Saturday, August 25, 2018

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 34

Non-population is this week’s writing prompt, which is probably confusing if you are not involved in genealogy. Most people in the United States are aware of census records, in which the federal government attempts to locate all the people living in this country at a given point in time. Less familiar are the non-population schedules, which were used to identify and quantify resources and needs. Agriculture, mortality, and social statistics schedules were taken in 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880. Manufacturing/industrial schedules were taken in 1820, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880. And the delinquent, defective, and dependent schedule was a supplemental schedule taken only in 1880. These schedules are helpful to genealogists not only because some of them contain names not found on any other records, but also because they add additional information about our ancestors and the communities in which they lived.

Agricultural Schedules recorded statistics on farms, plantations and market gardens, listing the names of owners, agents and managers. The type of statistics recorded included the total acreage of land, the value of the farm, machinery and livestock, amount of staples (wool, cotton, grain, etc.) produced, and the value of animals slaughtered, etc.

Mortality Schedules included anyone who died in the year prior to the record being taken. In addition to the name, also listed were the age, sex, marital status, state or country of birth, month of death, occupation, cause of death, and the length of the final illness.

Social Statistics Schedules contained information about cemeteries listed within the city boundaries, trade societies, churches, and a list of schools, colleges, libraries, and newspapers, among other things.

Manufacturing/Industrial Schedules identified any manufacturing, mining, fishing, mercantile, and trading businesses which had an annual gross product of $500 or more.

On the 1880 census, if a person was noted as blind, deaf and dumb, idiotic, insane, or maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise disabled, or was enumerated in a prison, orphanage or poorhouse, a supplemental schedule called the Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes was included. The schedule included different forms to enumerate the following classes of individuals:

blind
deaf and dumb
idiotic
insane
homeless children (in institutions)
inhabitants in prison
pauper and indigent inhabitants (in institutions)

To date I have only located a non-population schedule for one of my ancestors - Samuel Moorhead. To be honest, I really hadn’t taken any time to study the schedule until this writing prompt came along. Samuel is my paternal 4th great-grandfather, and he was born about 1799 in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. This county is located east of Pittsburgh. At some point before 1826, Samuel moved from Pennsylvania to Cincinnati, where he married Elizabeth Carnes. Together they had seven children.

1855 Cincinnati map

The Industrial Schedule for the 8th Ward of Cincinnati was taken 1 June 1850. It showed that Samuel Moorhead had a business making bricks, with a capital investment in real and personal estate of $300. Samuel listed that he used wood and clay in the process of making the bricks, placing a value of $450 on the wood and $125 on the clay. He had 5 employees making bricks by hand and horse power. His average monthly cost for labor was $135. Annually they made 500,000 bricks, which were valued at $2,000. In the 8th Ward alone there were 41 brick makers shown on the schedule!

In the 1850 census, which was enumerated on 23 July 1850, Samuel and Elizabeth were living in the 8th Ward of Cincinnati with their children Josiah, John, Samuel, Elizabeth, Angeline, William, and Oliver. Samuel was employed as a brick maker, as were sons John and Samuel. That accounts for 3 of the 5 employees Samuel listed on the Industrial Schedule.

The 1860 census shows the family living in the 16th Ward in Cincinnati, with the two youngest children still at home. Though he was in his 60s, Samuel was still employed but now he worked as a moulder (someone who makes moulds for casting). The value of his real estate was listed as $800. By the 1870 census, Samuel was a widow as Elizabeth had died 6 August 1866. He was living with his daughter Angeline and her family in 1870 on a farm in Union Township, which is located in Highland County, Ohio about 70 miles northeast of Cincinnati. When he died on 30 January 1879, his body was brought back to Cincinnati for burial in Spring Grove Cemetery next to his wife.

While the normal census records would have let me know that my 4th great-grandfather was a brick maker, without the non-population schedule of 1850 I would have had no idea that he had ever owned a brick making company. Hopefully I will come across more of these schedules so that I can gain a better understanding of my ancestor’s lives.


