Where Were They 100 Years Ago?

 

This week Randy Seaver's SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN  challenge is: Where were they 100 Years Ago? 

1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 18 May 1919 – 100 years ago.

2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist?


I always enjoy these challenges.  However, while I usually try to answer them, I haven't done it in a post.  I was surprised to find that I had 11 ancestors living in 1919 and all of them were in Indiana. 

On my maternal side, there were three generations, with four of my ancestors, living in this home farm of William Bovenschen in Greene County, Indiana.

My oldest ancestor living in 1919 was my Great-great grandmother Margaret (Schmidt) Bovenschen.  She was born in Germany in 1842 and immigrated about 1850 with her parents, settling in Greene County, Indiana.  She married Dedrick Bovenschen in 1862.  In 1911 Dedrick died and she moved in with her son William, my great grandfather (1866-1947). 

In the 1919 household were William, age 52 and his wife Gesena (Heitman), 52, and their children: Grace age 25, Helen age 23 - my grandmother, Tressa age 20, Bernice age 18, Ruth age 15 and Wayne age 11 and William's mother Margaret, age 77. Anna their oldest daughter had already married.

The Bovenschen farm was 272 acres with a large brick house.  These are the only pictures I have and they were taken at family events in 1920 and 1921. The house is no longer standing. In his later years William leased the land for coal mining and then after his death the family sold the land.