolgirl, a daughter of a widowed German immigrant, living on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.

From the "Local Drifts" of the January 9 Gazette:

Wm. Sykes will have his public sale on Thursday of next week Jan. 15th, at his farm about three and a half miles southwest of Hobart, which is now under the management of his brother Henry. It will be one of the largest sales ever conducted in these parts. Besides farming implements, grain, some household furniture and several head of horses he will offer for sale some high grade Polled Durham cattle and many head of swine of the Victoria breed. He will give a credit of one year on all sums over $5.00. L.E. Fehlman will cry the sale.

It appears that Betty Koepke's visit coincided with the public sale on the Sykes farm, which, by the way, "was attended by over 500 people …. The weather was very pleasant and many stock buyers from distant points were present" ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 23 Jan. 1903).

If Herman drove his mother and her friend Betty over to that public sale, and someone happened to take a photo of the two young people with their team and wagon, the only thing I would find surprising is that none of the other 497 people who attended were visible in the background.

Toward the end of January 1903, Harve Carey moved onto the Sykes farm, having leased it for several years ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 30 Jan. 1903).

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[10/23/2015 update] Betty Koepke paid another visit to her friend the following autumn, as reported in the "General News Items" in the Hobart Gazette of Nov. 13, 1903:

Miss Helen and Betty Koepke and Messrs. Lou and Herman Rossow and Wm. Scholtz, of Chicago, visited over Sunday [Nov. 8] at the home of W.H. Carey, near Wheeler.

This provides an even more likely occasion for the photo above to have been taken: it would explain why no one else was visible in the background, and why Betty might be visiting a farm rented by Harve Carey — by then her friend Augusta was Mrs. Wm. Carey, Harve's stepmother. And this time, we know for sure that Herman Rossow was visiting as well.

Along with Betty (the newspaper tells us) came Helen Koepke, which supports the theory that the Bettie Kopke mentioned in my previous update is our girl, since the 1900 Census records that Bettie had a 16-year-old sister named Helene.


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*A son was born to Harve and Kate Carey on that farm in 1903 ("Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 6 Nov. 1903). An untitled social column in the Hobart Gazette of January 5, 1906, included an item advertising a public sale by H.F. Carey "on the Wm. Sykes farm southwest of Hobart." Late in February, Harve moved to the "Elmer Wolf homestead," which he had purchased, and the Charles Chester family moved to the Sykes farm ("General News Items," Hobart Gazette 2 March 1906).

What Is She Planning to Do With That Sword?

This is Ida Rossow Hendrix, dressed up for either theatrics or sports.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

The photo is undated. There is a calendar on the wall, but I can't read it. Ida was born in 1886, and here she looks to be in her late teens/early 20s, so I'd guess this dates to the first decade of the 20th century.

EJ&E Crossing at Lake Street

(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.






These three photos appear to be taken at the same place — the Lake Street crossing of the EJ&E Railroad, where Ezra Gilpin worked in 1923, according to the caption of one of the photos.

As we've already noted, he was still working as a railroad crossing guard when the 1930 census came around, though perhaps not at the Lake Street crossing.

I can't read the name on the sled in the last picture — King something? (Anyway, it's not Rosebud.)

William Ezra Gilpin

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Here is Rose's husband and Charles' stepfather. Born circa 1856, he was some six years older than Rose, and the third of four (surviving) children of Washington and Mary Gilpen. His father and mother were from Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively, but by 1850 they were married and farming in Adams County, Indiana. I believe Mary died in the 1870s, and Washington remarried circa 1881.

The casual researcher has some trouble tracking down this particular Gilpin child, since he sometimes went by William and sometimes by Ezra. After his marriage to Rose, apparently he settled on Ezra.

I have mentioned elsewhere that Ezra described himself in 1900 as a day laborer. By 1910 he was a railroad section foreman. His occupation is illegible in the 1920 Census — perhaps "Laborer" for a "Railroad," but I can't be sure. In 1930 he was a railroad crossing guard.

An entry at findagrave.com shows 1934 as the year of his death, but I have not been able to confirm that.


Sources:
♦ 1850 Census.
♦ 1860 Census.
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.

