A Menu of Death

This page from the Hobart Gazette of November 25, 1921, offered up varied styles of death, from the horrifyingly sudden to the tragically premature.


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I'm guessing that Bertha Stoltz's mother was Gust Busse's sister (Bertha's maiden name being Heiman, not Busse). Bertha had married Robert Stoltz in 1908, and early in their married life they rented a house on Center Street in Hobart, convenient to Robert's work in a brickyard. By 1920 they had moved into Morgan Township, Porter County, and were farming rented land.

The Gazette's version says the shooting was accidental, but a couple of articles I have tracked down from other sources, including a Wanatah newspaper, say it was intentional, though impulsive.

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Minnie Chase Smith had been born November 9, 1865, on her parents' farm, which I believe I have found on the 1874 Plat Map:


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I wish I had figured out earlier that Sela Smith had this local connection; I could have talked about him more — not that he's done anything particularly interesting, but I think his name has popped up in the newspapers more than his wife's … which isn't saying much. They seem to have led a pretty quiet life. (Minnie's brother, Gust, is the one who would be killed in a car crash in 1927.)

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We saw this coming for poor Harold Guernsey, who had been seriously ill for many months. Incidentally, I have never heard of Putout, Indiana, where Otis Guernsey is described as living, nor can I find any information on such a place. (And "Mrs. Carrie Sondong" in the last sentence is a misprint for "Santonge.")


Additional Sources:
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Funeral of Mrs. Sela Smith Held at Her Home Saturday Afternoon." Hobart News 24 Nov. 1921.
♦ Indiana Marriage Collection.
♦ "Mrs. Robert Stoltz Killed by Shot Gun in Hands of Orphan Boy." Wanatah Mirror 24 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).
♦ "Obituary." Hobart News 17 Nov. 1921.
♦ "Youth Slays Woman." Indianapolis Star 23 Nov. 1921 (newspaperarchive.com).

Amanda's Son by Her First Marriage

The Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society has a three-ring binder full of notes concerning local families — when they came here, and from where; who married whom and begat whom; and in some cases, little details about their farms or businesses, or what motivated them to settle in this area. I get the impression that this is all oral history, based on the memories of old-timers that (thank goodness) someone took the trouble to collect and organize, more or less.

Anyway, I found some information about the Guernseys, and in particular Otis and his confusing wives and children. According to these notes, the DeWell family archivist was correct in her conclusion that Clarence McDonald was not Minnie's son but Amanda's, by her previous marriage.

So here you go: a whole lot of stuff about the Guernseys:


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Images courtesy of the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society.

A Minnie of Many Names

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Otis and Minnie Guernsey.
Image courtesy of Victoria Rickey.

OK, here's the thing that surprised me, when I just recently re-learned it, about Otis Guernsey's wife, Minnie: she was born a Schavey, half-sister to Henry and the other Schavey siblings, thus some sort of half-aunt to Mable Schavey Breyfogle. I learned this from her father's 1910 obituary:


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Fred Sr.'s first wife came to this country and then departed this world in between censuses, so I don't even know her given name. The 1870 census shows Minnie in the household with Fred's second wife. (However, my assumption that I've found the right household requires me to believe that the enumerator made a mistake in putting Frederick down as "Philip," and there's also what seems to be an older sister to Minnie, named Augusta, while the obituary has Minnie as the sole surviving child of the first marriage by the time of the second marriage — but in between 1870 and 1910 there was plenty of time for confusion of memories, nor would it be the first time we've seen a mistake in an obituary.) In 1880, Minnie was still at home (and Augusta, whoever she was, was gone).

And then Minnie got married to someone who wasn't Otis Guernsey … but I can find no record of it. We know she was Minnie Jones when she married Otis (and furthermore she had a son, John Jones, who served in France during World War I, and afterward came to the Guernsey farm in July 1919*). I thought there might have been a second marriage pre-Otis, because we've encountered a son of hers with the surname McDonald. However, the Dewell family archivist has done some detective work on that question, and writes:

I started to try to figure out if Clarence really was her son, and came to a negative conclusion.

1) There is a Clarence listed in the 1900 Census living in the Guernsey household. His birthdate is listed as June 1892, which would have been before Otis [Guernsey] and Amanda [Rex, Otis' wife before Minnie] married. Amanda says she had 5 children and 5, including Clarence, were living in the household. So perhaps Amanda was married before or had Clarence 'McDonald' out of wedlock.