Saturday, August 18, 2018

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 33

We are talking about Family Legends in this week’s writing prompt. A couple of legends come to mind. The first is that my great-grandfather Michael J. Crusham came to the United States because he was fleeing the law after being accused of stealing a horse. I’ve found no evidence of this being the case. The second is that my great-great grandfather served in the Civil War. I’ve written about Micheal W. Cramer in the past, which you can read here. Unless he was a super-young member of the drum and bugle corp, I don’t think he was in the war.

So what to write about? How about a family that became a legend in the business of death, among other things? My paternal 3rd great-grandfather Wilhemus (William) Hillenbrand was born 7 March 1811 in Frankenthal, Germany. He was the youngest of 6 children born to Andreas and Gertrude (Walter) Hillenbrand. While I have not located his immigration information, I found a general land office certificate that indicates that on 16 March 1837 William Hillenbrand of Ohio County, Virginia purchased 80 acres located in the west half of the southwest quarter of Section 31 in Township 10 north of Range 13 East in Ripley County, Indiana. When William bought the land, he was already married to Maria Barbara Schantz, and the couple had one daughter named Elizabeth, who was born in 1835 in Ohio County, Virginia. The couple eventually had a total of 9 children.

John Hillenbrand
The oldest son of William and Maria was John Hillenbrand, my 3rd great-uncle. Born 18 February 1843 on the family farm in Ripley County, Indiana, John was quite an enterprising young man. Reportedly he owned 16 sawmills by the age of 18, which was his age when his father died in 1861. On 12 May 1863, John married Margaret Herr in Dearborn, Indiana and they had 8 children, 4 of whom lived to be adults. In 1876 he and his family left the farm to move to Batesville, Ripley County, Indiana where he opened a general store with his brother William.

Batesville was platted on 3 November 1852. Born and raised in the area, John was a member of the first town council of Batesville, and served as postmaster of the town during President Grover Cleveland’s second administration.

After a local furniture plant in Batesville was destroyed by fire, John purchased the property, and rebuilt and expanded the facility. He thus founded the American Furniture Company in 1879, one of the most substantial industrial enterprises in Batesville. He kept his hand in the mercantile business, and in 1888 he bought his brother out and formed the Hillenbrand & Mitchell Company with one of his son-in-laws. The business continued to expand with its lumber and sawmill operations.

The Batesville Water Works Company was founded by John in 1901, and in 1906 he purchased the Batesville Casket Company, with active management of this enterprise being turned over to his son, John Adam Hillenbrand. He also organized the Batesville Electric Light & Power Company, and his son John Adam served as the President.

Batesville Casket Company is still in operation today as a subsidiary of Hillenbrand Industries, along with Block Medical, Inc.; The Forethought Group, Inc.; Hill-Rom Company, Inc.; and Medeco Security Locks, Inc., employing over 6,000 people world-wide (1,200 locally) and with revenue of 1.6 billion. Numerous people and institutions have benefited from the philanthropy of Hillenbrand family members and/or the foundation set up by Hillenbrand Industries. A few examples include:

  • George & Sophia Hillenbrand donated the land for Liberty Park in Batesville
  • Margaret Herr Hillenbrand donated money to build Margaret Mary Hospital on land that was gifted by her son, George M. Hillenbrand
  • The Batesville Memorial Public Library was built on land donated by John Adam Hillenbrand
  • Memorial Pool and Southeastern Indiana YMCA were built with donations from the family
  • John Adam Hillenbrand donated land to St. Louis Catholic Church for a new school

I think it is safe to say that the Hillenbrand family members and their businesses are legends in Ripley County, Indiana - and beyond.


Saturday, August 11, 2018

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 32

Chicago ~1958
With the writing prompt this week being Youngest, my mind went to youngest in the family. I am the baby in my family, having three older brothers (one of whom died before I was born) and one older sister. That made me think about other members of my family tree, wondering if any of them were also the youngest born child. I knew that neither mom nor dad were the youngest in their families. As it turns out neither Grandma or Grandpa Kubler, my dad’s parents, were the babies in their families, nor were my mom’s parents, Grandma or Grandpa Crusham.

In looking at the ancestral chart, I had to go all the way back to my maternal great-grandfather Peter Metz, who was the youngest of 9 kids, to find another baby. None of my other great-grandparents fell into this very special place in their families.