Lena Rossow

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Someone has written on the front of this photo: "Lena Rossow." Who was Lena Rossow? I wish I knew.

The photographer was August Haase, so the photo probably dates between 1902 and ca. 1912. It looks like a confirmation portrait, or maybe eighth-grade graduation, so Lena was probably about 14 years old. And it has come down to us through a descendant of Clara Rossow Hendrix, so Lena was probably related to Clara.

That's as far as I've gotten.

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[4/24/2015 update] Mystery solved — see the comment to this post, and the DeWell family archivist reached the same conclusion independently.

Samantha Rosetta Hendricks Gilpin

Just call her Rose … or Grandma, if you're one of the three little Hendrixes.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Rose is on the left. The other two are unidentified (although I'm wondering whether the girl on the right mightn't be her younger sister, Ida). Rose was born circa 1862, and in this photograph she looks about 17 years old.

The earliest record I can find of her is the 1870 Census, which shows Rose and Ida with their 36-year-old father, Jacob, a carpenter, and apparently a widower. Their home was in Plymouth, the county seat of Marshall County, Indiana. I can find no official record of Jacob in 1860, nor of his marriage or his wife's name. Notes appended to his name on findagrave.com state that his wife's name was Rebecca Gillis, that she died in 1868, and that they had lost a little daughter, Lucetta, in 1863.*

The 1880 Census shows the little Hendricks** household unchanged but for the addition of ten years. Unusually for that time, Jacob had not remarried. I don't know how he got through those early years after the death of his wife, with two small girls to care for. Those girls no doubt took on household responsibilities early. By 1880, Rose was 18 and Ida 16 — certainly old enough to manage the house for their father.

The loss of her mother had been the first great trouble of Rose's life. As we look at that 1880 census, the second great trouble of her life may have been already developing. We will get to that soon.

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*These notes may not be entirely reliable, as they give 1920 as the year of Rose's death, but the 1930 Census shows her still living.
**This is how the family originally spelled its surname, but the father of the three little Hendrixes changed the spelling because he was tired of getting mail addressed to another Hendricks living nearby. For my own convenience, I will be indexing everyone in this family under Hendrix.

Jack Murphy

The identity of the man on the left has been lost to history, but the man on the right is identified as Jack Murphy.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

I suppose this could be the John Murphy whom Liz Rossow married in 1920.

Elizabeth Rossow Murphy

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Date and location unknown.
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

She was the daughter of Henry and Augusta (Stolp) Rossow, thus a half-sister of William Rossow and a sister of Ida Rossow.

We find her in 1880, at the age of three, with Henry and Augusta on their farm in Hobart Township. As a child, Liz somehow survived the epidemic of diphtheria that took the lives of her older brother, Freddie, and younger sister, Annie — so we are told by Minnie Rossow Harms in As It Was Told to Me; she tells us, too, that it was Lizzy who discovered her father's body in the field where he was killed in an accident in 1895.

In 1903, Lizzie's mother married again, to William H. Carey. Liz and her sisters did not get along with their stepfather (again, according to Minnie Rossow Harms), so they moved into their own lodgings. Thus we find Lizzie in 1910, as the oldest sibling, the head of a household in Hobart composed of sisters and brothers. By 1920 Liz had moved to Chicago, and was living with her sister Clara, her brother Herman, and her cousin Ella (Minnie Rossow's sister, I suppose). They were all employed, and supplemented their income by taking in lodgers.

In August of 1920 Liz, at about 42 years of age, married John "Jack" Murphy. By 1930, I believe she and her husband were living in Hobart again.

Minnie Harms says this of her Aunt Liz:

She lived to see a great many hardships, also good times, and was always a great favorite with my father and his brothers, his two right brothers. She did not marry until middle life and she never experienced the joy or the hardships of having a family herself. She was 64 when she died of an asmethedic [sic] heart, Feb. 4, 1940.

Liz is buried in Hobart Cemetery.


Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ Harms, Minnie Rossow. As It Was Told to Me. 1952 – 1978. MS. Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.

Happy New Year!

Don't drink too much.


(Click on image to embiggen)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

People unidentified. Date unknown.

