Hurlburt's Corners

From early on in my reading of the microfilm, I've seen mentioned some place called "Hurlburt's Corners," and could not figure out where it was.

At last, a Hurlburt descendant has clued me in. What was Hurlburt's Corners is now the intersection of Randolph Street and E. 93rd Avenue. If you go back to 1874, you find the whole west side of that intersection owned by J. Hurlburt.


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From the 1874 Plat Map.

I believe J. Hurlburt was Jacob, and the M. Hurlburt owning 80 acres on the north line of Jacob's land was Milan, his son.

The little square marked "S.H." is the Hurlburt schoolhouse. This map shows it on the southeast corner; a hand-drawn map at the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society museum shows in on the northwest corner.

Hurlburt's Corners is distinct from the lost village of Hurlburt, which is, or was, in Porter Township, Porter County, along the Chicago & Erie Railroad. See this 1895 plat map, showing both Hurlburt and Boone Grove, and the 1876 plat map, showing about 320 acres in that vicinity owned by a C. Hurlburt — first name unknown to me. Still, I would not be surprised if both the village and the corners got their name from members of the same extended family.

This large family began with Reuben and Rachel Hurlburt, who came to Porter County in the spring of 1834, according to Goodspeed and Blanchard. If we can trust that source, the family first lived in Portage Township, later moving into Porter Township, where Reuben and Rachel died.

In 1850 their son Jacob and his wife, Susan, were farming in Porter Township with their seven children, the youngest being one-year-old Milan. By 1860 they had moved into Ross Township, and among their neighbors were Guernseys and Bragingtons; this leads me to suspect they were already at the place that would come to be called Hurlburt's Corners.

In 1873 Milan married Mary Ann Guernsey. The 1880 census shows them farming in what seems to be southeastern Ross Township. The young Hurlburts had two children, Jacob and Jennie. Goodspeed and Blanchard, writing in 1882, list their children as "Jacob (born January 1, 1874), Jennie (born March 3, 1877), and Chester (born August 8, 1880)" — Ethel is ever elusive!

… Well, no, she's not quite as elusive as she used to be. I just took the trouble to read through the 1900 census of Ross Township, and found the Milan Hurlburt family, which Ancestry.com's search function couldn't do. While their listing is not the most legible, Ethel is there, and (reading it as best I can) I think she's 10 years old. Now I wish I could remember what inspired me to say she was sixteen years old at her marriage, in that earlier post. Evidently I was wrong. She was nineteen.

I have finally found out a little about Ethel's older sister, Jennie. In August 1898 Jennie married William G. Fisher. They lived in Winfield Township at first, but by 1909 were back in Ross Township, living on her father's land.

Here's a little story from 1909 about Jennie and her son, Lester.


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Lester "got along" well enough to be counted in the 1910 census, which shows the Fishers farming rented land — probably her father's. Just before the 1920 census, they lost their son Richard to complications of influenza. They were left with seven surviving children.

… And that is all the Hurlburt genealogy I can handle in one day.


Sources:
♦ 1850 Census.
♦ 1860 Census.
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Auto Injures Boy." Hobart Gazette 20 Aug. 1909.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ Porter and Lake Counties (Goodspeed/Blanchard).