William Harvey & Carolyn Westover are my direct line ancestors (Great Great Grandparents) and spent most of their lives in Elkhart, Indiana. They had 8 children: Mary, James, John, William, Fredrick, Judson. Oliver and Albert.
We visited Elkhart to find information about this line of the family. The Elkhart County Historic Museum was able to find several newspaper articles about the family, which were quite interesting to read. For example:
March, 1885
There were old plat map books available, where I found property listings for family members.
1874 Plat
1892 Plat
I found it interesting that James married twice and both times to neighboring ladies: First to Kate Newell, and when she passed away, to Ellen Aurand.
The ladies at the museum were able to show me, on Google maps, where the property is located and it was only a few miles north of the museum. The area where William had his farm is now a huge industrial park with major roads surrounding it.
The museum also had a map of the grave sites in Zion Lutheran Cemetery, where we knew William and Caroline are buried, along with several of their children and spouses. The cemetery is only 1 mile from William and Caroline’s farm.
We found 2 family plots and there might be additional sites that we did not find. The records for the plots were not well maintained for quite a few years. We did some cleaning of grave stones, but for the most part they were all in good shape.
Plot 1:
(James)
Plot 2:
William and Caroline
William (Jr.) has a marker for the Spanish War/Cuba
The museum has a collection of Elkhart City Directories and I was able to find a couple of entries for Albert (Bert). The 1901 entry contains the word ‘lab’ and I don’t know what that means, but the 1899 entry states he works for ‘LS & MS’ and that was a railroad that employed many Elkhart men.
1899 – 1900
1901 – 1902