In October 1869, Jacob and Hannah sold those 80 acres to their only surviving son, Charles L., for $1400.
(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.
Charles, in turn, immediately gave his parents a lifetime lease on the northern half of that parcel, along with a pledge of support in the amount of $800, if needed.
Possibly Charles was farming the southern half for himself.
Not quite a year later, Charles gives up all ownership of the 40 acres his parents were farming.
From this transaction we learn that Charles, now about 33 years old, was a single man.
In 1873, Charles — who is now in Clay County, Iowa — sells the southern 40 acres back to Mary Chester (who, with her husband, had sold the land to Charles' parents in 1857).
Thus we learn that in the two and a half years between October 1870 and March 1873, Charles had found and then lost a wife. I have no idea who the wife was. I can't identify any record during these years of Charles' marriage. Of course, my galloping imagination races to the conclusion that he left Indiana to get away from the heartrending memories after his wife died. But he may have married her in Nebraska. I just don't know.
A year later we find Charles in Hamilton County, Nebraska, as he recruits James Sanders to collect his mortgage money from Mary Chester.
In 1876 Charles married Mary Jones,[1] who apparently had had an earlier marriage with at least one child (1880 Census). But previously Charles had entered yet another marriage, according to the 1910 Census, which notes that Charles was on his third marriage and Mary her second. So between 1873 and 1876 Charles may have suffered heartbreak yet again.
Albert Van Doozer, who bought the northern 40 acres, is a bit of a mystery. We encountered him for the first time in my earlier post about the Smith family, when (for quiet-title purposes, I believe) he wrote letters saying that he had been "well acquainted" with the late Jacob and Hannah Smith and their late daughter-in-law, Sarah.
I don't know how he became acquainted with this family of farmers, or what he wanted with farmland: he doesn't seem to have been the farming type himself. Born in New York in 1838, he shows up in the 1850 Census as a city boy, living in Buffalo, New York. His father was a joiner. Then I lose track of him until 1866, when he marries Emma Bevans — but the marriage is recorded in both Lake County, Indiana and Cook County, Illinois.
Not coincidentally, I'm sure, this was the same Emma Bevans, or Bevins, who had appeared in the 1850 Census living in the household of Jacob and Hannah Smith. She was a native of Canada. How and why did she get to Ross Township, Indiana, and into this particular household? I have no clue.
In the 1880 Census, Albert and Emma were living in Chicago and he worked as a shoemaker. By 1900, they were living in Wheatfield, Jasper County, Indiana; Albert described himself as a watchmaker. Ten years later, in the same town, he owned a jewelry shop. In 1920, at the age of 81, he was still a jeweler, still making watches, but Emma had died. Albert lived only three more years and was probably making watches to the end.
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[1] Ancestry.com. Nebraska, U.S., Select County Marriage Records, 1855-1908 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2017.
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