I Say, "Jump," You Say, "Woof Woof"

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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

According to the notes with this photo, it was taken somewhere near Wheeler, Indiana, around May 1904. The man at right is Herman Rossow, son of Henry and Augusta Rossow, and brother of Ida Rossow Hendrix, whose grandson owns the original.

In 1904, Herman was about 22 years old. I can't find him in the 1900 census, but in 1910 he was living in Hobart in the same household with three sisters and a brother, and working as a driver for a brewery. (In As It Was Told To Me, Minnie Rossow Harms mentions that Augusta's daughters did not get along with her second husband, William Carey, whom she married in 1903; the young women moved out of the Carey home and got their own place in Hobart. In 1910 their brothers lived with them. All five siblings were then single, and Herman would remain so.)

The man at left, who has persuaded the dog to jump, is Herman's friend Perry Palmer. Perry was about 28 years old in 1904, married for some five years, father of three children (with more to come), earning his living as a bricklayer. He had moved his family from Hobart to Wheeler sometime between 1900 and 1910. Later they would move to Gary.

The photo below appears to have been taken in the same place on the same day.

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.


(Click on image to enlarge)
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

(Click on images to enlarge)
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.

A Country Wedding Portrait

After the less-than-dignified photo in that previous post, I thought I had better show you the formal wedding portrait of Robert and Bertha (Berndt*) Rossow, lest you think he went through the ceremony in his gingham workshirt, and she in her calico apron.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

It's interesting that the photographer was A.O. Merrill of Hobart. Just recently, he had sold his photograph business to August Haase — the sale being reported in the Hobart Gazette of November 28, 1902, and the wedding took place November 29; so this was probably among the last photographs he ever took in his Hobart studio.

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*Or Burchman, according to the marriage records I'm finding on Ancestry.com, and I do not know which is correct.

Country Wedding Festivities

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

This photograph was taken on Robert Rossow's wedding day. What we know about that day comes from the "Local Drifts" column of the Hobart Gazette of Dec. 5, 1902:

Last Saturday, Nov. 29th, Miss Bertha Berndt was united in marriage to Robert Rossow, Rev. E. Schuelke officiating. The ceremony was performed at four o'clock at the home of Theodore Rossow, brother of the groom. In the evening the groom gave a free dance at the K. of P. hall which was largely attended by the numerous friends of the happy couple.

By four o'clock on November 29th, the sun would have been far down in the sky, so the pictured festivities must have preceded the wedding ceremony. I image the women were inside the house, making ready, and the men went outdoors to goof around. Only one person in this photo is identified: William Rossow (another brother of Robert), who stands at left against the wall, wearing a white shirt and a big mustache.

As for the location of Theodore Rossow's farm, I can't confirm it, since I can't find Theodore in the 1900 census. He did eventually own a farm in Union Township, Porter County, but that ownership is not reflected in the 1906 plat map. Here it is on the 1921 plat map:


(Click on image to enlarge)
From http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/UnionTownshipMaps.html.

The 1910 Census suggests that Theodore and his wife, Annie, already owned at least a part of that land (based on the enumerator's margin note placing them near the "North Township Line Road," and the other residents recorded on the same page). Oddly enough, the Hobart News, in May 1921, described their residence as "southwest" of Hobart, but that have been a misprint for "southeast" ("Local and Personal," 5 May 1921).

Robert and Bertha Rossow are even more elusive. The 1930 Census records them farming rented land in northern Ross Township, west of Ainsworth. In April 1921 the Hobart News placed them somewhere southeast of Hobart ("Local and Personal," 7 Apr. 1921). I cannot find them in any other census, or on any plat map.

Belly Up to the Bar

Here are some unidentified men enjoying a glass of beer served by an unidentified bartender in an unidentified bar at an unknown date. It's still a great picture.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

Since it's from the Rainford collection, one of those men might be Herman or Louis Rossow (Ida's brothers), but I can't say I recognize anyone.

Jackson Hendrix

From the Rainford collection.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Tom Rainford.

We've seen "Jack" before in a group photo; now here he is on his own, at about four years of age, circa 1915.

He was the first child born to his parents, Charles and Ida (Rossow) Hendrix.