Thursday, October 10, 2019

Granny Ensign's House

One day several years ago, I was driving with Eldon Harms along South Hobart Road when he pointed to a house on the east side of the road (number 1395) and said, "That was Granny Ensign's house."

"Who was Granny Ensign?" I asked him.

"I don't know," he said. "I just knew that as Granny Ensign's house." He went on to tell me that the house originally consisted of only the front part, and the larger back part was a later addition.

The house in question was built in 1925 according to the county records. If it started as only the "front part," it would have been very small — about 400 square feet, according to the sketch on the Assessor's website.

I bring this up now because the September 13, 1923 issue of the Hobart News, in an article entitled "Building of Residences Here Not Active This Year," mentions an exception in "Mrs. Elizabeth Ensign" who was building a house described as being southeast of Hobart, across the road from her present home. Well, we know who Elizabeth aka Nora Ensign was, and we know her "present home" was on the west side of South Hobart Road, so maybe I've finally found the Granny Ensign of Granny Ensign's house.

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Elsewhere in the same issue, a story about our old friend, Calvin C. Shearer:

2019-10-10. Shearer Sedan, News, 9-13-1923
(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News, Sept. 13, 1923.


Two columns to the left of that story, we find an article about the wedding of Erna Piornack. I have been following her outside the blog because her mother, née Emma Zobjeck, was the sister of Hobart's own Hugo Zobjeck. Emma had married Charles Piornack in Chicago in 1896.[1]. According to the 1920 Census, they had only two children: Erna and George.


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[1] Ancestry.com. Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index, 1871-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: "Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871–1920." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2010. Illinois Department of Public Health records. "Marriage Records, 1871–present." Division of Vital Records, Springfield, Illinois.

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