In a way my family is unique in that my parents had almost two separate sets of children. My sister is 11 years older than me, followed by a brother who is 9 years older than me, and then a brother who is 18 months older than me. In between the boys, my mom suffered a couple of miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy which resulted in all of one and most of the other ovaries being removed. She was told she would most likely not get pregnant again, and if she did would not carry the baby to full term. And then along came my brother and me.

My sister was like a second mother to me, and she spent a lot of time caring for my brother and me. With my brother being so close in age to me, we were best buddies as children. We shared bottles and toys, and got along great. My sister has corroborated that we were sickeningly sweet to each other. We played a lot of games together, rode our bikes and acted out war scenes with his G.I. Joes, and later played baseball with the neighborhood boys.

Maybe due to our close age, I never really felt like the baby of the family. I certainly never was aware that I received special attention. Mom never played favorites with any of us, and if anything my dad favored the brother next closest in age to me. I don’t think my dad ever got over losing his oldest son to aplastic anemia at the age of 7, and I believe my brother reminded dad of Roy.

One benefit of being the youngest is that I learned a lot from my older siblings. My dad had a bit of a temper, so by observing what set him off with the older kids, I avoided doing those things. It was also nice to have my parents to myself for the last couple of years of college, when the others had married and/or moved away.

It was a good childhood, with a lot of love and laughs. I enjoyed my place in it as baby of the family. Even if I often shared that place with my not too much older brother.

Saturday, August 4, 2018

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 31

The writing prompt Oldest probably makes you think of the oldest person in your family. But that topic was covered in Week 3 when the prompt was Longevity. Instead I want to write about the oldest heirloom that I have in my possession. It is an oak chair that was made in the mid to late 1800s.

North Wind face?
Whimsical furniture containing griffins, lions and gargoyles appeared in England in the 1820s, and the style made its way across the pond. A unique American version was the face chair. The carved face was supposed to blow evil spirits away. G. Stomps & Brother (later changed to Stomps-Burkhardt Company) of Dayton, Ohio was one of the furniture manufactures producing face chairs in the 1800s. While there is no marking on the bottom of our chair, I have seem many photos of similar looking chairs that were made by the Stomps company.

So how did this chair come to be part of our family? In 1944 my father LeRoy Kubler was stationed at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, living in a boarding house along with my mother and oldest brother Roy. My father was in the Army Air Forces, and received orders that he was shipping out to India. He was given enough time to drive my mom, very pregnant with their second child, and Roy to Cincinnati and deposit them with her parents, Mike and Mayme (Metz) Crusham before leaving the country.

When the house next door to her folks came on the market, mom quickly sent a letter off to dad asking if she should buy the Koch home. Before my dad even had time to answer, she had borrowed money from her brother Charlie and purchased it. The next letter dad received announced, “I bought the Koch house!”

face chair
The Koch’s left behind a couple of pieces of furniture, of which one was this chair. Mrs. Koch said that the chair was 100 years old at that time, indicating that it was manufactured in 1844. Mom and dad kept the chair, and it moved with us from Cincinnati, to Chicago, to Des Moines and then back to Cincinnati when dad retired in 1984. I always loved it, though it had a very dark patina on it for much of the time it was in our family. Back in Cincinnati, dad decided to refinish it. While the stripping brought out the beautiful grains in the wood, I knew what the Keno brothers on Antiques Roadshow would say. “Well, if your dad hadn’t refinished the chair, it would be worth $2,000. But since he stripped off the original finish, it is only worth $300.”

After my dad died, my siblings and I divided up his household items. As I am the only one who lives in an old home and collects antiques, I got the face chair. It sits proudly in the foyer of our 1902 Queen Ann house. Several years ago I took the chair to a new antiques dealer in our town. She called it a North Wind chair, and said it had been made in the mid-1860s. She placed a value of around $1,600 on it. We discussed the fact that my dad had refinished it, and she simply asked me if I like how it looks now. I told her that it really is so much better because you can see the beautiful wood and also make out the facial features. She said then that is all that matters. I suspect she is off a bit on both the production year as well as the value, but that’s okay. I don't intend to ever sell the chair. It keeps a bit of mom and dad here in the house with me.