Farmhouse in Snow, 1949

This is the Harms farmhouse on East 73rd Avenue in the winter of 1949, according to handwritten notes on these two photos.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.




The second photo shows the back of the house, and a sled for enjoying the snow (and a bicycle for getting stuck in snowdrifts).

As I've mentioned before, the house has been demolished, but the row of evergreen trees on its west side (first photo), planted by Eldon himself, is still standing.

Updated Index to Ledgers, with Bonus George Earle Autographs

I finished indexing the ledger that begins in 1835, so I have posted an updated index to the Index page.

And here's a page from that ledger with George Earle's autograph (four times).


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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


The reason I think that is his autograph (as opposed to the ledger-writer's signing his name for him) is that these receipts are among several others on the latter pages of the ledger, each of which has a name signed in distinctive handwriting, e.g.:



The first receipt on this page is made out to "Nath Davis," which could be an abbreviation of "Nathaniel Davis." That might explain the confusion between Timothy H. Ball and the other sources on Liverpool history as to whether the Mr. Davis who was there at the town's beginning had been christened John or Nathaniel — there were two Mr. Davises attending the birth of Liverpool. Both of them show up in this ledger.

Frederick Wallace Gordon

I have not finished with the Gordon family yet — I still have some obituaries to post. This one tells of the untimely death of E.R.'s brother.


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Hobart Gazette 5 May 1899.


The article has details about the funeral but does not tell us where Frederick was buried, nor can I find any information on that.

His wife, Amanda, was the daughter of Frederick and Wilhelmine (Passow) Triebess, and now I have another project: figuring out if this Triebess family was related to Julius, Tillie, and Lena.

Merry Christmas!

A note on this picture tells us it was taken on Christmas Day 1953.


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Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.


One of those ladies is Grandma Chase — mother of Norma Chase Harms. The other is identified only as Helen. No doubt they are fixing Christmas dinner for the family.

South of Deepriver, March 22, 1923

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Hobart News 23 March 1923.


Among all the other social news, we find Maybelle Guernsey marrying Lloyd Moreland of Sedley, who thus far has figured in this blog only as a visitor in other "South of Deepriver" columns. But looking into his background a little, I find that his family goes back to the 1870s in Union Township, Porter County. His grandparents were Joshua and Margaret Anna. I believe that Joshua, born in Ohio in 1834 (Indiana Death Certificates), shows up in Union Township in the 1870 Census with his name spelled Moorland. The following year he went back to Ohio to marry his sweetheart, Margaret Anna McConkey.[1]

The young couple probably returned to Indiana soon after their marriage. The 1876 plat map for Union Township shows a J. Moreland owning a nice big parcel of land not far southeast of where Sedley would be after the Grand Trunk Railroad came through.

Around 1874, Joshua and Margaret had a son named Harrison (1880 Census). In 1896, Harrison married Jessie Wilson (Indiana Marriage Collection). Their son Lloyd was born in 1898 (Indiana Death Certificates).

Per the Union Township plat map of 1921, Harrison Moreland owned nearly 200 acres around Sedley.


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Image from http://www.inportercounty.org/Data/Maps/1921Plats/Union-1921.jpg.


The 1930 Census shows Lloyd and Maybelle farming rented land in roughly the same vicinity (to judge by their neighbors); it may have been his father's land. By then they had three children.


To the left of the "South of Deepriver" column is an open letter from William O. Sievert. He may or may not be somehow related to the Ainsworth-area Sieverts — I don't know. I believe he was a Hobart resident; the 1920 Census shows a 25-year-old steel-mill employee by that name in Hobart with his widowed mother, Anna. The Charles Carlson (who was allegedly to blame for the accident) was a son of Swan Peter and Hedwig Carlson, and per the 1920 Census lived in Ross Township, farming on part of the old Carlson place on S.R. 51, roughly across S.R. 51 from the present-day Indian Ridge Golf Course.

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[1] Ancestry.com. Ohio, County Marriages, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original data: Marriage Records. Ohio Marriages. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, UT.

One Pair of Boots for George Earle

Here's another image from the account book that begins in 1835.


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


I don't know why the transaction had to be so complicated, but I hope Mr. Earle got his boots and was happy with them. Perhaps he needed them to muck around with a team of oxen for half a day.

On the top of the right-hand page, the book-keeper wrote "Liverpool Sep 27 1837." The previous page covered September 25-27, 1836. The next page (not reproduced here) begins September 29, 1836. I think that 1837 is a mistake … but I'm trying very hard not to make assumptions. So I indexed it as 09/27/1837?. I'm really wondering what was going through the writer's head that caused him to specify Liverpool when he hadn't on the other pages and it was just another day of business in 1836.

Elsie and Glen and Their Sons

Thanks to another Chester descendant, we now have a Nelson family photograph.


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Image courtesy of Kelly.

Elsie (Henning) and Glen Nelson are in back. Their sons are, left to right, Melvin, Robert and Delmer. (The owner of this photograph is descended from Delmer.)

We don't have a date or a location for the photo. Robert was born in September 1922 and here I'd say he looks approximately nine years old, so we can estimate its date at roughly 1931. The style of Elsie's dress looks consistent with that estimate.

I can see some resemblance between Glen and his brother Owen.