It would seem natural that if Minnie raised the children after Amanda ran off and met her horrible end, Minnie would have received notice of Clarence McDonald's death in 1918, being sort of the next of kin.

Now it gets tricky... FamilySearch.org shows a Clarence Edward McDonald getting married in Newton Co IN on 20 Dec 1919 to Amanda Myrtle Parks. And his mother is listed as Amanda Rex! So is it possible that Clarence was resurrected by the US Army? I suppose the name may have been common enough that there could have been a mistake made. Did they have dog tags? What a shocker that would have been!

Clarence has a WWI and WWII draft card showing his birth in Hebron IN on 12 June 1892. SSI records show death in Lake County in Oct 1970.

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Now let's look at some incidents from Minnie's time under the surname Guernsey. Well, she was exposed to the hazards of farm life, as this 1910 incident shows:



Shortly the cow attack, several of the Guernsey kids came down with scarlet fever and the house was quarantined. I believe they all recovered.

In 1913 Minnie had serious problems hinted at in a short news item: "Attorney R.R. Peddicord and Henry Schavey went to Longcliffe Saturday and returned with Mrs. Otis Guernsey, who has been an inmate of the Northern Hospital for the Insane for the past three weeks." That was the only such incident, so far as I know from the newspapers. Three years later, she temporarily left Otis — we can only speculate as to why.


There you have it, a brief summary of the highlights, or the lowlights, in the life of Minnie Schavey McDonald(?) Jones Guernsey.

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* The Dewell family archivist has also found John Jones living in Minnie's household in 1900, 1910 and 1930.



Sources:
♦ 1870 Census.
♦ 1880 Census.
♦ "Death of Old Citizen." Hobart Gazette 2 Dec. 1910.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 10 June 1910; 1 July 1910.
♦ "Mrs. Otis Guernsey Returns From Northern Hospital for Insane." Hobart News 10 July 1913.
♦ "South of Deepriver." Hobart News 24 July 1919.

Peacetime Casualties

The war was over, but soldiers were still dying.

The News of December 12 carried this brief story:

Word was received Monday that Clarence McDonald, son of Mrs. Otis Guernsey,* residing south of Deep River, had died of wounds received in action in France. Last week they received a message stating he had been seriously wounded. He went to France in June of this year.

Just above that story appeared a fuller report on the death of Edward Abel, 26 years old, who had died in France on November 24 of bronchial pneumonia. The next day's Gazette described Edward's military service:

When Co. F was organized at Gary, he became a member, and in June, 1916, he went with the company to the Mexican border. There he had charge of the construction of army shacks, and after the company was mustered out of the U.S. service, in March, 1917, and again became a state organization, he returned home, but soon war broke out, and again he joined the company that was sent to Camp Shelby. Here he remained until about last October, when most of the remaining members of Co. F were sent overseas. From a letter received later, he arrived in France Nov. 5, or six days before peace was signed.

On December 18 Fremont and Carrie Price received a report that their son James had died — a sketchy, unofficial report, if we are to go by what appeared in the newspaper about it. The Prices were surely stunned and confused; James himself had recently written to them that he was fully recovered from his wound.

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*Minnie Jones Guernsey, and I can't account for the difference in surnames.


Sources:
♦ "Another Hobart Boy Dies in France." Hobart Gazette 13 Dec. 1918.
♦ "Clarence McDonald of Ross Twp. Dies of Wounds Received in Action." Hobart News 12 Dec. 1918.
♦ "Edward Abel Dies of Pneumonia November 24 in France." Hobart News 12 Dec. 1918.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 19 Dec. 1918.

Charles Chester v. Everybody

A new season, a new action to quiet title.


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Two and a half acres of this land overlapped the land that Charles' stepmother and her second husband had been suing over the previous autumn. I wish I knew the story behind that.


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These days you can go walking in the woods on the land that was the subject of this action.


Sources:
♦ 1926 Plat Book.
♦ "Notice to Non-Resident." Hobart News 11 Apr. 1918.

(For search-engine purposes) Defendants named in the action: Benton, McDonald, Race, Beckwith, Barney, Wheeler, Bond, Hanks, Smith, Maxwell, Wilcox, Brown, Green.